Jim found a converter for RealPlayer files that converts them from .rm to MP3 and WAV. It's called RM Converter and was only $25 for an Internet downloadable copy. Although the conversion process is slow going, it does a good job. I make the WAV file and drag and drop that into my Oggdrop and it converts the WAV to Ogg Vorbis in about 2 seconds.
I had a couple rather large Real files from the Little Cowpuncher oral history project on my desktop computer. As Real files, one is 196MB and the second is 46MB. Of course, they are video and converting them to MP3 and Ogg Vorbis is only audio, but the difference in file size is 8.7MB and 4.5MB for the MP3s and 5.8MB and 1.8MB for the Ogg Vorbis files.
The reason this is so important is that we have a lot of Real video of lectures and this is an easy, not to mention inexpensive, way to convert them for podcasting. I added them to the Campus Programs page on the podcasting website.
