RealPlayer 11 Is a Real Rip Contender

rishimathew writes to tell us TechNewsWorld is reporting that the new RealPlayer 11, not even out of beta yet, has a lot of great new features including the ability to easily rip streaming videos from sites like YouTube, Revver, and Heavy.com. "With the release of RealPlayer 11, the company is boldly moving into another dicey realm: ripping streaming video. Sure, there are lots of means out there to capture video from sites like YouTube Latest News about YouTube, Revver, Heavy.com and such. There are programs like WM Recorder (US$49.95) and Replay A/V ($49.95), as well as Web sites like Keepvid.com and Mozilla Latest News about Mozilla Foundation Firefox add-ons like VideoDownloader. I've tried some of them. Few, though, can match the slick ease of use of RealPlayer 11 -- and it isn't even out of beta yet."

Comments

Yea but if history tells me anything

[DustyShadow]

...it will be the worst hijacking player of all time. I've never used Real Player because of the sole reason that it would never let me disassociate it with file types. Don't play nice, fine...you don't get installed...ever...again. Some reputations just can't be fixed, and Real ruined theirs long long ago.

Change in tactics?

[jma05]

Amusing, given that they sued companies which made software that ripped real streams back in 2000.

Alternative:

[UncleTogie]

Wait for Gutsy and use clive...

Saving YouTube videos

[ThePyro]

Am I the only one who just copies the videos directly from the FireFox cache folder? It's pretty easy to find them - they're huge compared to the other cached stuff. Just copy the file, rename to .flv, and you're ready to play it.

All is not well...

[Herms]

Few, though, can match the slick ease of use of RealPlayer 11 -- and it isn't even out of beta yet.

Also, few can match the problems caused to completely unrelated software by simply installing it. The mechanism they use for flash video ripping is (as far as I've been able to tell) pretty much undocumented and, as it currently stands, breaks lots of stuff. My company's product breaks in a couple ways, even though our product has nothing to do with Real Player and doesn't serve video. Here are some links with info on the problems:

• Adobe employee (engineer?) bringing up some of the issues: http://weblogs.macromedia.com/jd/archives/2007/07/ real_problem.cfm
• Real's response to the above post: http://rws-blog.rhapsody.com/realplayer/2007/07/re alplayer-beta.html
• Flash/FMS communication details: http://blog.jaycharles.net/?p=9
• Other details. From comments here it suggests that RP11 is installing some kind of proxy for the Flash communication: http://www.flashcomguru.com/index.cfm/2007/8/1/rea l-bug

I also created a wiki page on the osflash site to document them and workarounds/fixes if they're found: http://osflash.org/flashcoders/realplayer_bugs I honestly wouldn't be surprised if Real gets sued by someone over RP11. Either for stream ripping or simply for breaking Flash related products.