Again today RP will only run for about an hour and then it shuts down and has to be restarted....

Thanks.

RP has stopped on me about 8 times today and it seems to be getting worse as the day goes on.

Thanks in advance for any assistance.

Can anyone at NG tell us what is happening with the Polar Bear Cam?  It still hasn't started this year and no one answers the multitude of questions regarding the cam.  Please help!

Real Player has had control of my sound for months. I can not mute it without it muting all other sounds on my computer. I have had many people on this forum make suggestions to fix it but nothing worked.  Can you help me? Thanks.

You should be able to stop that by going to Tools on the menu bar at the top of the player, select Preferences, then in the window that pops up expand Automatic Services, then select Automatic Updates and then uncheck the box that says Automatically Download and Install Important Updates

matthewcalder:

Good details, Pat. Thanks! I guess for the free player the best place to start is our faq at http://service.real.com/realplayer/ 

And although I'm not an expert on the nuts and bolts of the player, I'll try my best if you send me mail at mcalder@real.com

 

Thanks, Matt. I do find that when I having problems, most other people are too. Today I've had the Pond up in the independant player for over 4 hours. Wonderful!

As always, we Mac users would love to be able to download the stream for viewing later like the PC people can. It is also useful for taking screen shots.

Thanks for all the efforts to improve things.

 I keep having issues with RP......I had RP 10 and want to stick with it, but keep getting kicked back to RP11, which I don't want to keep, I'm having problems keeping the RP 10 version, and want to know how to keep it...any suggestions??

matthewcalder:

So does closing the player and restarting help? Does it solve things completely or just improve them for a while?

 Restarting just fixes it for a while. Then it will do it again. The past week or so some of us were lucky to keep it running for an hour before it quit again. A lot of the time it would only run for a few minutes before it died. Today was better until my last post. That was the 1st time it quit today. Now it has been running for about 2 hours and 25 minutes without stopping.

I am using v 10. I did try v 11 but did not like it. It was too large. Something else I didn't like too, but I don't remember what now... sorry....

Oh, I am using the free version too. Fixed income and can not afford to purchase anything.

Good details, Pat. Thanks! I guess for the free player the best place to start is our faq at http://service.real.com/realplayer/ 

And although I'm not an expert on the nuts and bolts of the player, I'll try my best if you send me mail at mcalder@real.com

So does closing the player and restarting help? Does it solve things completely or just improve them for a while?

matthewcalder:

Hi, I'm a product manager on the video services team at Real, and we are indeed working with the folks at National Geographic to improve the stream quality. As noted already, the best place to get help with Real Player techincal issues is http://service.real.com. But hopefully we'll have things working soon.

Matt Calder

Real Networks

mcalder@real.com

Thank you, Matt. We are addicted to Our pond and appreciate all you can do to improve the service.

As I typed this my RP feed to the pond quit ! ! ! 

Time to restart it....

Thank you for responding, Rachel and Matt. It is so reassuring to know that those in charge know the problem exists and are working on it.

Today, for me, the feed has not stopped as much as it jsut keeps "slipping". I know that's not the right term, but I'm not savvy to the right terms. The feed just gets slower and slower, and then the audio drops. If I hit rewind and then fast-forward, I can get the sound back. Otherwise before long, the picture streaks or slides too.  Then it does stop. If I rewind then, I lose the feed completely. Sorry I can't put it more technically. I have a Mac, 10. 4. 11 and use FF 3 with RP Mac 11 if that makes a difference.

Thanks for additional contact link. It is appreciated. Good luck with your efforts on this.

I did just try to use the contact link supplied above, but it says support is not available for the free player. Is there any support link that we can use?

Hi, I'm a product manager on the video services team at Real, and we are indeed working with the folks at National Geographic to improve the stream quality. As noted already, the best place to get help with Real Player techincal issues is http://service.real.com. But hopefully we'll have things working soon.

Matt Calder

Real Networks

mcalder@real.com

Rachael NGS:

Hi Pondies!

I emailed our partners at Real Networks to ask them to look into the real player issue.  We're sorry it hasn't been functioning as well as it normally does!  We'll keep you posted about what they find.  I will also ask about the best way for our viewers to contact them.  Reporting the issue on the forum is important either way, but in addition the general contact for technical problems can be found at http://service.real.com.

Thank you so much for your patience and dedication to WildCam!  I hope you've enjoyed the leopard, lion and elephants as much as I have!

 Thank you for the update and the assistance, Rachael. We hope they can get the problems resolved soon. So far today I have not had a problem with RP stopping, but I did have nothing but a slide show most of the morning. Restarting did not help that, but this afternoon it seems to be streaming nicely.

Hi Pondies!

I emailed our partners at Real Networks to ask them to look into the real player issue.  We're sorry it hasn't been functioning as well as it normally does!  We'll keep you posted about what they find.  I will also ask about the best way for our viewers to contact them.  Reporting the issue on the forum is important either way, but in addition the general contact for technical problems can be found at http://service.real.com.

Thank you so much for your patience and dedication to WildCam!  I hope you've enjoyed the leopard, lion and elephants as much as I have!

pat:

I'm one of many Pondies who are experiencing constant stopping of RP today. I have even had to "force quit" before I could even try to get it back. I am in the US Midwest using RP 11 for Mac. I hope someone will look into what is causing this. TIA

 I'm on a PC, am in the US Midwest, and have the same problem. Yes, I have had to "force quit" too.... sometimes it even locks up my browser windows and other programs I may have open. I am using RP 10.

I'm one of many Pondies who are experiencing constant stopping of RP today. I have even had to "force quit" before I could even try to get it back. I am in the US Midwest using RP 11 for Mac. I hope someone will look into what is causing this. TIA

It would also be VERY helpful to have a contact address for Real Networks whose servers provide the live feed.  The service has been DREADFUL in the past few days.  MANY people are having problems.  The feed won't stay running - it keeps stopping and having to be re-started, often dozens of times within an hour or two.  It quits right in the middle of the visits of animals that we have been waiting hours hoping to see!  A cheetah visited the pond for the first time ever, and I was away from the computer, but had left RP running.  However it was all for nothing, as RP had stopped and dumped the cache in which one can go back and see things that one missed.  Often when I get dropped I go to Speakeasy and check the bandwidth that I am receiving from Seattle, and I am always receiving at a rate several times that needed to keep the live feed running, yet it continually stops! Or, Clip Info will be showing the feed at the rate of .03 FPS, where 15 FPS is needed, and the viewers are getting a slide show instead of full motion video.

Nobody seems to be monitoring how often people are getting dropped, nor does anyone respond to messages left here, or to complaints made on other forum threads.  It would be WONDERFUL to have someplace that we could send a message and KNOW that it would be SEEN by the Real People.  They can't possibly belive that this kind of service is accceptable, so I have to believe that the problem is that they don't know when problems are existing.

Can someone please supply me with an e-mail address to contact the forum folks?  

I've been having some issues with inappropriate banner ads on the forum.  I contacted the support group at apple computer and they told me to disable javascript and to notify the websites on which I'm having problems, as the problem is at their end, with their server being compromised.  The problem was fixed, but I need javascript to do many things on the computer (like sign into the forum).  

I'd appreciate help in contacting the people in charge of the forum.  

Thanks in advance.

LAP:

 Just got this error message when doing a reply on the Chat thread.

Sorry, there was a problem with your last request!

Either the site is offline or an unhandled error occurred. We apologize and have logged the error. Please try your request again or if you know who your site administrator is let them know too.

I got the same message when I tried to refresh the Chat thread.

 Just got this error message when doing a reply on the Chat thread.

Sorry, there was a problem with your last request!

Either the site is offline or an unhandled error occurred. We apologize and have logged the error. Please try your request again or if you know who your site administrator is let them know too.

MeliaTech:

 In the server transition, e-mails built up from members' subscriptions. We've now cleared the backlog and re-enabled the e-mail system.

If you are getting a lot of e-mails, most likely you are subscribed to one or many of the site forums or you have selected "Email me replies to this post" on a previous post or reply. You can verify your subscription settings here: http://forums.ngm.com/forums/ForumSubscriptions.aspx. This allows you to unsubscribe (that is, receive e-mail each time a new post is made within the forum).

Alternatively, you can disable ALL notices using the "Edit my profile" and selecting "Site Options." You can then select No for "Enable Conversation Notifications."

We are still looking into the lag time for the posts. It may be a result of the scoring system that keeps track of everyone's posts taking awhile to make record.

Thanks,
Webmaster.

 Thanks for the info. We always appreciate knowing what is happening.

 In the server transition, e-mails built up from members' subscriptions. We've now cleared the backlog and re-enabled the e-mail system.

If you are getting a lot of e-mails, most likely you are subscribed to one or many of the site forums or you have selected "Email me replies to this post" on a previous post or reply. You can verify your subscription settings here: http://forums.ngm.com/forums/ForumSubscriptions.aspx. This allows you to unsubscribe (that is, receive e-mail each time a new post is made within the forum).

Alternatively, you can disable ALL notices using the "Edit my profile" and selecting "Site Options." You can then select No for "Enable Conversation Notifications."

We are still looking into the lag time for the posts. It may be a result of the scoring system that keeps track of everyone's posts taking awhile to make record.

Thanks,
Webmaster.

Hi, whoever is there from NG right now... Thanks for fixing the forum and the email problem. We appreciate your efforts !