Shoutbox

This must be before Patchou dicovered MSN Messenger.

I found this on a CD that had other freeware and shareware on it.


RealMedia - Sound Eliminator Version 1.02 - 22/06/2000

"Hi, another program made and distributed by me, Patchou. If you
have never used any software from me, well, no matter
except that in order to use this program, you must have the
correct version of the MFC42.DLL in your Windows System
directory.

What does a tiny 32Kb executable file can do for you? very
simple: if you want to remove the audio stream from a
RealVideo G2 file (version 6.00 and higher), you just have
to use this program. Why? just because at this time, no
other software can do it; trust me, I've searched again and
again before coding this. For RM version 5.00 and lower,
you could use a tool named RMTools.exe, given with
RealEncoder. With G2 files, Real told us to use the SMIL
language which could do anything RMTools.exe did and a lot
more. That's true except for one thing: you can't play a
movie without it's sound... that's impossible and very
annoying in some situations.

The interface is really simple: enter the path of your
RealMovie file, the path of the desired new movie file and
click on the Go button . The first audio stream found in
the movie will be deleted from the new movie and the header
of the file will be modified in consequence. Note that only
Single Rate files can be processed, not Multi Rate ones.

The Advanced button is more for future use than anything
else. For now, you can change the mime-type of the stream
the program will search for. Normally you don't have to
care about this but you could someday, if you have a RM
file with special encoded sound. If case you wonder if
this parameter can be used to remove video stream, let me
answer you: YES! you can remove the video stream from a
RM file just by changing "audio" with "video" in the
default mime-type... the program is made to be this
multipurpose; the only problem is that when you'll play
the file, a black frame will still be displayed: no video
but the size of the player window adjusts by itself
according to information from the header (this program
does not change any specific information from any media
header).

To conclude, let me ask one question: if I have been able
to make such a program, knowing nothing of the Real file
structures and having only my good and old HexEdit tool,
why didn't Real made it, better than me? it only took me
6 hours and I'm really happy of my work (even if it's far
from perfect)... for reference, on my P-II 450Mhz, a 20min
300K RM file take 30 seconds to be processed. It could be
twice faster or better but you know... it does not HAVE to
be this fast .


Note:
This program does not use any DLL from Real, neither any
Real SDK code. This is a freeware, you can distribute it
to anyone you want as long as you don't forget to
distribute this TXT file with it.

Known limitations:
* The header of the new file is rewritten a little but not
too much so nothing bad happens. In consequence, if you go
and see the statistics of the file, you'll see that the
audio stream is still here: yes, it's still here but it's
empty ... this should not cause you any problem.
* If you try to go directly to a portion of the new video
file, RealPlayer will get sucked in "Buffering...". This
is because of the header too... if you know what I should
re-write in it to correct this bug, it will be appreciated.
* If you try to use any diagnostic tool from RealProducer
(as RMEditor.exe), an error will be generated. As for the
two other limitations, it's because of the header.

Useful softwares for RM files from me:
RMTest: with it, test your downloaded RM files for
structure errors. Don't store files without it!
Download: http://www.patchou.com/perso/progs/RMTest.zip

Limitation of responsibility:
As you can imagine, nothing that you can do with your files
interest me. If you have suggestions or ideas for this
program, let me know, but if you want to complain because
after using it, your HD crashed and your credit card was
used for $50.000 over the internet: forget it . "