2xAV™ Plug-In For RealPlayer

Buying And Registering Your Plug-In

To buy the 2xAV Plug-In, go to the Enounce Store.

If you are using the free trial version of the 2xAV Plug-In, you can purchase the unrestricted version of the 2xAV Plug-In by clicking the "Buy Now" button when the reminder dialog comes up, or you can launch the 2xAV Registration Utility from the Start Menu on the machine on which you will be using the 2xAV Plug-In.

The 2xAV Registration Utility can normally be found from the Start menu at:

• Programs -> 2xAV for RealPlayer -> 2xAV Registration

This program will remind you that it needs to connect to a registration server over the Internet in order to register your Plug-In. With your approval it will attempt to make the connection, and then lead you through a simple three step purchase and registration process.

• In Step One, you will be asked to enter your name and a valid email address;

• In Step Two, you will be shown a URL to the 2xAV Plug-In purchase page of the web site from which you downloaded the 2xAV Plug-In. When you click on this URL, your web browser will take you to the web site from which you will purchase the 2xAV Plug-In.

  When you have purchased the 2xAV Plug-In, you will be given a serial number. Please copy the serial number into the box labeled "Enter Serial Number", and press "OK". You do not have to browse to the purchase web site shown in step two, unless you want to purchase additional serial numbers in order to use the 2xAV Plug-In on additional machines.

• In Step Three, you should press the "Register and Unlock" button to complete the registration of your 2xAV Plug-In.

When registration is complete, the 2xAV Plug-In will be unlocked on the machine that you used to register. We will also send an email message confirming your registration to the address you provided during the registration process. Please keep that email message for reference.

Software Activation via email: If you do not wish to register electronically using the Registration Utility described above, Click Here to get information on how to activate your Plug-in via email.

Plug-In User's Guide

Table of Contents

• Launch the 2xAV™ SpeedBar
• The 2xAV SpeedBar
• RealPlayer Embedded in a Web Page
• SpeedLimit™
• The 2xAV™ Property Dialog
  • 2xAV™ Engine Setting
  • Playback Quality Setting
  • Optimum RealPlayer® Settings
  • Advanced Properties

Launch the 2xAV™ SpeedBar

There are two ways to launch the 2xAV™ Plug-In SpeedBar from within RealPlayer.

When RealPlayer® is in normal view mode and the 2xAV Plug-In has been properly installed, a 2xAV button appears on the RealPlayer toolbar, as shown below:

To bring up the 2xAV SpeedBar, click on the Real Player Toolbar Button button on the toolbar.

If RealPlayer is in compact view mode the RealPlayer toolbar (shown above) is not visible. In this case, you must select the 2xAV menu choice from the RealPlayer View menu.

To switch between normal and compact view modes in RealPlayer, select either Normal or Compact from the RealPlayer view menu.

The 2xAV™ SpeedBar

Clicking on the button brings up the 2xAV™ SpeedBar.

The slider on the SpeedBar controls the RealPlayer's playback speed. A setting of 2.0 (as shown in the figure) results in playback twice as fast as normal. If the slider is set to "1.0", playback occurs at normal speed. A setting of "0.5" results in playback at half normal speed.

Feel free to move the slider at any time, even (or especially!) while media is being played: 2xAV gives you immediate control over your playback speed! Once the slider is selected you can use the left and right arrow keys on you keyboard to change the speed as well.

RealPlayer Embedded in a Web Page

When RealPlayer is embedded in a web page a 2xAV Floating SpeedBar will pop-up over the web page and a 2xAV task item is added to the task bar. This floating SpeedBar has the same behavior and control over RealPlayer's playback speed as the SpeedBar described above. If the floating SpeedBar is not visible it may be behind the web page you are viewing or minimized to the title bar of the web page you viewing. For more information on the options associated with the 2xAV Floating SpeedBar, see the Advanced Properties section below.

SpeedLimit™

Checking the SpeedLimit box turns on the 2xAV™ Plug-In's automatic SpeedLimit™ mechanism. When this box is checked, the 2xAV Plug-In will attempt to play media as fast as you request, so long as that speed doesn't cause gaps. Gaps can occur if your Internet connection isn't fast enough to deliver media as fast as you are trying to play it, or if your computer isn't powerful enough to process media fast enough to keep up with your requested speed.

In the SpeedLimit™ mode, if the 2xAV Plug-In detects gaps it will slow down the playback speed. The "thumb" of the speed slider will remain where you set it, but the blue "thermometer" in the center of the slider may get shorter, showing you that SpeedLimit has momentarily lowered the playback speed in an attempt to avoid gaps.

Please see the section When All You Can Have Is Not Enough for more information.

The 2xAV™ Property Dialog

To verify or modify the 2xAV™ Plug-In properties, click on the Properties button on the SpeedBar. The following dialog box will appear:

In addition to "About" information, and a hyperlink to the Enounce™ web site, the 2xAV tab of the properties dialog contains settings to control the operation of the 2xAV™ Plug-In. These settings are discussed below.

2xAV™ Engine Setting

The 2xAV™ engine can be set to any of three states:

• On Normal: This is the normal setting. The engine uses our patented digital signal processing algorithms to play back media at the rate you specify;
• On Chipmunk: This setting is just for fun. It lets you change playback speed the way you used to be able to do with an audio tape: put your finger on the record and make it go around faster or slower. Faster makes people sound like "chipmunks"; slower makes them sound like Darth Vader.
• Off: This setting turns off the 2xAV engine. All playback is at normal speed.

Playback Quality Setting

The 2xAV™ Plug-In software engine can trade off processing efficiency and audio output quality. The Playback Quality slider on the property page controls this tradeoff. For best quality, set the slider to the leftmost position. For most efficient processing, set the slider to the rightmost position. The setting selected determines the amount of CPU used for processing, so increasing the quality may cause "gaps" in playback if the CPU cannot process data fast enough.

Optimum RealPlayer® Settings

To prevent rebuffering when playing streaming media at speeds greater than 1.0, you may have to change your RealPlayer® Connection speed settings. RealPlayer and RealServer™ technologies support streaming media at speeds faster than the encoded bitrate through the RTSP protocol. RealPlayer will cap the connection speed at the 'Normal' setting however, thus causing rebuffering when playing faster than normal. If you get rebuffering, you might want to increase your connection speed settings. To do so:

1. Start RealPlayer

2. Pull down the View Menu, choose Preferences

3. Click on the Connection tab

   1. Set your Maximum bandwidth as high as it can go (10 Mbps LAN)

   2. Increment your Normal bandwidth up one notch from its current position. For instance, if you were at 56Kbps Modem, try 112Kbps Dual ISDN, or 256 Kbps DSL. Be careful with this setting however, because if you set it too high, RealPlayer may initially choose a higher bandwidth encoding which could be beyond your connection's actual bandwidth. RealPlayer does have the ability to change the encoding bitrate on the fly however, and so even if this was set too high, the player would adjust to your actual bandwidth.

   3. On the Buffered Play group box, choose 'Buffer entire clip up to available memory'

   4. Continue to adjust these settings to suit your needs.

4. Click on the Performance Tab

   1. On the Clip Cache button, make sure it is enabled and at least 4 MB in size.

5. Click on the Transport Tab

   1. Click on the Auto Configure button to setup the transport settings

   2. When that is done, click on the RTSP Settings... and ensure that HTTP is NOT selected.

Advanced Properties

The Advanced Settings tab of the Properties dialog box controls the interaction of the 2xAV™ Plug-In with a browser:

• If the "Floating 2xAV Controls Window over Browser" checkbox is checked, a floating window containing the 2xAV Speedbar will appear whenever a web page contains a RealPlayer ActiveX control or RealPlayer Netscape plug-in, but the same web page doesn't contain a 2xAV ActiveX control. In other words, a floating SpeedBar will appear if the designer of the web page has not provided a SpeedBar on their page.
  
  If you check this box, you will be able to control the playback speed of all web content that uses an embedded RealPlayer object..

• If the "Floating Window" checkbox is checked, you can control what happens when you close the 2xAV SpeedBar.

  • If you set "Close to Title bar", when you close the SpeedBar, a "2X" icon appears on the title bar of the browser. You can reopen the SpeedBar either by clicking on the icon, or by refreshing the web page.

  • If you set "Close normally", when you close the SpeedBar no "2X" icon appears on the title bar of the browser. You must refresh the web page in order to reopen the SpeedBar.

When All You Can Have Is Not Enough

The 2xAV™ Plug-In software engine is capable of slowing down or speeding up almost any form of media, either from local files stored on your computer or "streaming media" being delivered to your computer over the Internet.

But sometimes we can't have everything we want. Even with media playback.

Sometimes you might want to play faster than your computer, or your Internet connection, or your media server, can handle.

When that happens--and we'll explain why it may--you can get rebuffering pauses or gaps in your playback.

Rebuffering pauses occur when the RealPlayer® is playing back streaming media, and it's run out of media to play. It is possible this could be prevented by changing your connection settings, however. See Optimum RealPlayer Settings for more information.

Gaps occur when the RealPlayer can't decode media fast enough to play it at the speed you want.

When your player is playing back streaming media, it can't play material any faster than it gets it. If your Internet connection, or the server from which the media is coming, can't deliver media as fast as you want to play it, the player may pause from time to time as it "rebuffers" media. When the player has finished rebuffering sufficient media, it will continue playing.

Many forms of media are stored and delivered to your player in an encoded format. Your player decodes this media into a form that can be played. The process of decoding media requires varying amounts of computing power. If you are trying to play an encoded media stream twice as fast as normal, your computer was to process twice as much data every second, using twice as many computations. If your computer is not fast enough to decode the media as quickly as you want to play it, there may be gaps, or short silences, in the playback.

The simplest solution to both of these problems is to slow down. If you have turned on the 2xAV Plug-In's SpeedLimit™ feature, the 2xAV Plug-In will try to prevent pauses and gaps from occurring, but will also repeatedly try to play at the speed you have requested. For best results, don't request a speed that is significantly faster than your player can manage.

Release Notes

Release notes for version 2.0 of the Enounce™ 2xAV™ Plug-In.

RealPlayer® Version 6

If you are using RealPlayer version 6, which is not the most recent version of the RealPlayer, the 2xAV install program can not successfully shut down your player if it is running while you are installing the 2xAV Plug-In. If you are using RealPlayer version 6, be sure to shut down the RealPlayer, and the "StartCenter" program in your system tray, before you install the 2xAV Plug-In.

RealPlayer® Version 7

If you are using RealPlayer version 7, which is not the most recent version of the RealPlayer, the 2xAV uninstall program can not successfully shut down your player if it is running while you are uninstalling the 2xAV Plug-In. If you are using RealPlayer version 7, be sure to shut down the RealPlayer, and the "StartCenter" program in your system tray, before you uninstall the 2xAV Plug-In.

The 2xAV install program can successfully shut down RealPlayer 7 if the player is running when you try to install the 2xAV Plug-In. However, Enounce still recommends that you shut down the RealPlayer before attempting to install the Plug-In.