By Bryan Lambert - October 31, 2010

It happens to us all – we see a totally cool video on the Internet we’d like to keep a copy for ourselves*. Maybe you’d also like to convert the video to your phone or iPad – or maybe just rip the audio into an MP3 player. Now with one convenient, free program called RealPlayer SP, you can.

RealPlayer SP is simply the latest free player available fromRealNetworks Inc., made primarily for playing RealVideo encoded videos. The player also plays a wide range of other video and audio formats as well. If you have used an earlier version (and maybe been turned off by it) you may be surprised at some of the new features in the latest version. With it you have One-Click Video download ability from the Internet. You also have a nifty Mobile-Transfer feature that lets you easily move your media to your phone. Not sure what kind of video your phone can play? With RealPlayer SP the guess work is taken out as it will convert it for you before transferring. Not only do you get these features, but you can now do some simple trim edits as well as post the media to your favorite websites. Best of all, most of these features and built into both the Windows and Mac versions of the software. For a closer look at these features, click on this link.

1.) Download RealPlayer SP onto your favorite laptop or desktop computer.

2.) When Installing be sure that you keep “Enable browser download button” checked.

3.) Launch your favorite browser and go to your favorite video site such as YouTube. When you watch the video hover the mouse pointer over it and a “Download This Video” button will appear. Simply click on this button and the video will be downloaded to your computer in no time. If the button fails to appear, be sure that the plug-in is enabled. Also note that this will not work with Silverlight videos (used by Netflix) and certain sites such as Hulu.

4.) Your downloaded video will now appear in a RealPlayer Downloader box as well as in the My Library (under My Library> Downloads & Recordings).

Now let’s take the sample video that we downloaded and have some fun. First let’s do a simple edit. While in the My Library, highlight the video you want to edit and click on “Trim Video.” The RealPlayer Trimmer will appear. Here you can adjust the starting and stopping point of the media and “clip it off”. Real simple – real easy (note that the trimmer is one of the features only available on the Windows version).

Now let’s transfer the video to our phone. In the My Library, highlight the video and click on down arrow where you see “Copy to Apple iPad” – there you can select your mobile device. The RealPlayer Converter will then pop up and start converting the media to something that your device can handle and then start transferring it (be sure that your device is plugged into yournotebook computer or desktop).

Of course you can simply convert the media to another type easily by clicking on the “Convert to …” button while in the My Library. In this example, we are converting the video into an MP3 track (ripping the audio). When the RealPlayer Converter box comes up, click on the “Convert To” button and choose the format you want the source file converted to (don’t worry, the original file is safe). After that, click on Start and in no time you have your new file in the format of your choosing.

To post the image to the Internet, while in the My Library area, click on the down arrow next to “Post to Twitter” and choose the site you’d like the video posted to. In our example, we are going to post it to Facebook. After logging on through a pop-up window, it will ask you for permission (the first time you use it) to post and then you click on the share button.

The newest version of RealPlayer is not only fun and powerful, but extremely easy to use. So the next time you see a video you JUST HAVE TO HAVE, with RealPlayer SP, not only can you grab it, but you can edit it, convert it, move it and keep it too!

*Please be sure to respect the copyright laws of your country.

By Ryan Morse - October 17, 2010

If you’re not a dedicated PC gamer, chances are you haven’t been paying attention to the advancements in video card technology over the years. In a short time,video cards have gone from simple add-on cards with a single graphics processor, a tiny heat sink, and some RAM chips, to full-on computers in and of themselves. You may also not be aware that you can install more than one video card in a desktop PC so their graphics processing units (GPUs) work together to provide what’s known as “performance scaling.” In this week’s TechTip, I’ll discuss some different multi-GPU solutions available, why you might want one, how can go about getting one, and why you might be using one before you know it. 

Traditional multi-GPU solutions, ones that involve two physical add-in cards, are available from the big two video card developers, NVIDIA and AMD, with each using their own method of implementation.Generally, the two cards split the workload and render frames as a team to provide close to double the performance as a single GPU system.  NVIDIA’s solution is called SLI, which stands for Scalable Link Interface, and AMD’s is called CrossFireX. To use either solution, you need at least two PCI Express x16 slots on your motherboardand a supported northbridge chipset. With this being the case, a multi-GPU setup is something you need to plan for before building a desktop system, it’s not something you can easily fall back on for an upgrade if you don’t already have an SLI/CrossFireX-ready motherboard. For an NVIDIA-basedmulti-GPU system, you need two cards with identical GPUs. You can use cards from different manufacturers, but if you have aGeForce 9800GT, you need another GeForce 9800GT to go with it.CrossFireX allows for a little flexibility in its pairings, letting you to pair cards that are within the same subseries (e.g. HD 4870 will pair with HD 4850). Unfortunately, these traditional solutions are can be buggy and are not widely supported. That makes traditional multi-GPU solutions an expensive venture for something you might not even be able to fully utilize. Video cards can be expensive enough, buying two or more can be left to the bleeding edge enthusiasts.

Luckily, multi-GPU solutions have evolved to overcome the hindrances of the traditional setup. Each solution offers a Hybrid variant (Hybrid SLI, Hybrid CrossFire) that is designed to incorporate the use of an integrated graphics processor already on the motherboard to handle light-duty graphics tasks along with the much better performance of a GeForce or Radeon GPU. These hybrid solutions are perfect for notebook systems that usually are already using low cost integrated graphics, providing extra graphics processing power when it’s needed. You can find these multi-GPU solutions in place in a number of notebooks already on the market, but, like traditional SLI, these hybrids are not without their drawbacks.

  

The first drawback is that powering two GPUs at all times when you’re only really using one can drain your battery quickly and the second is that you’ll often need to reboot your system when you enable or disable the extra GPU. This second drawback will probably be overcome by technologies likeNVIDIA’s Optimus and Apple’s “automatic graphics switching”found in their current generation of MacBook Pros. 

These multi-GPU solutions will seamlessly switch between energy-efficient and performance modes without the need to reboot by powering down the unused GPU. This gives you the convenience of a virtually instant performance only when it’s needed, consuming less power, and translating to better battery life for mobile applications. This best-of-both-worlds solution is definitely something I am interested in and I expect to see solutions like this to become widely available in the near future.

If seamless multi-GPU switching doesn’t take over, it will be due to the fact that integrated graphics are gradually being moved from the motherboard’s northbridge chip to the CPU itself. Technically, it can still be a multi-GPU solution, but the hardware is much different and the GPUs aren’t working together. Intel’s Core i3 and i5 CPUs already feature a graphics processor integrated onto the die and AMD is planning on releasing the Fusion series, their incorporation of Radeon technology with AMD CPU microarchitecture. As CPUs have hit a ceiling as far as clock speeds and moved to including more cores, you can expect GPUs to take a similar path. There have already been a few high-end video cards released with two GPUs stuck together, and it’s only a matter of time before they’re small enough to fit many GPU cores alongside the multi-core CPUs of today.