How do you watch Rifftrax?

[RandyMistie]

I am but an English major, and do not know of these "video cards" and "GoldWave" of which the kids today are speaking (with their Nerf balls, and their big pants, and their listening to the No Doubts...)  What I do is, I have this highly technical process in which I unplug the 8.9 million wires from my laptop, and carry it into the living room, and set it down, and plug in the speakers, and since the cord is really short I have to lean way way way over to see when the visual cue to restart the track is.  A great deal of sprinting is involved.  Sometimes I invite people over just to have somebody go, "Okay... nnnnnnnnnnnnow!"

Yet another reason why Rifftrax are meant to be shared

LadyK, that was hilarious and well written!  I also use the laptop with speakers plugged into it for guests to enjoy the beauty of Rifftrax, but I have longer wires so not as much sprinting is involved, LOL!

Thanks for that!

[LadyKenobi]

Aw, I'm so glad you liked the description of An Evening At LadyK's Apartment.  The sweet bonus of my patented process is that I get a bit of a workout before the film starts.  Bufftrax!

Although...

I'm afraid to drink beer or wine or a lot of water before/during the movie because the pending exit strategy of said liquids might cause a synchronization nightmare.  Anybody else prepare for an initial Rifftrax viewing as though for some sort of major sporting event?

[Bob]

Aw, I'm so glad you liked the description of An Evening At LadyK's Apartment.  The sweet bonus of my patented process is that I get a bit of a workout before the film starts.  Bufftrax!

Although...

I'm afraid to drink beer or wine or a lot of water before/during the movie because the pending exit strategy of said liquids might cause a synchronization nightmare.  Anybody else prepare for an initial Rifftrax viewing as though for some sort of major sporting event?

Heck yeah, the beer is at the ready and the snacks are at hand.   And since I dont dare to try and pause BOTH the DVD player and the IPOD at the same time....... no bathroom breaks!

[Bob M.]

If anyone other than me is interested in mixing audio and dvd reauthoring in Linux/BSD (or possibly OSX), I would be happy to share info and my scripts.  I would love to have more eyes to help produce a more streamlined/improved process.

I'm working in OS X 10.4, and I tried to do a combined DVD with the software I have on hand, plus any free ones I could find. I tried a few different things, but I ended up working within GarageBand, of all things, to set up what it calls a movie soundtrack, where I could drop in the video file of the movie with original audio track (ripped from my DVD with Handbrake), then add the Rifftrax mp3. I could then visually drag around the rifftrax until it was synched up properly, then send it to iDVD as a new DVD.

The downside to that is that there's no real way to create the original chapters for the DVD. I had tried to import the movie into iMovie to do just such a thing (which I do with my home movies), but it was going to take somewhere in the neighbourhood of 9 hours to import the darn movie (I've got an older computer). At the end, my DVD burner was acting flaky and I never bothered to burn the one I'd set up. I may try to rip the DVD with a different tool (MacTheRipper) and try again sometime. If it works out, then I'll pull the Disembodio synch lines and clean it up proper.

Until then, it's still iPod into home stereo and press play on the DVD player

[Sharktopus]

My simple, low-tech approach:

I recently spent a whopping 40 woolongs on the Durabrand home theater speakers they've recently piled up at Walmart. I'm sure it's not up to some audiophiles' high standards, but compared to the craptastic speakers in my TV it might as well be George Lucas' private theater. I'm sure the relentless forces of irony won't allow any product dubbed "Durabrand" to last very long, but you can't beat the price.

Anyway, the subwoofer/control center has an auxiliary input, so I just hook up my cheapo mp3 player and with an acceptable amount of cable wrangling connect the DVD player's audio back into my TV. Voila! I get both good-enough-for-me movie audio and Mike's mellifluous voice blasting from each corner of the room like the voice of God. A very snarky, Midwestern God. Let there be riffing. And it was good.

[jammindude]

I found a very simple solution last night for XXX....

I remembered that I had an xtra DVD player, and some "splitter" RCA cables.

I burn the Rifftrax as an MP3 onto a CD and put it in one DVD player....put the movie in the other DVD player....and use the "splitter" RCA cable to plug them BOTH into the same audio jack on my tuner.   Push play on both machines and......VIOLA!!!!

Worked like a charm....

[SmilinJackRoss]

I'm working in OS X 10.4, and I tried to do a combined DVD with the software I have on hand, plus any free ones I could find. I tried a few different things, but I ended up working within GarageBand, of all things, to set up what it calls a movie soundtrack, where I could drop in the video file of the movie with original audio track (ripped from my DVD with Handbrake), then add the Rifftrax mp3. I could then visually drag around the rifftrax until it was synched up properly, then send it to iDVD as a new DVD.

The downside to that is that there's no real way to create the original chapters for the DVD. I had tried to import the movie into iMovie to do just such a thing (which I do with my home movies), but it was going to take somewhere in the neighbourhood of 9 hours to import the darn movie (I've got an older computer). At the end, my DVD burner was acting flaky and I never bothered to burn the one I'd set up. I may try to rip the DVD with a different tool (MacTheRipper) and try again sometime. If it works out, then I'll pull the Disembodio synch lines and clean it up proper.

Until then, it's still iPod into home stereo and press play on the DVD player

I'm on a mac too, and I'm quite illiterate on ripping/burning DVD's and audio files on the computer.  I do have handbrake, I've used it to put movies onto my video ipod, but that's it.  I downloaded mactheripper, but after reading some tutorials, it sounded like I needed to BUY additional software to burn the dvd properly.

If you (or anyone else!) figures out a way to do this on a mac for free, please let me (and everyone else!) know. 

[Bob M.]

I'm definately going to work on it, Smilin Jack. Maybe this week I can take some quality time with Road House and figure out the best way for Macs to do it.

[SmilinJackRoss]

I'm playing with it right now, and it looks like you can add chapters right in garageband.  Here's what the help page says:

To add a chapter title to a marker:
With the video track selected, open the editor.
Select the "add marker" button, with the box "marks as chapter" checked.

Maybe that helps, bobodante?  I'm going to keep monkeyin' around with it.

[Bob M.]

Oh, cool, I didn't know that was possible. Thanks! That actually makes it unnecessary to even use iMovie, assuming you can do all the work in GarageBand. All you have to do is rip the movie with Handbrake, drop it into GarageBand, do the synch up and clean up, mark your chapters as noted and send to iDVD. I shall give it a whirl this week when I get a chance.

Thanks again!

[SmilinJackRoss]

Oh, cool, I didn't know that was possible. Thanks! That actually makes it unnecessary to even use iMovie, assuming you can do all the work in GarageBand. All you have to do is rip the movie with Handbrake, drop it into GarageBand, do the synch up and clean up, mark your chapters as noted and send to iDVD. I shall give it a whirl this week when I get a chance.

Thanks again!

Be careful when you start this process.  I got 3/4 of the way through Sta Trek V, making chapters and editing out DA's lines, and I noticed that I was towards the end of the slidebar, but not the end of the movie.  It reached the end at about 1 hour 20 minutes.  Turns out you can only have a maximum of 1999 "measures" in a song, but at any tempo.  The default tempo is 100, but that wont let you finish the average movie.  You can change the tempo on the fly, but it made my stuff not sync up anymore.  So FYI, bring the "tempo" down low before you start (minimum of 40) so that you don't run out of "measures".  When I put the tempo to 75, star trek V fits in there.

[Bob M.]

I noticed that the first time I was playing around, so I just clicked on the little clock icon with the time to change it to absolute time, but I didn't really go all the way out, so it's possible that didn't change anything. Thanks for the time!

[SmilinJackRoss]

I noticed that the first time I was playing around, so I just clicked on the little clock icon with the time to change it to absolute time, but I didn't really go all the way out, so it's possible that didn't change anything. Thanks for the time!

OK, a few issues in burning the DVD.  I got the Garageband file all nice and synced up, no DA lines, and imported it to iDVD.  If you have made chapter markers, iDVD is supposed to recognize this and automatically make a submenu for chapter selection, but it didn't recognize the chapters I made in Garageband.  No biggie for me, so I tried to burn the DVD, and I keep getting this error message before it even starts to burn. telling me that there's an error with the "menu assets".  I don't really know what that means, but I've been trying to get it to work all afternoon and no luck.  So I think I'm going to start over using iMovie and see if it will work with that file.

[SmilinJackRoss]

OK bobo, I got it to work.  I started over from scratch using iMovie, imported the mpeg4 movie and the rifftrax, edited out the DA stuff...I didn't make chapter markers because I didn't want to waste time if it wasn't going to burn.  But, I then sent it to iDVD...It took many hours for the DVD to burn (~4?  I wasn't really keeping track) but it works.  IT WORKS!!!  And all with existing and free apps.  God, I'm happy about this.  Gotta do it with the others now too. 

[Bob M.]

So, now you can add the chapter markers in iMovie successfully, since you know the burn works

As for importing the file into iMovie, how long did that take? I'm going to give it a shot with a full quality MPEG2 file later on, and I'll let you know if I have any luck. Thanks! We'll figure this badboy out.