My friend recently gave me an anime series that is encoded in Real Media format, but I stubbornly refuse to install Real Player on my computer. Last I checked, it was an evil piece of spyware/bloatware and I’d really like to avoid installing it if possible.
So here’s the question: is there a method by which one can convert files in .RM format to the much nicer DivX format, or anything else for that matter? I did the customary Google search, but it seems like people think that the only way to re-encode RM is to directly rip the video frames while the movie is playing. Needless to say, this is a bad solution for me because it not only requires me to install Real Player, but also to spend 5+ hours to re-encode 5+ hours of video.
Is there a better way to do it, or is the Real format so secure that I have no choice but to install Real Player in order to view the files?
I don’t know the answer to your question (sorry.) But what program do you have that runs DivX files? And where can I obtain this precious piece of software for a reasonably free price?
You could probably do this, but you don’t want to. Recompressing video streams turns them into mush. You can’t recompress a file that was originally compressed with “lossy compression” like realplayer, mpg, divx, etc, without basically ruining the content. You know what I’m talking about, haven’ t you ever seen a jpg that was recompressed? They look like crap.
