Had a few issues with the player (Long report)

[Monty]

So I finally got to try the player last night.

I installed it on my home theater PC and attempted to watch Spiderman on it.  It was one that I hadn't seen or purchased yet, so I was looking forward to it.

I purchased and downloaded the Spiderman riff, I wasn't sure if I would need both the MP3 file and the RIFF file, so I downloaded both.  Turns out that for the player, only the RIFF file is needed.  But it's probably a good idea to go ahead and download and store both anyway.  I did this on my home office PC (which is where I always download the Rifftrax purchases).  All my Rifftrax files are stored on the home office PC.

I inserted my Spiderman DVD in the PC and started up the player.  Everything fine so far.  I hit the button to load the Rifftrax and it asks for the location of the file.  My first attempt was to try and load it over the network from my home office PC.  This did not work.  It would not load at all and just sat there doing nothing.  Not a big problem since it is just as easy to copy the small file over to the home theater PC.  Once I did that, it loaded just fine.

My next issue was with the picture.  There wasn't any.  The opening Columbia DVD stuff played, and then a blank screen.  I hit the next chapter button (>|) until I got to the DVD menu, which was shown.  When I hit play movie on the menu, the movie started.  But again there was no picture, just audio.  After a few seconds the Rifftrax portion kicked in, but still no video.  When I hit the next chapter button again, it went to Chapter 2 of the movie (the scene at the spider lab), and there was the video!  So I went back to chapter one (this time using the dropdown chapter menu), and voila!  the video was there too!  I'm not sure if this glitch is a problem with the player or with my setup.  But at least I got video now!

Or so I thought!  Turns out that the video was showing in a full frame window, instead of the anamorphic widescreen it should have been.  (By the way, this PC is connected to my 46" widescreen HDTV)  There doesn't seem to be any way to adjust this from the Rifftrax player, so I'm assuming that it should automatically be playing at the correct aspect ratio of the DVD.

I have no issues playing DVD's on this PC normally.  I use Media Player Classic to do this.  I tested the Spiderman DVD on the same PC using Media Player Classic and it played fine.  I am using the original 2 disc version of Spiderman.

I played around with the custom codec section of the player, switching among the ones available, but none of the changes made seemed to affect the video problem.

I read here on the forum that you might need to have a DVD player installed on your PC for this to work.  I'm wasn't sure if that would help me since I could otherwise run DVD's through Media Player Classic.  But I was willing to try anything.  I downloaded the free AVS DVD Player and installed that.  I also installed the PowerDVD program and tried that one too.

I unistalled and reinstalled Rifftrax player and tried Spiderman again.  Same issue with the video not showing until I skip ahead a chapter then go back.  Only this time, Correct Aspect Ratio!!!

At this point I stopped messing with the player and sat back and enjoyed Spiderman! 

A few thoughts on the player in action:  First off, Spiderman was one of the best riffs the guys have done!  In full screen mode, the mouse pointer that doesn't disappear and the Riff bar that you have to close are kinda annoying, but that is stuff that you should be able to fix in future versions of the software.

For the most part the rifftrax stayed in sync with the DVD.  The only way it was noticable that there was some drift, was the sync lines.  The riffs themselves never seemed like they were off one way or the other.

Later today I'll try Star Trek VI and see if the same video problems are there.  I'm still missing several RIFF files from My Files section of the shop.  So I can't really check any other movies until that clears itself up.  As someone that finds the whole reauthoring process tedious and time consuming, I look forward to being able to watch all my Rifftrax movies with the player.

My home theater PC is running Windows XP SP2
and has an AMD Athelon 64 Processor 2.01 Ghz with 512 Mb of RAM

P.S.  sorry for the long post!

UPDATE!  I just now tried out Spiderman again, and it once again is playing in a squished full frame 4:3 box.  I don't know how I got it to play at 16:9 last night!  I'll keep playing with the player today and report back anything else I find.

[Monty]

OK, I finally figured out what was wrong.

The problem was twofold and both involved my setup. 

The player was having issues using the codecs associated with Media Player Classic.  But when I switched to any other DVD player program, including PowerDVD there would be no picture at all.

The problem with PowerDVD was that I had my PC connected to my HDTV via the component inputs.  I switched to the HDMI connection and that completely resolved the issue.  I get video and at the correct aspect ratio for both Spiderman and Star Trek VI.

So in closing:  If you are using Media Player Classic codecs, you need to install PowerDVD. Rifftrax player WILL NOT work correctly with the Media Player Classic codecs.   And you need to switch the custom codecs in the DVD settings of the Rifftrax players to the PowerDVD codecs.

Also you need to make sure that your PC is connected to your HDTV via HDMI, DVI or VGA, not component or other TV style connection.  Since the PowerDVD codecs will only allow certain outputs to play DVDs.

Huzzah!  Great job with the player, guys!  Now if I only had more Riff files available for me! (still missing a bunch!)   

I'll leave these posts here, in the event that someone else has similar issues.