RealText Tutorial version 0.1

This tutorial will try to give you the basics of RealText creation, with emphasis on "closed captioning", which can be used to create subtitles without changing the RealVideo file.

I want to thank JD for hosting this page some time ago in his site, and to be as motivated as I am with this subject. Also, his site for animes was great. I hope that he find the time to make it come back to life...

Please, send your comments, suggestions, complaints and questions to Ricardo M. Ferreira at ric@mpcnet.com.br.

Contents

• Introduction (what's RealText?)
• What you'll need
• Basic Stuff
• The format of a RealText file
• Important Tags and Values
• The SMIL Presentation
• Tips & Tricks
• Links
• Disclaimer

The RealText mark-up language is a new feature of the RealPlayer G2 that allows text streaming, in a similar way that RealVideo is a video streaming. With SMIL (another new feature), you can create presentations that combine together streams of audio, video and text.

You can set the text attributes (like typeface, size, color, ...), time when it appears and disappears, and position (including over or outside the video window area).

The RealText language is simple and intuitive, so it's really very easy to learn. You don't need previous experience with any other computer/scripting language, but if you have some knowledge of HTML it will be even easier for you to get started.

To follow this tutorial and create RealText files, all you'll need is:

• A non-formatting text editor, like Notepad or Wordpad
• RealPlayer G2 (get yours at http://www.real.com)

The syntax of the RealText mark-up language is very similar to HTML. If you can write HTML, you already know the basics about RealText.

A RealText file is made of

• the text that your "audience" will read (like your captions);
• "tags", that are a sort of "commands" that the RealPlayer will understand;

An example of a single line inside of a RealText file is:

I'm gonna kick your sorry butt <font color="red">right now!!!</font>

The above line produce this:

Fig. 01 - It's as simple as that.

Notice that the text inside the "<" and ">" symbols are not displayed, but rather interpreted by the player, who see it as a command to change the color of the text font.

Now that you know a bit about how it works, here are some rules that you need to be aware of:

• all RealText files must have the ".rt" extension
• don't use spaces in the file name (and this is a good rule for ANY kind of file, anyway);
• tags appear between angle brackets (<>);
• tags must be written in lower case;
• values inside tags must appear between quotation marks ("");
• tags usually appear in pairs (a starting / ending tag pair)
• when a tag appears alone (don't have an ending tag), there must be a forward slash at the end of the tag, like this: <br/>

The wrong-and-right table:

Here is another simple sample:

She is <b> so sexy! </b> Well, at least <br/> as sexy as a cat-girl can be...

Fig. 02 - One tag pair, and one tag without pair in action.

All your RealText files must have this pair of tags:

<window>
</window>

They are the first and the last line in your file, respectively. Everything else goes between these tags.

Here's a fully working example of a RealText file. Copy and paste it into your editor and save it as "example01.rt" (if you're using Wordpad, remember to always save as a "Text Document" type).

<window width="320" height="60">
I'm gonna kick your sorry butt <font color="red">right now!!!</font>
</window>

When you play this file, you'll have the result seen in fig. 01. The width and height values are the horizontal and vertical size of the window in pixels, respectively.

Play with the values and see what happens. Change the file to get the same result found in fig. 02.

Let's jump out of the basics this time. Save the text below to "example02.rt" and see how it plays.

<window width="320" height="140">
Countdown starts in five seconds...<br/>
<time begin="3"/>Get ready!<br/>
<time begin="5"/>Five...<br/>
<time begin="6"/>... four... <br/>
<time begin="7"/>... three...<br/>
<time begin="8"/>... two... <br/>
<time begin="9"/>... one...<br/>
<time begin="10"/>Launching the Battle Squadron!
</window>

Fig. 03 - An example of the <time> tag.

Of course, you will see it animated. :-)

As you can see, the <time> tag determines when a text will appear in the RealText window. The unit of the value is a second, and all time information are related to the beginning of the presentation.

You can type the value in seconds or in the format "dd:hh:mm:ss.xyz". So, if you want a text to appear 60 seconds after the start of the file, you can type any of the three lines below:

<time begin="60">60 seconds have been passed...
<time begin="1:00">60 seconds have been passed...
<time begin="00:01:00.0">60 seconds have been passed...

Our next section is all about tags.

The attributes of your window and the text where it appears are both controlled by tags. With the appropriated value, your text can scroll from right to left, from bottom to top or do some other amazing things! :-) But here we will only look at those relevants to our intent.

Here's a piece of a real RealText file for you to use as reference:

<window type="generic"
 duration="13:20.9"
 height="30"
 width="320" 
 bgcolor="#808080"
 wordwrap="true" />

<font color="black" face="arial" size="2">
<center>

<time begin="00:00.0"/><clear/>Tradução e legenda em português: 08/1999<br/>
Ricardo M. Ferreira - ric@bestway.com.br
<time begin="00:04.0"/><clear/> 

<!-- the opening subtitles -->
<time begin="00:13.7"/><clear/>Kodomo no Omocha<br/>(Brinquedo de Criança)
<time begin="00:16.7"/><clear/><font color="#008040"><b>O boato sobre eu te amar é verdade, é sim.
<time begin="00:22.6"/><clear/> 
<time begin="00:23.8"/><clear/>Você não consegue ignorar também.
<time begin="00:26.1"/><clear/> 

</b>
</center>
</font>
</window>

<window> ... </window>

Have I told you that this tag is present in every RealText file? It will set the window size, type, color, duration of the RealText presentation and other things.

All values are rather self-explanatory:

• duration is the duration of the entire presentation.
• width and height are the window dimensions in pixels.
• bgcolor is the name of the background color of the RealText window. You can also use hexadecimal notation in the format #RRGGBB.
• wordwrap breaks long lines of text to make then fit in the window width.

<font> ... </font>

The <font> tag changes the default attributes of the font.

• color can be the name of the color or any #RRGGBB value.
• face is the name of the typeface, like Times, System, Courier, etc. (note: this is not the same as the name of a TrueType font. Use these examples so the RealPlayer will map it to the equivalent font available in the system. See the RealText Authoring Guide for a complete list of possible font names).
• size can be a fixed or a relative value, just like in HTML. To have a bigger font than the current, you can use a value like size="+1".

<center> ... </center>

Guess what? Text between this pair of tags is centralized horizontally.

<clear/>

After this tag, all text inside the window disappears, and any new text appears at the default position (top-left corner of the window, if your window type is "generic").

<br/>

Forces a line break. The next text will appear in the following line.

<b> ... </b>

Makes a text bold.

<i> ... </i>

Makes a text italic.

<u> ... </u>

Underlines a text.

<!-- ... -->

If you want to insert a comment in the file, put it inside this tag. It will simple be ignored by the RealPlayer.

To show the "<", ">" and "&" characters in your subtitle, you must use a "character entity".

For example, the following line

Calling <Mr. Shinji & Mrs. Rei>

... will look like this in the RealText window:

Calling <Mr. Shinji & Mrs. Rei>

So far we have covered only the RealText itself. But how do we put it together with the video?

To accomplish this, we must create a SMIL file that contains information about your presentation, as the name of the files it will play, and their window's position and size on screen.

All basic rules for a RealText files apply to a SMIL file (except that the extension must be ".smi" or ".smil"). Here's a complete example:

<smil>

   <head>
      <meta name="title" content="Ep. 01 - Kodomo no Omocha (Brinquedo de Criança)" />
      <meta name="author" content="Ricardo M. Ferreira - ric@bestway.com.br" />
      <meta name="copyright" content="(c) 1999" />
      <layout>
         <root-layout width="320" height="270" />
         <region id="video_region" width="320" height="240" left="0" top="0" />
         <region id="text_region" width="320" height="30" left="0" top="240" />
      </layout>
   </head>

   <body>
      <par>
         <textstream src="kodomo_ep1part1.rt" region="text_region" fill="freeze" />
         <video src="kodomo_ep1part1.rm" region="video_region" fill="freeze" />
      </par>
   </body>

</smil>

Let's look at the meaning of each tag:

<smil> ... </smil>

All SMIL files must begin and end with this tag pair.

<head> ... </head>

In this section, some important information is defined in other tags.

<meta name/>

These tags are not required, and are used to add comments about your presentation. This text appears when you choose the option "About this Presentation" in the "Help" menu of the RealPlayer.

<layout> ... </layout>

Tags in this section will define the dimensions of the whole presentation and of each window.

<root-layout/>

This tag appears only once. The <width> and <height> values represent, respectively, the horizontal and vertical size, in pixels, of the whole presentation. All other windows must fit inside this area.

<region id/>

For each window/media clip in your presentation, you must insert one tag of this type. Each one will describe the region id (or name), its position and size. The unit of the values is a pixel, the top-left corner is position 0,0 and the position value increases going from left-right or top-bottom.

Remember to always use here, for the RealText region, the same <width> and <height> values you set in the <window> tag of the .rt file.

<body> .. </body>

This section describes the media clip files that are part of the presentation.

<par> .. </par>

You can have more than one of this pair of tags in a file, but in our case, there will always be just one. Media clips described between these tags are meant to start being played simultaneously.

<textstream/>  <video/>

These tags contain the filename of the media clip to be played in each region defined with the <region> tag.

The fill="freeze" value will keep the last frame visible when the presentation ends.

Now that you have your RealVideo (.rm), RealText (.rt) and SMIL (.smi) files, you can play the SMIL file to start your presentation.

• The .rm, .rt and .smi files can have different names, but why not let them have the same name for the sake of clarity?

• It's better and simpler to leave all the files in the same directory. If you have your video stream in a read-only media, like a CD-ROM, or can't or don't want to put the files in the same path, change the path inside the .smi file, like this:

  <video src="file://e:/animes/kodomo_ep1part1.rm" region="video_region" fill="freeze" />

• Older versions of the RealPlayer (before r32ppg20_3* ?) seem to stretch the video in full-screen mode only when the proportion between screen resolution and .rm resolution is an integer, ex.: screen is 640x480, .rm is 320x240 (2:1). When you add the text region and play the presentation in full-screen mode, it will not scale the video. Newer versions of the player seem to correct this, and also have a much better image quality for full-screen playback.

• You can use the <time end/> tag to clear some text in a similar way than <time begin/> display it. You can even use both values in a single tag, like <time begin="3" end="6"/>. But in our case, it is better to use the <clear/> command instead.

• I have experienced that the <clear/> doesn't work if it is not succeeded by any text. If you want to clear the previous text without writing anything right now, just leave a space after the tag.

• You must know the resolution of your .rm file to calculate the size of your presentation. How can you find it out? I don't know! For me it has been a matter of try-and-error...

  If you know a way to find this information out using the RealPlayer, or even another software, please tell me and I'll write your tip in this section. :-)

• To set the height of your text window, you must know the height of your font and how many lines of text you want. I've been guessing this one too. :-)

  I found out that <font face="arial" size="2"> have a height of 15 pixels per line. As I use only two lines for most of the movies, my window region is set with a height of 30 pixels.

A much longer and more comprehensive description of the RealText format (the "RealText Authoring Guide") can be found at http://service.real.com/help/library/guides/realtext/realtext.htm or http://service.real.com/help/library/encoders.html (search for RealText and choose to read it on-line or download).

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