.ram file? What software?

What kind of viewer/player software do I need to view a .ram file?

Thanks in advance for your help!

-Ivar

You’ll need a Real player, available free here. If memory serves, .ram means Real Audio Media.

Just to warn you, Real media is unloved by all. There were about three pit threads within a week about Real pretty recently. It installs itself pretty deeply in your computer.

Agreed. Unless you absolutely, positively, must see the file, do yourself a favor and never, ever download that virus of a application.

It has spyware. I refuse to install it.

It was definitely a bitch to get it off my machine, and I understand how to use my machine. I pity the people who install it and don’t know how to get it off. Be warned, Ivar.

Real Player used to be essential software, but the RealOne player is just plain lousy. It does install a lot of crap and affects performance. It’s enough to make you go to Microsoft’s Media Player.

At least in my experience, a .ram file is just a text file containing a URL to a .rm file on a server somewhere. Unfortunatelly you need the real-media player to download the actual file. Once you have downloaded the .rm file, it’s not yet over. Last time I checked there are no general-purpose players that can decode the .rm format.

What I did on my (linux-) machine was to install the real-one player. I never, however, execute the actual player. Instead
I use mplayer, which calls the real-audio libraries to decode the file. Then you can capture the output, and convert it to something usable.

The sound-decoding libraries aren’t all that bad. It’s true that they’re maybe not as neat as some other codecs, but they do work (more often than not). It’s that [expletive deleted] piece of [expletive deleted] front-end ‘real-one’, that keeps installing all kinds of spy-ware, popups, and others. But as long as you don’t actually run it it’s OK. (Note, I’m talking from a linux point-of-view here. Although I have heard of similar set-ups for windows, I’ve not really used it.)

Does anyone know if there’s been a Real Media plug-in for WinAmp?