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RealPlayer to Support One-Click Video Ripping 95

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."
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RealPlayer to Support One-Click Video Ripping

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  • Cool! (Score:5, Funny)

    by sharkey ( 16670 ) on Saturday June 02, 2007 @08:17AM (#19362605)
    Cli...

    *buffering*
    *buffering*

    ...ck!!
  • Windows Only For Now (Score:3, Interesting)

    by WrongSizeGlass ( 838941 ) on Saturday June 02, 2007 @08:18AM (#19362611)

    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: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by XSforMe ( 446716 )
      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: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Bemopolis ( 698691 )
        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!
      • 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.
      • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

        by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Saturday June 02, 2007 @10:24AM (#19363283)
        Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • 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.....
        • 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.
          • 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!

      • by jZnat ( 793348 ) * on Saturday June 02, 2007 @11:15AM (#19363633) Homepage Journal
        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.
        • 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 po
      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by Angostura ( 703910 )
        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: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Ash Vince ( 602485 )
        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 full
    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by zlogic ( 892404 )
      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.
  • by Overzeetop ( 214511 ) on Saturday June 02, 2007 @08:18AM (#19362613) Journal
    ...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.
    • by cpuh0g ( 839926 ) on Saturday June 02, 2007 @08:22AM (#19362633)
      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.
      • by pla ( 258480 )
        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,
      • 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.
    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      ...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-)
      • by gadlaw ( 562280 )
        Seems to me that items downloaded from Pirate sites are already conveniently ripped for you. Generally speaking of course.
  • DRM-enabled? (Score:1, Insightful)

    by 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.
  • Big Yawn! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Greger47 ( 516305 ) on Saturday June 02, 2007 @08:29AM (#19362677)
    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

  • RealPlayer? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by suv4x4 ( 956391 ) on Saturday June 02, 2007 @08:31AM (#19362685)
    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: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by MMC Monster ( 602931 )
      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 no
    • by freakxx ( 987620 )
      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 n

      • by Moochman ( 54872 )
        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
    • 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?
      • by freakxx ( 987620 )
        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

    • 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.
  • I thought one-click was Amazon's bag. Get on the stick IP lawyers, sheesh.
    • by Jekler ( 626699 )
      I think Amazon's patent only covers users. You have to pay royalties if you only click something once.
  • ...until someone reverse engineers the RealPlayer code and makes it do whatever the hell they want it to (IE. Burn DRM protected crap and stuff like that).
  • What about OGG? (Score:5, Informative)

    by saibot834 ( 1061528 ) on Saturday June 02, 2007 @08:52AM (#19362801)
    in all major formats including Flash, QuickTime, RealMedia and Window Media

    What about Ogg [wikipedia.org] (+Vorbis/Theora)?
    Flash and Windows Media are just as bad as RealMedia. No improvement this far, in my opinion.
    • by suv4x4 ( 956391 )
      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 n
      • by jZnat ( 793348 ) *
        Flash also uses H.263+, and since encoding to that is supported in FFmpeg [mplayerhq.hu] (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 p
      • 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.
    • Any format that Mplayer [mplayerhq.hu] 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

    • Forget Ogg, what about AVI?
  • 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.
  • ... 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?
  • Argh (Score:3, Interesting)

    by bradavon ( 1066358 ) on Saturday June 02, 2007 @12:02PM (#19364003)
    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.
  • Democracy Player [getdemocracy.com] 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 ...
  • Please select the proprietary DRM crippled format you wish to save the video in..

    Flash [ ]
    Quicktime [ ]
    WMV [ ]
    None of the above [x]
  • this will be fun. I might try it. Hope RIAA or MPAA don't complain about it.

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