RealplayerInstallationMethods

About RealPlayer

[http://www.real.com/player RealPlayer] is a media player originally developed by RealNetworks way back in 1995. It supports a number of audio and video codecs such as realaudio, realvideo 10, mp3, ogg vorbis and theora, h263, and AAC. [http://www.real.com/linux RealPlayer for Linux] is based on the open-source [https://player.helixcommunity.org/2005/downloads/ Helix Player] which can be found at the [https://www.helixcommunity.org/ Helix Community Website].

attachment:IconsPage/eyes.png Please NOTE: RealPlayer is proprietary software and is not supported by the Ubuntu community.

Installing RealPlayer

Install RealPlayer from Canonical's Commercial Repositories (6.06 LTS Dapper only)

Add Canonical's Commercial Repositories to your system:
```
  deb http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu dapper-commercial main
```
If you need help with adding the repository, see [wiki:Repositories/Ubuntu Adding Canonical Commercial Repositories on Ubuntu] or [wiki:Repositories/Kubuntu Kubuntu] on the Repositories wiki pages.
Once the repository has been added, select Add/Remove... from the Applications menu.
To find RealPlayer more easily, type RealPlayer into the search box at the top. Check the box next to the search result and press OK
To uninstall RealPlayer, return to Add/Remove Applications, uncheck the box next to RealPlayer, then press OK.

attachment:IconsPage/eyes.png RealPlayer is available from Canonical's Commercial software repository for Ubuntu 6.06 LTS (Dapper) only. To install RealPlayer on 6.10 (Edgy), use one of the methods below.

The package in the Commercial repository is called realplay.

Install RealPlayer for Linux from the RealNetworks web site

Go to the [http://www.real.com/linux RealPlayer for Linux] web page and download the installer to your Desktop.
A PowerPC version is avaliable from the [https://player.helixcommunity.org/2005/downloads/ Helix Player Download] page.
Open the terminal and navigate to the file "RealPlayer10GOLD.bin". Type
```
 $ cd ~/Desktop
```
Verify that the file is executable. If it isn't, type
```
 $ chmod a+x RealPlayer10GOLD.bin
```
Run the installer by typing
```
 $ sudo ./RealPlayer10GOLD.bin
```
and enter your password.
Follow the prompts provided to finish installation.
When you launch the player for the first time, a set-up assistant will take you through configuring your player. You can run the set-up assistant again at any time by choosing Reset RealPlayer from the Help menu.

Install RealPlayer.deb using dkpg

Download "realplayer_10.0.7-0.0_i386.deb" from [http://www.youmortals.com/ubuntu/packages/realplayer_10.0.7-0.0_i386.deb this mirror].
To install RealPlayer, open a Terminal command line and type
```
 $ sudo dpkg -i realplayer_10.0.7-0.0_i386.deb
```
To uninstall RealPlayer, type
```
 $ sudo dpkg -r realplayer
```

Troubleshooting RealPlayer for Linux

RealPlayer and Firefox 2

External Protocol Handling: I want RealPlayer to handle RealAudio and RealVideo files and streams (file extensions .ra, .rm, .rv, .ram, .smil) as well as the rtsp network protocol, but Firefox wants to open these files and links with the Totem player. What to do?
- To make Firefox 2 call RealPlayer for realaudio / video files, go to "Edit > Preferences > Content > File Types > Manage...". Select the "real audio" file type and click "Change action.." Check the setting for "Open with the default application" (unless you have made changes to this setting previously, it will probably say Totem). If you want the file to open with an external program other than the default (like RealPlayer), select "Open with this application" - you will then be prompted to select an application. Navigate to the start-up script for RealPlayer ("realplay") located in the "RealPlayer" program folder. The location will differ depending on the installation method you have chosen. For a typical install using the installer from the RealNetworks web site, it will be
```
 /usr/local/RealPlayer/realplay
```
- Save and close the preference panel.
- To prevent the MPlayer plugin from playing realaudio / video files, edit the plugin configuration file
```
 gedit ~/.mplayer/mplayerplug-in.conf
```
  Change or add the following three lines
```
 enable-rm=0
 enable-smil=0
 enable-helix=0
```
- To make Firefox 2 use RealPlayer for rtsp streams embedded in web page links, close Firefox and open the gconf editor from the Applications menu. Navigate to "desktop > gnome > url-handlers > rtsp". Check the value for "command" - it will probably read totem "%s". Change the entry to read realplay "%s" and close gconf editor. Note: make sure that a symbolic link of the "realplay" start-up script is in your system path, otherwise you'll need to enter the full path to "realplay" in the gconf entry. See below.
- Note: Firefox will only evaluate the mime types that the plugin supports either when such plugin is updated or when $HOME/.mozilla/firefox/pluginreg.dat is missing. Therefore when you change any option you also need to either remove pluginreg.dat
```
 rm $HOME/.mozilla/firefox/pluginreg.dat
```
  or simply update the plugin file time
```
 sudo touch /usr/lib/firefox/plugins/mplayerplug-in.so
```

Plugin Handling: Firefox 2 won't play real media embedded in web pages. What's up with that?
- Check whether the RealPlayer plugin is installed correctly. Type about:plugins into the Firefox address bar. You will see a page with details of all currently installed plugins. Search for plugins that will handle real audio or real video files and streams. If you cannot find any, there is a problem with your plugin installation. Read on. More likely however, you will find at least two similarly named plugins that claim to handle real media:
```
   Helix DNA Plugin: RealPlayer G2 Plug-In Compatible (compatible; Totem)
   File name: libtotem-complex-plugin.so
   The Totem 2.16.2 plugin handles video and audio streams.
```
  and
```
  Helix DNA Plugin: RealPlayer G2 Plug-In Compatible
  File name: nphelix.so
  Helix DNA Plugin: RealPlayer G2 Plug-In Compatible
  version 0.4.0.572 built with gcc 3.2.0 on Sep 15 2005
```
  The first entry is a plugin for the Totem player; the second entry is the actual RealPlayer plugin. Firefox will try to use the first plugin it finds that claims to handle a given file type. Unfortunately, the Totem plugin won't play real media files. Now, if we close the browser and look into the plugins folder of Firefox 2, located at
```
  /usr/lib/firefox/plugins 
```
  we can see that most plugins offer a pair of files named foo.so and foo.xpt, and that they use symbolic links that point to the original installation locations. Therefore, we can safely remove the symbolic links to the non-functional Totem real media plugin
```
  $ sudo rm -v /usr/lib/firefox/plugins/libtotem-complex-plugin.*
```
  The plugin provided by RealPlayer should now handle embedded real media.

When I try to view embedded real media in Firefox 2, a dialog box appears saying the following, what gives?
```
   "Could not find an appropriate hxplay or realplay in the system path to use as an embedded player."
```
- Firefox is telling you that it cannot find an instance of the "realplay" start-up script for RealPlayer in the system path. Close the browser, open a Terminal and create a symbolic link in your system path that points at the "realplay" script. An example of an appropriate location for your symbolic link would be
```
   $ ln -s /usr/local/RealPlayer/realplay /usr/local/bin/realplay
```
  Test your work:
```
   $ which realplay
   $ /usr/local/bin/realplay
```
  The plugin provided by RealPlayer should now handle embedded real media.

How can I verify that the RealPlayer plugin for Firefox is properly installed?
- Enter about:config into the Firefox address bar. You will see a large list of configurable options for the Firefox browser. In the search bar, enter "plugin". Look for an entry named plugin.expose_full_path and set its value to true. (This will allow you to see the full path to the plugins in the next step.)
- Enter about:plugins into the browser adress bar. You should now see a list of installed plugins along with some additional information and their locations in the file system. If you can see the Helix DNA Plugin: RealPlayer G2 Plug-In Compatible plugin and the path to a file named nphelix.so is given, the plugin is installed correctly.
- Another way to check is to look for the file pair nphelix.so and nphelix.xpt in the Firefox plugins folder. Depending on the way RealPlayer was installed on your system, the plugins folder should either hold copies of or symbolic links to the plugin file pair; either should be ok.

RealPlayer and SCIM

RealPlayer might not start if using SCIM as the default input method. When trying to launch from the terminal one gets the error message

Segmentation fault (core dumped)

This issue can be resolved by setting the environment variable GTK_IM_MODULE to the value xim (instead of scim).

export GTK_IM_MODULE=xim

After typing this in a terminal, RealPlayer can be started from this terminal. In order to make this setting the default, one can for example write a small shell script which first sets the above environment variable and then launches the RealPlayer.

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