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RealNetworks is piling on the functionality of its RealPlayer software in the face of strong competition for its well known video and audio player.
Apple announced Quicktime X this month, adding editing capabilities to its player. Mozilla’s Firefox 3.5 browser now has the same ability as RealPlayer to download web video. Meanwhile Apple, Mozilla and Google are pursing HTML5 standards that can do away with the need for separate video-playing software and plug-ins.
RealPlayer is therefore moving towards a hybrid application that combines the ability to download streaming web video with features from multimedia desktop programs that allow conversion to different formats and transfer to a range of devices.
Its SP version, released today, allows users to download streaming video from the web and put it on a portable media player or mobile phone with just a couple of mouse clicks.
“SP stands for social and portable and it’s all about taking content with you anywhere you want,” Jeff Chasen, Real’s head of video product development, told me.
Media players were commoditising, he admitted. The company had therefore decided to differentiate itself by focussing on the problems consumers were having getting content from the web easily onto phones, media players and other devices such as games consoles.
He demonstrated how conversions and transfers to some of the latest smartphones could be done seamlessly through a USB cable attached to a PC. The iPhone is an extra step as Apple only allows converted content to be transferred to its iTunes library, meaning users will then have to sync their device.
The software also has a share function to email the video or post links to Facebook and Twitter. In addition, it can convert local PC files such as videos from a digital camera for playing on another device.
This is a beta version so there is a lot of missing functionality. In future versions, RealPlayer should be able to convert the other way - taking video from an attached cellphone and repurposing it for the PC or web. Video editing should be possible as well as automated detection of cameras and prompting to convert and upload.
The software is free, but DVD playback and burning can be added for $40.
RealPlayer’s new functionality is similar to that offered by Nero’s Move It and Doubletwist. Its transcoding seems quite slow - a one-minute video takes one minute to convert, putting it at a disadvantage to software like CyberLink’s Espresso, which can utilise every core of a quad-core processor, plus the GPU using ATI’s Stream or Nvidia’s CUDA, to do that in a fraction of the time.
Mr Chasen said RealPlayer should have faster transcoding in a future version, and the company will certainly have to increase the speed of its product’s development if RealPlayer is to stay relevant.
Tags: Cyberlink, DoubleTwist, Nero, Quicktime, RealNetworks
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