Finally a RiffTrax player!! - v.1.1.1

[FBX]

I'll eventually get around to adding more polish, but it would be way too much effort to give it any extravagent features. Unfortunately, due to copyright and legal reasons, a lot of the cool features of media players are locked away from me. Sharecrow, from what I can tell, is a modified winamp player, which is why it can do what it can do (such as timeramping). However, that obviously has limits too.

All four ways of watching rifftrax have their own target audience, sorted by how much time you want to invest in each rifftrax:

Rifftrax player
- quickest time from download to watching the movie
- works well if you dont tend to watch them often, are generally satisifed after one sitting, or like to watch from the beginning
- fairly easy to use, deals with random desyncing fairly well by simply adjusting the relative position of the audio, but cannot deal with persistant syncing problems.
- wont help PAL users if they get persistant problems
- requires a computer
- griefs: could be a little more powerful, many of the features are somewhat useless or dont work good enough to be useful, has a few bugs. Can still eat up time by fiddling with the audio controls, but works a lot better than the "pause/unpause" method. The quality of the bookmark feature relies on the quality of the readme file times as well as other matters.

Sharecrow
- Requires set-up time for each movie to gain any benefits
- Works well for rewatching movies and showing your friends
- interface is somewhat difficult to figure out, has no abilities to deal with random desyncing
- works great for PAL users
- requires a computer
- griefs: When there is random desyncing, it tends to desync during the middle of movies, then resync near the end.

DVD and Mp3 player
- Requires setting up your DVD player and Mp3 player seperately, then trying to sync them manually using Mike's cue. Its not hard after a couple times.
- works well if your at someone else's house and thats all you have, or if your computer has a poor sound system (or a tiny monitor with no TV support).
- Interface? Ha! Deals with random desyncing well only if the mp3 is getting ahead of the movie.
- wont help PAL users if they get persistant problems
- doesnt require a computer, but does require an mp3 player of some sort, which often times ends up being your computer anyways
- griefs: random desyncing / volume control issues can ruin the experience, as well as other problems.

Making your own DVDs
- Requres a TON of set-up time for any movie, as well as a lot of set-up before you can even get started.
- Works great under any situation if you make the DVD right
- You have to deal with multiple programs and learn them. Deals with random desyncing by getting rid of it completely
- Works great once they are made. Period.
- requires a computer with plenty of free hard drive and a DVD burner to make them, but not to play them
- griefs: Not for the layman. You might be kicking yourself if you spend hours making one only to find out its not funny.

[BEERxTaco]

You might be kicking yourself if you spend hours making one only to find out its not funny.

Not funny? Surely you jest!

I'm going to invest my time in the DVD authoting route... it seems worth it to me. Initially I was looking for a quick and dirty way to do it, but as with most things in life, you get out of it what you put into it 

[Conc]

Good Thread.

We're actually working on a new version of Sharecrow which addresses many of the issues you bring up, including:  A simplified interface, more intuitive navigation, and easier adjustment features.  As soon as it's complete, we'll let everybody here beta test it.

Steve

[BathTub]

Good to hear, I must admit my first time running it was confusing, because it wouldn't play the DVD and wouldn't say why, when the dvds worked fine in WinDVD, wasn't till after finding the information tab that I found out that windows can conflict with the drive over the 'region' flag.