How do you watch Rifftrax?

[SmilinJackRoss]

Yep, I plan on playing around with chapters, maybe putting in a "special features" submenu, riffer's bio's, maybe a hotlink to rifftrax.com, putting some fun menu music in, extra silly stuff like that.  Now that I know it works, I can tinker to my heart's delight.

Importing the mpeg4 into iMovie took awhile.  When I initially dragged the file to iMovie, the message box said it would take ~100 minutes.  I just went to Home Depot and let it chug away, so the exact time it took I'm not sure, but I assume around that hour and a half.  FYI, I'm running all this on a "1.83 GHz dual core intel" iMac desktop.

How did you get a "full quality" MPEG2?  What's the difference between mpeg4 and mpeg2?

[JoshWay]

DVD video is encoded using mpeg2. A VOB ripped from a DVD will basically give you an mpeg2 stream. mpeg4 is severely compressed and usually intended for the web or something portable. iPod video is mpeg4.

[Bob M.]

I've spent about an hour toying around with Road House. I was able to rip the standard VOB files out of the DVD, and they play fine with VLC, but I've yet to find any configuration in the transcoding wizard that leaves the file as an MPEG2 while allowing iMovie/Quicktime/iDVD to use the darned thing. I'm going to keep hunting around, but the only thing I saw was a note that you need a $30 extension for QT to read MPEG2 files...

I can convert them to MPEG4 and those load fine but the conversion screws up the widescreen aspect. And they're lower quality, of course. Still working on it, though! We'll sort it out, I'm sure.

[Ivan Druzhkov]

Wow...everyone has this massive, technical process to listen to Rifftrax.  All I do is sync the MP3 file to my generic MP3 player, play the movie on my computer's DVD drive, then listen to Mike on the MP3 player's earbud headphones while I've got some big headphones for the movie.

Ug.  Me feel inferior now.  Me go away, play game of "hide the rock" until feelings of technical inadequacy go away.

[Pak-Man]

I'll say it again. A cheap set of PC speakers, an MP3 player, a DVD player, an TV, a table, and a couch. (Wife optional. :^)) That's all it takes. :^)

[SmilinJackRoss]

I'll say it again. A cheap set of PC speakers, an MP3 player, a DVD player, an TV, a table, and a couch. (Wife optional. :^)) That's all it takes. :^)

It's the way I've done all of them so far, to be sure.  But EVERY track has drifted at some point, requiring me to resync with DA.  Burning them to a disc is not only fun (I've been enjoying the process of learning how to do this, I'm a total amateur) but it also makes future viewings a piece of cake.

[Pak-Man]

Drift's easy. Whatever comes in too early, pause it for about as long as it was off. If Mike's jibs are coming in a little too soon, just jam on pause on the ol' MP3 and unpause as quick as you can. If the DVD is coming in a little soon, do the same. You don't even have to use Disembaudio (But he helps.) If the jokes aren't timed just right, figure out how it should be timed and adjust accordingly. It's kinda fun and it distracts you a little bit more from the pain of the feature. :^)

[Bob M.]

I think we all know how to fix drift, it's just that we're trying to avoid it on subsequent viewings

I certainly don't mind doing the iPod pause the first viewing, but I'd love to figure out a good Mac way to get everything onto a disc for later viewings, especially at other people's houses without the mountains of useless electronic gizmos that I have

[stirrell]

One Windows way is using Roxio Easy Creator (I am using version "8") and DVD Decrypter.

First, break the DVD encryption using DVD Decrypter. This gives you a folder with the DVD files. Then, create a Disc Image of this folder using Disc Copier. You then need to mount this disc image using Disc Image Loader. It will then look like you've got a DVD in a drive. But, this "DVD" no longer is copy protected. You can then use the Media Import to import the video of the movie.

Now that you have a video of the movie, you load it into Video Wave. Use the Rifftrax that you've trimmed (to cut out the beginning instructions - use Sound Editor for that) and add that as an audio track to your movie. You can then move the audio track on the timeline until it synchs up with your movie and then burn to DVD.

Simple! Er, okay, well simplish... okay, doable? :-)

It did work for RoadHouse. Trying it with Star Trek V right now.

If anyone has a better Windows solution, I'd love to hear it.

[Tealeaf]

I've used video editing software to add the Rifftrax to the movie.  That way I can burn the movie to DVD and watch it without having to resync if I have to stop. One of the problems I've encountered is having to add to the Rifftrax file to get it to sync up.  To The Fifth Element, I had to add 3/4 sec every 15 minutes, and in Star Trek V I had to add 0.1 sec.  But the biggest problem was the Aspect ratio.  The video editing software I'm using squishes everything to a 4:3.  I had to burn the solo movie to DVD, them recopy it using a USB video capture card.  That way the 16:9 picture is contained in a 4:3 frame.  The black bars are actually part of the file.  Then I put the rifftrax over the movie burn it to DVD, put a "Mike and the Bots" silloutte on the bottom of my screen, and VOILLA!  MST3K!!!!!  (Almost)

*blinks*

   Um, to answer the question in the title of the this thread, well... *deep breath*

    Drunk and naked.  I hope I didn't get too technical on y'all.

Edit: Oh, and on DVD's I've bought from gammer73.  In case I wasn't technical enough.  You're my hero, Gam!

[gammer]

Edit: Oh, and on DVD's I've bought from gammer73.  In case I wasn't technical enough.  You're my hero, Gam!

Please note that I don't sell these anymore. I was reminded by certain individuals, that although I was making people buy the rifftrax and movie being riffed before I would send the DVD, its still illegal.

So if you managed to get some from me when I was doing it, consider yourself lucky. 

[PsypherPunk]

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 was just curious about your Linux setup. While I'm using Audacity for the editing like many people on here I'm not actually reauthoring the DVDs; I'm ripping them as Xvid/Vorbis files and saving them that way. I'd be interested to see how you're reauthoring the DVDs under Linux.

[subtr4ct]

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 was just curious about your Linux setup. While I'm using Audacity for the editing like many people on here I'm not actually reauthoring the DVDs; I'm ripping them as Xvid/Vorbis files and saving them that way. I'd be interested to see how you're reauthoring the DVDs under Linux.

Basically, I have two scripts that do most of the work in an automated fashion.  The first one tears the DVD apart.  Then I edit and syncronize the rifftrax with the movie audio using audacity.  Then the second script puts the new DVD together.  Only the audacity part is interactive -- I only spend about 20 min. actively working on a remaster.

Outline of the first script:

• transcode is used to rip m2v, ac3, and sub files from dvd
• transcode is used to convert the ac3 to wav, downmixing to two channels if neccesary
• sox is used to compress the dynamic range of the wav
• sox is used to decode the rifftrax, resample to 48000 hz, and compress its dynamic range
• subtitle2pgm is used to extract images from the

Outline of the second script:

• a program called multimux is used to create a 3-channel wav -- movie in two channels, rifftrax in the third
• aften is used to encode the 3-channel wav into a new ac3 -- movie in the front two channels, rifftrax in the rear (so that the relative volumes of the two can be adjusted on-th-fly during viewing using the reciever remote)
• m2v is requantized using transcode, if neccessary, so that eventual the finished bundle will fit on a DVD5
• mplex is used to multiplex the m2v and new ac3
• spumux is used to mulitplex subtitles in
• mkisofs is used to create iso
• growisofs is used to burn iso

I'll email my scripts to you in case you might find them useful.  Most of the above tools are available in Ubuntu.  The exceptions are aften and multimux -- I had to build those.

[BBQ Platypus]

Um...yeah...I play it on my computer speakers and hope to God it doesn't drift.  Very scientific.  Wow...I feel slightly less nerdy now.

[Sharktopus]

Just trying to read this thread makes me feel dumb. I just plug my MP3 player into the home theater's auxiliary input and play the movie audio through the TV. Ta-da.