RealAudio Player Help Contents

Quick Start

File Menu

View Menu

TroubleShooting


QuickStart

The RealAudio Player provides real time sound over the internet.  Once you have installed the RealAudio player, RealAudio will play automatically when you select any RealAudio button on a World Wide Web page.  You do not need to first load the RealAudio player, it will be loaded by your World Wide Web browser.

Audio Formats

The RealAudio player only plays RealAudio files, it does not play .au or .wav files.  To convert an AU or WAV file to a RealAudio file, use the RealAudio Studio, available from Progressive Networks.

Quick Start

File Menu

View Menu

TroubleShooting


File Menu

The File Menu allows you to play RealAudio files directly from the player without using your World Wide Web Browser.

Open Local File

Open File plays a local file (a file you are not accessing through the internet).

Open URL

Open URL plays a file on a RealAudio server through the internet (without using a World Wide Web Browser), by using Open URL.  Using  the player in this fashion is not recommended: you have to remember the exact file name and server name.  There is no browse option.  Enter the filename as follows:

pnm://RealAudioServer/complete-path-to-file

where

pnm specifies that we are opening a file from a Progressive Networks server

RealAudioServer is the address of the Real Audio Server providing this file

complete-path-to-file is the complete path to the file on the RealAudio Server.

This feature is only of value to maintainers of RealAudio servers who want to test their servers. Do not use this feature to open any other kinds of URL such as http, ftp, or gopher.  Instead, please use your web browser.

Quick Start

File Menu

View Menu

TroubleShooting


ViewMenu
View

The View menu allows you to see different parts of the RealAudio player.  These parts are:

Status Bar:

The Status Bar displays the current status of the player.

Info and Volume

Information and Volume displays the title, author, and copyright of the clip as well as the volume control.  The higher the setting on the volume control,  the greater the sound should be.  If you hear no volume, or the volume is very muted, check the control knob on your speakers.  Next, start the mixer application provided with your sound card.  Each sound card comes with a different mixer application, so we are not able to describe them all here.  However, you want to increase the master volume which is typically represented by a large triangle.

Options

The Options dialog allows you to control how your player acts.

Loss Correction

When Loss Correction is selected it makes the RealAudio Player compensate for packets lost in transit between the RealAudio Server and your Player.  When Loss Correction is disabled, the lost packets are simply skipped.

Send Statistics

The Send Statistics option controls whether the RealAudio Player sends statistics back to the RealAudio server after you complete playing a clip.  To help connection providers assure transmission quality, the RealAudio Player sends some transmission statistics to the RealAudio Server.  This information is sent when a clip is has finished playing and includes the same information you see in the Statistics dialog:

* the number of packets received

* the number of packets lost in transmission

* the number of packets arriving late

If you do not want your player to send statistics back to the server, please un-select Send Statistics.  Statistics will not be sent until you re-select the Send Statistics box.

The RealAudio player does not access nor send to the server any information about your identity such as your user name, e-mail address or passwords.

Connection Timeout

This value is the number of maximum number of seconds the RealAudio player has to connect to a RealAudio server.  If the player does not connect to the server within the time specified, a retry/cancel box will show up.  The default value is 10 seconds.  It may take longer than that to contact some RealAudio Servers.  A value of 0 means never time out.

Advanced Options

Advanced Options allow you to force the player into different modes.

8 bit:

Forces the player to play 8 bit sound instead of 16 bit sound.  Users of 8 bit sound cards will usually not have to select this option, the player should do that for you.  However, under certain circumstances, you may have to force the RealAudio player to play 8 bit sound.  Do this by selecting 8 bit  In general, 16 bit sound is better than 8 bit sound.

11 KiloHertz:

Forces the player to play at 11 KiloHertz.  Use this option if your player is producing extremely garbled sound.  Your sound card may not support 8 KiloHertz.

Acceptable Loss:

This option enables the player to warn you when the quality has become unacceptable.  Making this number higher means that you can tolerate more dissonance.  Making this value smaller means that you will not tolerate poor quality audio.

Quick Start

File Menu

View Menu

TroubleShooting


Trouble
TroubleShooting

If you experience problems with the RealAudio Player, please look at the documentation available on our web site at

http://www.realaudio.com/techinfo.html.

RealAudio uses port 7070 for TCP and ports 6970 through 7170 inclusive for UDP transmission. If you are accessing RealAudio through a firewall, your firewall administrator will need to authorize these ports. You can point your administrator to our firewall page at http://www.realaudio.com/firewall.html for details.

TIA

TIA (The Internet Adapter) is not compatible with the RealAudio player.  TIA is a program that provides pseudo-slip access to the internet.  Your internet provider may be using TIA without you knowing it.  Symptoms of a TIA connection is a player that does not play after Buffering.

Volume Control

Raising the lever on the volume control increases the volume.  To finer control the volume, check the manual control on your speakers as well as the master volume in your mixer application.  The mixer application came with your sound board, and every one is different.

Quick Start

File Menu

View Menu

TroubleShooting


Web_Browser
Configuring a Web Browser

When you click on a RealAudio link and your Web browser asks you to configure a viewer, you need to configure add the configuration information for the RealAudio player.  This information is usually provided automatically to your web browser on installation, but can be lost when you update your web browser.

In your web browser, select configure a viewer.

The mime type is audio/x-pn-realaudio

The extensions are .ra, .ram

The viewer is the RealAudio player: typically installed in c:\raplayer\raplayer.exe

Quick Start

File Menu

View Menu

TroubleShooting


Mime_Type
Mime Types

Mime Types are the method that World Wide Web browsers use to determine what kind of action should be taken on a particular link.  Most of the time, a consistent set of extensions is used to describe an Mime Type.  In your browser, you determine what actions should be taken for each Mime type.  You can change these actions by changing the values under Helper Applications.  For RealAudio files, the mime type is audio/x-pn-realaudio.

To download programs, you need to set the action for the mime type: application/octet-string to be Ask User or Save.

Quick Start

File Menu

View Menu

TroubleShooting