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February 16, 2004
 
Michael Snadaker is a contributor to OS/2 e-Zine.
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RealPlayer 9 on OS/2

This is a short brief description how to play RealMedia9 streams on OS/2. Before you're going through all this be sure to have a current backup of your system, nothing is guaranteed to work, though I've tested this on a few differrent machines.



Getting Started

As you may know there is no native Realplayer available for OS/2 - you have to use the ODIN runtime and the Windows version of Realplayer.

ODIN is a working target and its known that RealPlayer is broken on newer ODIN builds. I didn't want to go much in detail but some users reported that build 20020627 is the last known version of ODIN which can run Realplayer. I also wasn't successfull with newer ODIN builds but I kept the ODIN build dated 01/19/02 which runs RP just fine.

I like to use the win32k.sys loader instead of PE.EXE because you can launch win32 programs the same way like any other OS/2 program. There are some requirements to get ODIN with RealPlayer working, its very important to use a current fixed OS/2 system and a sound driver which supports the DirectSound interface from ODIN. This is true for the sbliveos2, C-Media CMI8738 and UniAud(io) driver, for more information see OS/2 Sound driver matrix. In the table below you can find the recommend fixlevel for use with ODIN:

OS/2 Version OS/2 Warp4 with Fixpak 15 or better
Kernel current testcase kernel (32bit) and os2krnl.sym for use with win32k.sys
TCP/IP Stack TCP/IP 4.1 (32bit) with Fixpak UN_2001 or better
video driver Scitech Display Doctor or SNAP!
sound driver sound driver with DirectSound support

Install ODIN

This is a short description for the ODIN installation (ODIN build 01/19/02). On request I can send you this version, all required DLLs are included. On default you unpack the ODIN ZIP archive in a directory e.g. C:\ODIN. Afterwards you add the system directory C:\ODIN\system32 to the PATH and LIBPATH statements in CONFIG.SYS. The ODIN loader win32k.sys is also enabled with CONFIG.SYS, add the line DEVICE=C:\ODIN\system32\win32k.sys.

For win32k.sys you have to install the latest testcase kernel with kernel symbol file in root of your boot drive, in my setup I used kernel revision 14.096e. Because of the outdated ODIN runtime the included win32k.sys won't recognize newer kernel, but you can easily replace the driver from a newer ODIN build.
win32k.sys information

To complete the ODIN install run odininst.exe from the ODIN system directory, this will create some windows registry keys, windows directories within the ODIN root and the odin.ini in \odin\system32 directory. Edit the odin.ini file to adjust some settings, enable the DirectSound interface if you have an appropriate driver but disable OS2Look.

[ODINSYSTEM]
OS2Look=0
[WINMM]
DefVolume=50
DirectAudio=1
Restart the system for changes to take effect.

Install RealPlayer 8 Basic

First download RealPlayer 8 Basic, the file is called rp8-setup.exe (size 4,750KB) you can find it somewhere in the Internet. With enabled win32k.sys loader you can start the install by excecuting rp8-setup.exe from command line or desktop.
Installation of RealPlayer8
Accept or change the install folder, on the next screens uncheck ALL options (channels, shortcuts, startcenter). After the first start of RP the Personalize Page will appear, also deselect all not required options.
My customized ODIN runtime contains some older DLLs in order to work and you will get a version mismatch for two system DLLs if you start RP, simply click on the 'Ignore' button.
RP very often does not show up in the task list, be carefull minimizing RP because you can't switch it again to foreground, you can only kill the PE process.

You are now able to play MP3 and other files from hard disk or live streams from the Internet. However for some unknown reasons you may can't connect to some streaming server or load files from disk.

Live Video Stream MP3 file

Create a program object on the WPS with program template, REXX or ..., a RealPlayer icon is available on request. You can also setup RealPlayer as "helper application" in Mozilla, the MIME type settings can be found here. There is one drawback, RP has to be closed before you pass a URL from Mozilla.

Install the RealVideo9 Codec

Now some of the RealMedia files are encoded with the new RealVideo9 Codec (like the Warpstock 2003 Video) and you will get a popup window for a program update on any attempt to play this file/stream, but you can see that this "update" is just the new RealOne player and you can skip this.

RP8 AutoUpdateRP Update Dialog

On Windows you have to use the RealONE player to play RealVideo9 streams but on OS/2 you can't get the RealOne player to work with ODIN.
Theres a way to update RP8 with the required codec, you only have to install it. The codec consist of two dlls, these are drv43260.dll (audio) and rv403260.dll (video), copy them from a RealOne install on Windows to the \Program Files\Common Files\Real\Codecs directory on your RP8 install drive. Then register the new codec in the system registry, you can add the settings by hand or use this registry profile file to add the values, import this profile with the OS/2 Regedit2 registry editor. Keep in mind that all files are located on drive C: in the standard directories. For manual registration you can also use Regedit2, create two new keys called File8 and File9 and the sub-key version, fill in the values below, the complete path of the keys can be seen at the bottom of the screenshot.

key value
File8C:\Program Files\Common Files\Real\Codecs\drv43260.dll
Version6.0.7.2389
File9C:\Program Files\Common Files\Real\Codecs\rv403260.dll
Version6.0.7.2389

Regedit2
[click on image to get larger version]
The Warpstock video should now play if the setup was done properly. However I noticed some strange behavior with sound playback maybe related to the sound driver. The Warpstock clip played without sound with the UniAudio driver installed, this problem didn't show up with SB Live! driver. There is a partly workaround for this behavior, if you're interested send me a message.

Warpstock2003 Video

Conclusion

There's no need to boot Windows to play newer RealMedia files if you can get this setup working. RP will play most of the streams and files from the Internet but not all. Due some ODIN limitations it tends to crash in some ways. You're stuck with an old ODIN runtime to run RP, if you want to run other Win32 applications you need a newer runtime and a workaround to use both runtimes at the same time. If you have any corrections or additional information drop me a note.

Related Links


Warpstock2003 Video (RealVideo9: 50MB)
RealOne Player
ODIN homepage

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