READ ALL ABOUT IT! Rifftrax Player to be Open Source!

xrampage16 · June 30, 2009, 02:48:34 PM

Currently planning on building an open source plugin for VLC to be used as an alternative to the Rifftrax Player.

I am planning on building a SVN Repository to store the code, and would appreciate help in this endeavor.

Please supply me with all questions to help ensure that this project gets started.

Thanks for your help in advance,
Cameron

torgosPizza · June 30, 2009, 03:52:44 PM

Just to bring everyone else up to speed, we've looked into other options (Java, etc.) and it seems like, since we already recommend VLC Player (http://www.videolan.org) to watch our VOD content, that this seems a reasonable approach to a new, open-source player - a plugin that we could package on our site with a link to download both VLC itself and the RiffTrax plugin. We're not quite sure what this means for the future of the .riff file - there's the possibility it will hang around for a while, but eventually we'd like to not even require it.

The best part of this direction is, VLC is now packaged with its own codec. Part of the problem with the current player is that, for the most part, it requires a DVD to have captions in order to perform the best syncing (which is still not always accurate). That's a huge problem when it comes to comedy, in which timing is everything. Utilizing VLC's own codec allows us to look directly at DVD timing information on a frame-accurate precision, ensuring us much better synchronicity and user experience.

Not to mention that it's cross-platform and open source.

If there's anyone here that already has experience writing in VLC, or working with DVD information, including codecs, hardware standards, anything of that nature, please PM either myself or Cameron. We want to leverage the community in this and think it'll be a great project, resulting in a fantastic player that we can all be proud of.

torgosPizza · June 30, 2009, 03:57:41 PM

I'm going to open this thread up for general comments and questions. Anyone wishing to actually be a part of the development process should PM xrampage16.

Minnesota · June 30, 2009, 04:27:14 PM

My only comment would be, VLC player has been my player of choice on both Mac and PC for several years now. Good choice, hope it all works out for you guys.

Edward J Grug III · June 30, 2009, 05:30:32 PM

Quote from: Minnesota on June 30, 2009, 04:27:14 PM
My only comment would be, VLC player has been my player of choice on both Mac and PC for several years now. Good choice, hope it all works out for you guys.

Ditto.

Will it work with PAL DVDs?

FLOCK of RABID SHEEP?!?! · June 30, 2009, 09:29:50 PM

this means that the linux users out there (like me, sorta) can watch riffs, yay! go you

torgosPizza · June 30, 2009, 10:46:49 PM

Exactly! Linux and Mac users can rejoice. And yes, it should work with PAL discs too - since essentially the player won't really care what DVD it's playing, as long as we can get it sync information.

Edward J Grug III · June 30, 2009, 11:00:31 PM

Brilliant!

RoninFox · June 30, 2009, 11:34:24 PM

Sounds like the best of all possible avenues to take, I look forward to seeing it work.

Indomitus · July 01, 2009, 09:57:07 AM

Sounds like a fantastic direction to go, to me. I hope it works.

k1 · July 01, 2009, 04:56:23 PM

Quote from: torgosPizza on June 30, 2009, 10:46:49 PM
Exactly! Linux and Mac users can rejoice. And yes, it should work with PAL discs too - since essentially the player won't really care what DVD it's playing, as long as we can get it sync information.

Hooray!

I'm assuming it'll also mean older PC's that couldn't handle the RT player will also be able to work (provided VLC works on it)?

xrampage16 · July 01, 2009, 05:00:09 PM

Hopefully. this plugin, since it is making use of numerous *extra* features will most likely be more resource intensive than a normal VLC build. But, it should have a higher probability of running on your machine.

k1 · July 01, 2009, 05:13:26 PM

Quote from: xrampage16 on July 01, 2009, 05:00:09 PM
Hopefully. this plugin, since it is making use of numerous *extra* features will most likely be more resource intensive than a normal VLC build. But, it should have a higher probability of running on your machine.

Nice! The player works fine on my tower and my wife's laptop, so no problems there. I'm just glad it'll most likely work on my parents PC now! (We've used VLC to watch some iRiff & VOD stuff.)

And especially happy about it working on Mac!

FLOCK of RABID SHEEP?!?! · July 01, 2009, 06:14:54 PM

and my ubuntu netbook, if i ever go traveling long enough to be away from my big screen tv

ja30278 · July 03, 2009, 10:58:42 AM

Outstanding news guys. I PM'd xrampage separately about contributing, but just wanted to post here and say what an awesome direction this is.

News:

READ ALL ABOUT IT! Rifftrax Player to be Open Source!