RealPlayer to Support One-Click Video Ripping

Aditi.Tuteja writes "RealPlayer is coming up with a free version in June which will allow one-click video ripping. This free downloadable video player will allow anyone to save and organize video files in all major formats including Flash, QuickTime, RealMedia and Window Media and will support video ripping from websites like YouTube or more. The new RealPlayer will not download or record video that is DRM-enabled."

Comments

Cool!

[sharkey]

Cli...

*buffering*
*buffering*

...ck!!

Windows Only For Now

[WrongSizeGlass]

The new version of RealPlayer will be released in June. Sorry Mac users, no Real enabled ripping for you until later in the year, Windows only at this stage with support for Internet Explorer and Firefox. Sorry Mac users? I guess lack of Linux support doesn't even warrant a mention (let alone an apology)? I'm sure glad there are no other browsers out there except for FF & IE.

I see they're trying to avoid becoming the middleman in content lawsuits by avoiding "DRM infected" content, but that won't protect them from the copyright owners suing them the very first time the MPAA downloads a clip from a movie.

Re:Windows Only For Now

[XSforMe]

I don't get it... why would anybody be interested in having this piece of crapware native in their platform? I for one, avoid it like the plague: no machine under my wing gets touched with Realplayer.

Re:Windows Only For Now

[zlogic]

Fedora used to include Helix Player as the default mp3 playimg app in Core 2 (I use Ubuntu so I don't know about later versions). And Helix is essentially an open-sourced version of RealPlayer (although some functions are missing). I'd say that Real supports Linux better than Adobe or nVidia.

Re:Windows Only For Now

[Bemopolis]

I absolutedly need this new version. That way I can convert those Real Player movies I have into a usable format and shitcan Real Player!

Re:Windows Only For Now

[Opportunist]

That's what VMs are for. Install to a VM that you use to have it perform what you want, then store the VM 'til the next time you need it. The host runs TOR or something similar to route your traffic once 'round the world and you're set.

Re:Windows Only For Now

[squiggleslash]

The funny thing is that it's only ever been the Windows versions of RealPlayer and RealOne that have been crapware. The GNU/Linux and Mac OS X versions have always been beautifully minimalist.

I think the assumption has always been that people running Mac OS X and GNU/Linux are content creators/managers, and Windows users are consumers. You don't want to piss off the former two groups.

Re:Windows Only For Now

[mrsteveman1]

I agree, Linux users tend to not put up with ridiculous annoyances and thus the realplayer and helix player on linux are very nice. I recently installed a version of both on my laptop in linux because VLC cant seem to skip to an exact location, and mplayer is just........bleh. RP/Helix is the closest i have found to Media Player Classic in windows, which is very minimalistic and i love it.

But anyway.....

Re:Windows Only For Now

[jZnat]

Because Real seems to be the only company that makes cross-platform media players one of their top priorities. Also, Helix is pretty good (their open source player). They are also one of the easiest ways to get proprietary codecs legally on Linux. And for some reason, their Linux version of Real Player isn't nearly as bad as I remember the Windows malware version from back in the day.

Re:Windows Only For Now

[Angostura]

I really don't understand the continuing antipathy to the basic, free version. I'm running the basic version on OS X and it is great. It lets me watch and listen to the BBC stuff I want, it integrates nicely with other apps, it installs itself cleanly and it doesn't incorporate unnecessary bling or bloat. It works well, it's unobtrusive. What's not to like now?

Re:Windows Only For Now

[krbvroc1]

Lack of bloat in the Linux version is related to apathy, lack of resources, and an older codebase on Linux rather than any intelligent design or insight from Real.

Re:Windows Only For Now

[Ash Vince]

Why does everyone whine about realplayer so much?

It has improved enormously of late. It runs on linux, it doesnt install any spyware and the actual player is open source.
To playback RM clips you need the proprietary codecs but let compare this to the other most widely used streaming media frameworks.

WMV / ASF

Windows only. I know you can get players that play the non DRM stuff but most sites seem to embed the clips in a webpage and try and force us to Windows Media Player.

Quicktime

Windows / Mac Only. No fullscreen unless you pay for the player (used to be anyway, havent used it for some time).

When compared to this lot Realplayer wins hands down. Now I know we could compare it to 8 million other formats / frameworks but these are the ones most widely used. This seems to be because most providers of content try and prevent you from keeping a local copy of their works, and things like MPG give you no way of doing this.

Re:Windows Only For Now

[MBaldelli]

Why does everyone whine about realplayer so much? Well, it's usually the Windows users that complain about it so much. I personally find it rather annoying because every time it's loaded up, it drops in HKLM's Run the TKBell.exe, which is guaranteed to send one messages from Real.com (read: Advertising) even if during the installation process you unclick every open to being notified about anything from Real. Not to mention that it has an annoying habit of being incredibly bloated, and trying to take possession of associations even if you told it to ignore trying to take any during the initial installation.

Re:Windows Only For Now

[pyrrhonist]

Lack of bloat in the Linux version is related to... an older codebase on Linux rather than... intelligent design...

Are you claiming that Real evolved from a single command-line tool like sox? Preposterous!

So it will rip "questionable" material

[Overzeetop]

...for which you're not sure whether you have permission (but isn't protected), but it still won't rip the DVD I purchased. Nice. Thanks.

Re:So it will rip "questionable" material

[Spy der Mann]

...for which you're not sure whether you have permission (but isn't protected), but it still won't rip the DVD I purchased. Nice. Thanks.

Oh, but it WILL rip material downloaded from pirate sites! OH the irony... B-)

Re:So it will rip "questionable" material

[gadlaw]

Seems to me that items downloaded from Pirate sites are already conveniently ripped for you. Generally speaking of course.

Re:One Click Goatse!

[WrongSizeGlass]

As much as I loath the "goatse.cz" posters, it's apropos in this thread since that's probably a picture of where RealPlayer was pulled from. ;-)

DownloadHelper plugin

[cpuh0g]

The "DownloadHelper" extension for Firefox already does this, without all the bloat and adware that RealPlayer delivers. It works great for downloading videos embedded in websites like YouTube, etc.

Re:DownloadHelper plugin

[pla]

The "DownloadHelper" extension for Firefox already does this

Not a bad little extension!

However, it unfortunately only rips videos that most geeks could already have gotten to (though it certainly saves the time of going through the cache, finding what you want, and manually grabbing that!).

I'd really like to find something that can rip videos from the "hard" sites that stream-only, like video.msn.com, that don't actually send the video as a proper file. Although StreamRipper used to work for those, it fails on more and more of them these days; So far the only 100% solution I've found requires actually using a screen-capture util such as CamStudio for those - And that does not count as a satisfactory solution.

Re:DownloadHelper plugin

[illegalcortex]

Try Net Transport. It usually works for me. Every once in a while you have to do a little detective work to get the right URL, though. It's even easier in FF with the FlashGot extension.

Re:DownloadHelper plugin

[mrsteveman1]

Despite all the media streaming protocols we have, they will keep trying to use obscure methods to prevent the majority of people from even capturing the video. But again, anything you can see you can record unless your hardware is working against you. BAD ROBOT!

Re:DownloadHelper plugin

[grondu]

Use URL Snooper to find the actual URL of the video: http://www.donationcoder.com/Software/Mouser/urlsn ooper/index.html

Re:DownloadHelper plugin

[Ash Vince]

without all the bloat and adware that RealPlayer delivers.

Please name some. It never seems to install anything I dont ask it to on my system, either under windows or linux.

DRM-enabled?

[Anonymous Coward]

"This free downloadable video player will allow anyone to save and organize an intentionally limited subset of video files ..."

There. Fixed the summary.

Re:CowboyNeal has never touched a boob

[WrongSizeGlass]

CowboyNeal has never touched a boob That's not true ... he's touched mine. He does have soft hands for a guy though.

Big Yawn!

[Greger47]

The Flash plugin has always allowed you to rip streams.

1. Open your %TEMP% folder.
2. Start playing todays 15 seconds of fame clip on YouTube's frontpage.
3. Notice the flaXXX.tmp file that just appeared in the temp folder.
4. When the clip has finished playing, copy the file somewhere and rename it to HE_iS_BURNiN_HIMS3LF_LOLZ!!!.flv

/greger

Re:Big Yawn!

[Xenolith]

There is a firefox plugin that makes this operation even more easy.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/239 0

Re:Big Yawn!

[suv4x4]

Even easier

Re:Big Yawn!

[figleaf]

For IE users, you can use IE7Pro -- Its like the ultimate plug-in for IE supporting video download, Ad Blocking, Inline Find, Spell checker etc etc.

Re:Big Yawn!

[Reverberant]

Safari users: use the "Activity" window (in the window menu) to find the .flv file (it's usually the largest file in a given webpage), and option-double-click the file to download it. You can play the resulting file (you may need to add the .flv extension) in QuickTime player.

Re:Big Yawn!

[freakxx]

oh damn...u hit the point...I was looking for this info soooooo much. I have a porn site always streaming in flash-format and I was not able to get how the hell should I get the video on my box for later use....I am testing it and it is working VERY well....

One addition: In Linux, there is no .tmp extension.....just "FlashiEzKDL" kind of names....rename it to "xxxxporn.flv" and it works like a charm. One can use format converter to convert it into other more common formats (e.g. ogg or avi or mpg). Thanks!

Re:Big Yawn!

[baboonlogic]

There is a firefox plugin that makes this operation even more easy.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/239 0 As a past user of this addon, I would like to warn you that it routes your requests via a third party website, which of course should and can be be avoided.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/300 6 (which someone did mention above) is much better.

Re:Big Yawn!

[Xenolith]

Thanks.

Re:Big Yawn!

[sootman]

OS X (10.4) needs Perian to play FLVs.

RealPlayer?

[suv4x4]

What the hell was that? Wasn't it a piece of ad/scam-ware that filled your desktop with crap and had misleading purchase options?

Didn't it die eons ago? I wouldn't know.

Re:RealPlayer?

[MMC Monster]

Yeah. I didn't realise they still existed. Now, when they say that the new realplayer "will not download or record video that is DRM-enabled", they surely mean that it will not play anything that is DRM-enabled. (Because they surely know that anything viewable on my computer can be copied as well.) It's a pretty bold move considering that noone even knows that realplayer exists anymore.

Unfortunately, they no longer have the clout (if they ever did) to push content providers to produce content that is not DRM-infected.

Re:RealPlayer?

[freakxx]

What the hell was that? Wasn't it a piece of ad/scam-ware that filled your desktop with crap and had misleading purchase options?

well, I don't understand why ppl r so critical abt realplayer. Isn't it an Internet standard for playing audio/video? Go to BBC or some porn sites...it offers both in Windows Media format as well as in Realplayer format. Of course, one can choose the Windows Media format (with mplayerplugin or mediaconnectivity(FF extension) support in linux) but that doesn't do the job. Using non-realplayer formats have a huge disadvantage that "seeking" is not possible. You can't seek a position in a streaming video or audio...if u try, the streaming stops. However, with realplayer, u can always do it and it indeed is very useful and convenient for users (whether u accept it or not).

Re:RealPlayer?

[anubi]

I will not install RealPlayer stuff because I use my machine for internet banking and purchasing. That is, I am handling MONEY and need confidence in the security of my machine.

If social bullshit sites wanna commit to virus prone or hidden-agendaware, fine. I won't see it, but then I really don't need to see it either.

I don't think any serious site, especially if MONEY is involved, would consider programming their site in a frivolous Rube-Goldberg manner if they have the slightest intention of being viewed as a serious business site.

Even javascripts on a business site are usually sufficient to cause me to take my purchase elsewhere, as I have no idea what hostile scripts hosting keyloggers may be running in my machine once I open it up to run downloaded executables.

When I land on these poorly coded business websites, these things immediately come to mind...

The CEO/President of the company is technically illiterate.

The CIO of that company is far better with people skills of finding a CEO to pay him than he is at coding.

Nobody at that company gives a damm over what kind of problems I may get if I open myself up to risky intercourse with their machine.

I consider the Internet a risky and filthy place, very useful, but dangerous. I would just as soon go onto the internet with a cash-handling machine with my safeties off as go into a house of prostitution with no prophylactics. God only knows what I am going to catch, likely something I have not seen before.

Re:RealPlayer?

[kalirion]

The other day I played an old .rm file, first time I'd used the Real player in years. From that point on, every time my computer would reboot I would get the RealMedia Message Center popup telling me to update. No options on disabling it, and it didn't appear in the Startup folder. I had to run msconfig and disable tkbell-something-or-other to get rid of that. Annoying as hell.

So, are there any other players out there that support .rm format?

Re:RealPlayer?

[Moochman]

I was doing an ethnomusicology project a couple of years ago on the music of Trinidad and Tobago, and I got half of the music samples off of websites offering "samples" that were actually just low-bitrate full-length songs. But get this: every single one of them was in RealAudio format! Guess it's still got a pretty big stronghold in some parts of the world.... Also a point of interest: After my sometimes harrowing but nonetheless workable efforts to download the files from the streaming media links, I was able to use Real's free Windows player to transcode the files into MP3 so I could take them with me in the car. Not too shabby! Actually, I went through a period when I was quite enamored with the interface of Real's Windows client (version 10) and even went so far as to try the 14-day trial and then cancel it immediately just so I could get the Pro version that let me rip at high bitrates etc. After the 3rd time having to reinstall Windows and confronted with pulling this scheme again, though, I gave up and switched to iTunes. Then iTunes got bloated and I switched to Winamp, which I still enjoy using to this day on my Windows partition, and which I consider to be the most flexible player out there on any OS.

Re:RealPlayer?

[Constantine XVI]

I dunno about the current state of their Windows version, but the Linux version is MILES (possibly light-years) better then it's Windows bretheren. It's even open source.

Re:RealPlayer?

[freakxx]

yes. there is. Install mplayer in linux with all the relevant codecs (from mplayer website). It will play .rm files. However, u may have difficulties if installing it because the installer is not so smooth. It is command-live version in windows. u can install MPUI or smplayer for GUI. And if u could install these successfully, u dont need to bother of any media-file at all....but "if".

To get rid of the annoying behavior of that tkbell or other similar stuffs, I would strongly recommend u to install "Spybot - search and distroy". It does a good job. It has an option which lets it stay in ur system-tray and keeps monitoring if there is any registry change. If some program attempts to do it, it asks u if u want it or not. If u allow, it will let it happen...otherwise not. By using this, u can control all the annoying automatic startup behavior of M$'s crapware (e.g. MSN-chat or Yahoo-chat or some kind of pornware).

I would say, use realplayer with Spybot installed....and of course, mplayer too ;)

Possible infringement

[rhoder]

I thought one-click was Amazon's bag. Get on the stick IP lawyers, sheesh.

Re:Possible infringement

[Jekler]

I think Amazon's patent only covers users. You have to pay royalties if you only click something once.

What about OGG?

[saibot834]

in all major formats including Flash, QuickTime, RealMedia and Window Media

What about Ogg (+Vorbis/Theora)?
Flash and Windows Media are just as bad as RealMedia. No improvement this far, in my opinion.

Re:What about OGG?

[suv4x4]

What about Ogg [wikipedia.org] (+Vorbis/Theora)?
Flash and Windows Media are just as bad as RealMedia. No improvement this far, in my opinion.

That's not a pissing contest about quality. It's a pissing contest about industry support and userbase, availability.

In other words, where on Earth am I to go for lots of good OGG content? What can I find in OGG format? Some training Linux video?

Flash is about being 98% coverage, and light, small, easy to use. It uses MP3 and On2 6 for video. Not the best, but no one needs the best.

Re:What about OGG?

[jZnat]

Flash also uses H.263+, and since encoding to that is supported in FFmpeg (and not On2 VP6), that's what sites like YouTube use.

Ogg Vorbis is gaining support in all sorts of places (e.g., tons of videogames, Wikipedia et al., some online music stores, etc.), and once Ogg Theora is fully standardised and better supported by other open source codecs (like FFmpeg), it can become more ubiquitous.

Oh, and if you were trying to praise On2's VP codecs, note that Theora is based on On2's VP3 (which they generously put all their patents into the public domain essentially). It's too bad that Xiph is a lot more focused on audio solutions rather than complete multimedia ones.

And for pure speculation, perhaps Adobe will add Theora and Vorbis to the list of acceptable codecs in a future version of Flash since they are patent- and royalty-free.

Re:What about OGG?

[Tickletaint]

All A/V content on Wikipedia is in OGG format, by decree of the "cabal." I'm not sure whether that reflects more poorly on Wikipedia or on OGG.

Re:What about OGG?

[martin-boundary]

Any format that Mplayer can play can also be saved. Just use the -dumpstream switch. For example, if there's a realplayer stream you like, use this:

mplayer rtsp://host/path/file.rm -dumpstream -dumpfile 'local.rm'

This is particularly useful to get rid of the "buffering" message. Just open an xterm and stream the file as above, then wait half a minute and open a second xterm and start playing the *local* file while it's still downloading at the same time:

mplayer local.rm

Re:What about OGG?

[nogginthenog]

Forget Ogg, what about AVI?

The Illusion of Something Useful

[gadlaw]

Wow, a ripper that doesn't actually rip anything useful or desired. I can see that Real Player is still right on top of technology these days and probably why it isn't anywhere on my computer. Now a program that would allow me to rip my cd's, dvd's and mixed media cd/dvd's - that would be something to Slashdot on about. Thank you Easy CD-DA Extractor for part of that solution.

Games that use Vorbis

[tepples]

I'm sorry to dissapoint you, but Ogg is not a MAJOR format. Only nerds ever heard about it, let alone use it. True, Theora is still in the nerds-only stage, but do only nerds play these computer games?

Re:Games that use Vorbis

[Anonymous Coward]

That only proves that some game programmers know about it, gamers won't know or care about what format the audio files are.

Re:Games that use Vorbis

[Lorkki]

Lots of music releases on the net are also made in (and sometimes available only as) Ogg Vorbis as well. A few indie net radios offer Ogg streams for much better quality than the regular MP3 encoding on lower bitrates. I doubt that "nerds" would be the only consumers of those.

Re:Games that use Vorbis

[rhizome]

A few indie net radios offer Ogg streams for much better quality than the regular MP3 encoding on lower bitrates.

This is getting beside the point of the article (ripping), but unless something has changed in the last year or two ogg sucks for streaming. Sure you can listen to something via an ogg stream, but the indexing/seeking features of the format are either underdeveloped or completely missing.

And how much of my soul...

[macraig]

... err, identity, do they surreptitiously suck from the bones of my PC for the privilege of using it? How much of my psychology and behavior and preferences will they then know even before I do? Does this tasty little bit of video-ripping candy in any way suggest that this is no longer the same company whose majority shareholder was Lucifer?

Re:CowboyNeal has never touched a boob

[benjaminperdomo]

Pics or it didn't happen!

Argh

[bradavon]

I wish RealPlayer would just die. It's such atrociously bad software in every way and always has been. Dreadful quality, constant buffering, proprietary format that barely works in any other software, bloatware to the extreme and to makes matters worse crud all over your system.

Just do us all a favour and go bankrupt.

Re:Argh

[Ash Vince]

Then go to this site and improve it:

https://helixcommunity.org/

About 5 years ago they open sourced the entire player and just held on to the codecs.

Democracy Player as alternative ?

[advid.net]

Democracy Player also can save YouTube videos.

It is based on vlc I think.

• Play Quicktime, WMV, MPEG, AVI, XVID, and more
• Subscribe to any video RSS feed, podcast, or video blog.
• Download and save videos from YouTube, Google Video, Yahoo Video, and other sites.
• Watch HD videos on your computer screen (high-def display)
• and more ...

Re:One Click Goatse!

[Kjella]

As much as I loath the "goatse.cz" posters

That should be "goatse.cx". Disturbingly enough, I spotted the error without a second thought.

Please Select your Poison

[EEPROMS]

Please select the proprietary DRM crippled format you wish to save the video in..

Flash [ ]
Quicktime [ ]
WMV [ ]
None of the above [x]

Re:Only a matter of time...

[Ash Vince]

Why bother reverse engineering an open source project you moron.

See here: https://helixcommunity.org/

Re:One Click Goatse!

[DJCacophony]

goatse.cx was taken down, so goatse.cz took it's place. although in this case I can forgive you for not clicking either link to find out for yourself.

this will be fun.

[webmonkey44]

this will be fun. I might try it. Hope RIAA or MPAA don't complain about it.

Re:realplayer? what's that?

[instanto]

Real = Spyware / Nagware / Crapware / WTFWare

Be Aware about RealPlayer.

Try Net Transport

[jackion]

http://www.apple-tv-converter.net/