RealNetworks’ founder Rob Glaser stepped down as chief executive in January as the company went on to announce the spin-offs of its games business and Rhapsody music service in response to falling revenues in 2009.
RealPlayer , the audio streaming product that defined the company when it was launched 15 years ago, is now once again the focus, with a new version unveiled today.
Streaming video has been added over the years and the latest RealPlayer SP adds video editing features for the first time.
The last major release, which was downloaded more than 70m times, allowed users to download streaming video from sites such as YouTube as files that could be converted to various formats for playing on portable media players and smartphones.
The new version of SP adds settings for video to be converted and played correctly on more recent devices such as Google’s Nexus One, the Droid smartphone and Blackberry Storm 2. Files can be saved in formats such as QuickTime, Mpeg 4 and as audio only.
The video editing is confined to trimming the beginning and end of a video, but it works well and is very easy to master with its slider tool.
The software is a free download but RealNetworks is charging $40 for a Plus upgrade that adds support for H.264 video conversion, DVD playback, and DVD burning.
