AVI to RM: Convert Video from AVI(Audio Video Interleaved) to RM(RealMedia) with River Past Video Cleaner, AVI2RM converter, conversion

What is AVI?

Defined by Microsoft, AVI stands for Audio Video Interleave. It is a special case of the RIFF (Resource Interchange File Format). AVI is the most common format for audio/video data on the PC.

AVI is Microsoft's response to Apple's QuickTime technology. Early AVI files were limited on choice of video and audio codecs, quality, and resolution. However, with the introduction of DirectShow, AVI became a very flexible and powerful architecture. Some newer codecs including DivX and XviD enable AVI files to have similar or even better quality than DVD.

What is RM?

A streaming technology developed by RealNetworks for transmitting live video over the Internet. RealVideo uses a variety of data compression techniques and works with both normal IP connections as well as IP Multicast connections.

More information is available on RealNetwork web site.

To convert other video formats to RealMedia, you will need River Past RealMedia Booster Pack in addition to your video software.

Additional Requirements

To convert from AVI(Audio Video Interleaved) to RM(RealMedia) video with River Past Video Cleaner, you must have River Past RealMedia Booster Pack installed.

Launch River Past Video Cleaner

Once River Past Video Cleaner is installed properly, launch Video Cleaner.

Add File

Click on the "Add File" button on the tool bar. The standard file open dialog appears. Select "AVI - Audio Video Interleave" in its "Files of type" combo box.

Select the file you want to convert and click "Open". The file will be added to the conversion file list.

AVI is a file container format. It may use standard Windows codecs, or any of the third party codecs. If it uses a third party audio codec, you need to have the codec installed on your system for River Past Audio Converter to decode the file.

If you get an error when adding an AVI file, please open it in Windows Media Player and see if you can play it with audio. If not, you must find out what audio compression is used in the file and download the codec.

If you cannot add the AVI file, it may contain video and audio which use codecs not installed on your system. You can verify that by playing the AVI in Windows Media Player.

If WMP cannot play the file, the codecs absent. You will need to find out which codecs are used to encode the AVI and install them.

Usually, you can install ffdShow, which is compatible with many video compression, including DivX and Xvid. For audio, you may need to install AC-3 Decoder Filter or CoreAAC.

River Past Video Cleaner

Select output format

Use the setting panel on the bottom of the window to control the output format. Click on the toggle to the left of the "Output Format" label to expand the panel. Select "RM - RealMedia" as the "File Type".

Note: To convert to RealMedia, you must have River Past RealMedia Booster Pack installed.

Change Audience

The audience specifies the target audience for your video streaming. It is normally bitrate based for streaming, or quality based if you just want to store the video for local playback. For example, to enable users of 512k DSL to play the video from internet, select "512k DSL or Cable" as the audience.

Change Video Settings

Click on the toggle to the left of the "RealVideo Settings" label to expand the panel.

Select "Specify" under "Size" and/or "Frame rate" to enter the video resolution and/or frame rate.

You can change the compressor, quality, size, and frame rate of the video.

RealVideo uses temporal compression. This means, only key frames contains complete information about the video frame. All other frames contains the difference from previous frame or frames. A "Key Frame" of 15 means there will be one key frame every 15 frames. Larger key frame setting will reduce the file size, but reduce the quality of all the none-key frames.

Change the "Mode" and "Complexity" settings according to your content so the RealVideo encoder can optimize its algorithm accordingly.

Change Audio Settings

Click on the toggle to the left of the "RealAudio Settings" label to expand the panel.

Select the audio compressor for the conversion. You may also change the sample rate, channel (stereo or mono), and bits/sample. You can also leave the setting to "Automatic" so the software choose the best settings depending on the original material.

Change the "Mode" and "Complexity" settings according to your content so the RealAudio encoder can optimize its algorithm accordingly.