RMVB

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RealMedia Variable Bitrate

Filename extension	rmvb
Internet media type	application/vnd.rn-realmedia-vbr
Magic number	0x2E524D46 (".RMF")
Developed by	RealNetworks
Type of format	audio-visual

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]}

Limited support is available on some media players, generally on the Windows platform, including the proprietary RealPlayer 10 and the open-sourced Media Player Classic, using an appropriate DirectShow filter or Real Alternative. MPlayer and some other programs such as totem are able to play RMVB files in Linux/UNIX-based x86 machines through the use of WIN32 DLLs or native closed-source libraries.

Contents 1 Identifying characters 2 See also 3 References 4 External links

[edit] 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.

[edit] See also

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

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• RealMedia File Format
• RMVB Codec RMVB Codec and Converter