RealVideo

RealVideo is a proprietary video format created by Real Media and Real Audio as developed and patented by RealNetworks. It is mainly used in streaming applications.

Compressed with RealVideo files are lossy. The quality of RealVideo files is comparatively good in general at high compressions, older versions are bad at low compressions compared with, for example, MPEG. However, newer versions are of high quality comparable to MPEG -4 video codecs like Xvid or DivX and Windows Media Video 9

For RealVideo 5 ( RV10 ) and RealVideo G2 ( RV20 ) open source encoders and decoders exist in the FFmpeg project.

Since the introduction of RealVideo 9 and the start of the Helix Community the end of 2002 maintains the main developer of the RealVideo format, Karl Olav Lillevold, a direct contact with the end users through the Doom9 forum, and are there precisely for help on using the RealVideo codecs. Since then carried out at shorter intervals updates of the encoder.

From RealVideo, there are currently four not mutually compatible versions, which to identify by a four -letter code, as it occurs also in AVI format:

• RV10: RealVideo 5, the first version of RealVideo, the format is identical to H.263
• RV20: RealVideo G2; RealVideo G2 SVT
• RV30: RealVideo 8
• RV40: RealVideo 9; RealVideo 9 EHQ; RealVideo 10

Real Video is usually in the RealMedia container in front and then transmits the file extension rv, ram, rm, rmvb or. .. .; the MIME type audio / x - pn -real video. However, it can also be used in Matroska ( file extension. Mkv ).

Real video can be created by the Helix Producer freely available for various operating systems. For the program, which can only be controlled by configuration files and command line, there are various front-ends that allow even beginners to use it.