RMVB

RealMedia Variable Bitrate (RMVB) is a variable bitrate extension of the RealMedia multimedia container format developed by RealNetworks.

As opposed to the more common RealMedia container, which holds streaming media encoded at a constant bit rate, RMVB is typically used for multimedia content stored locally. Files using this format have the file extension ".rmvb".

RealMedia uses compression similar to MPEG-4 Part 10 codecs^[1], such as x264.

RMVB files are extremely popular for distributing Asian content, especially Chinese television episodes and movies.^[2] For this reason, they have become noticeably present (though not entirely popular) on file sharing platforms such as BitTorrent, eDonkey and Gnutella.^{[citation needed]}

On the Windows platform, the proprietary RealPlayer SP and the open-sourced Media Player Classic support RMVB, using an appropriate DirectShow filter or Real Alternative. On Linux/UNIX platforms, MPlayer, xine, and Totem are able to play RMVB files using the open-source, reverse-engineered RMVB implementation in FFmpeg. The format is also supported for playback by the cross-platform VLC media player.

Identifying characters

The file header for the format consists of the four bytes ".RMF" (hex 2E 52 4D 46), the same as the standard RealMedia format.

See also

• RealMedia
• RealVideo codecs
• RealAudio codecs
• Container format
• Comparison of container formats
• Comparison of media players

References

External links

• RealMedia File Format

This multimedia software-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. v • d • e