Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System

"J. Lewis Muir" <[email protected]> · Mon, 24 Mar 2008 14:43:52 -0400

On 3/24/08 10:20 AM, Andrew Johnson wrote:
> Does anybody know if it's possible to transcode RealVideo files into any
> widely used non-proprietary formats, and if so what tools I need to do
> that?
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> - Andrew

Hi, Andrew.

I think the software FFmpeg <http://ffmpeg.mplayerhq.hu/> would be able
to transcode RealVideo to a format of your choice (I haven't actually
tried doing this though).  Of course, you would almost certainly be
making a lossy copy of a lossy copy at that point, so if you have higher
quality source video, it would be better to use that as your source when
transcoding to a new format.

As far as formats go, Flash Video may be a good choice from the
standpoint of being a widely used and supported format.  For example,
YouTube uses this format.  It would require a Flash Video player (e.g.
Adobe Flash Player plug-in for a web browser).  A large percentage of
existing web browsers already have an Adobe Flash plug-in.  However, I
believe Flash Video normally uses a proprietary codec, so if you truly
want a non-proprietary format, Flash Video won't work.

One non-proprietary video codec is Theora <http://www.theora.org/>.  It
is usually used inside an Ogg container format.  Wikipedia uses Ogg
Theora for their video content:

  <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:
   Creation_and_usage_of_media_files#Video>

Unfortunately, this format is not supported by default on many
platforms.  Wikipedia's Media help page talks about this and provides
instructions for installing software to play this format:

  <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Media_help>

Lewis

-- 
J. Lewis Muir
Software Engineer
CARS/IMCA-CAT

Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System

Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System