Editing RealAudio (section)

==Players==
The official player for RealMedia content is RealNetworks' [[RealPlayer SP]], currently at version 16, and is available for various platforms in binary form. Several features of this program have proven controversial (most recently, RP11's ability to record unprotected streaming media from web sites), and many alternative players have been developed. RealNetworks initially tried to discourage development of alternative players by keeping their audio format secret. However, in recent years,{{when?|date=November 2022}} RealNetworks has made efforts to be somewhat more open, and has founded the [[Helix Community]], a collaborative [[Open-source model|open source]] project, to extend their media framework.

When RealAudio was introduced, RealNetworks disclosed no technical details about the audio format or how it was encoded, but it was soon noticed that some of the audio codecs used in RealAudio were identical to those used in [[cellular telephones]] and [[digital television]]. As these formats had been described in detail in various technical papers and standards documents, it was possible to write software capable of playing RealAudio based on this information.

A variety of unofficial players now exist, including [[MPlayer]], and [[Real Alternative]]. However, Real Alternative does not decode the audio data by itself, but relies on the [[Dynamic Link Library|dynamically linked libraries]] (DLLs) from the official RealPlayer. Thus Real Alternative requires RealPlayer to be installed (or at least its DLLs) in order to function. Most other players are based on [[FFmpeg]], which has its own audio codec library. The audio codecs in ffmpeg were written based on the publicly available information about the formats, and do not use the RealPlayer or Helix software. It is also possible to obtain [[codecs]] which allow [[Windows Media Player]] to play some versions of RealAudio.

Although RealNetworks has made the Helix player available as an open source project, they have kept some of the audio codecs proprietary, and the Helix player can not play all RealAudio files.