{"id":11409,"date":"2011-12-02T12:10:24","date_gmt":"2011-12-02T17:10:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mst3kinfo.com\/?p=11409"},"modified":"2011-12-02T12:16:59","modified_gmt":"2011-12-02T17:16:59","slug":"riffplayer-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mst3kinfo.com\/?p=11409","title":{"rendered":"RiffPlayer Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

RiffTrax recently asked me to review a beta version of their new RiffPlayer software<\/a> and I enthusiastically said “sure, okay.”<\/p>\n

Full disclosure: In addition to the RiffPlayer, RiffTrax provided me with a commercial copy of The Twilight Saga: Eclipse<\/em> DVD and associated RiffTrax MP3 and sync files. But I’ll try to not hold that against them.<\/p>\n

RiffTrax recommends that the RiffPlayer be installed on Windows systems running WinXP and above (DirectX is recommended) or Mac systems running Snow Leopard (10.6) and above, and have an Intel CPU. I was able to test the RiffPlayer on a laptop system running WinXP and a desktop system running Windows 7. Sorry, I don’t have a Mac. Let’s not get into that whole Kirk\/Picard thing.<\/p>\n

Installing the RiffPlayer is a breeze, and playing a DVD is a simple matter. You simply start the RiffPlayer, load the DVD, then use the RiffPlayer to select the associated RiffTrax MP3 file. The RiffPlayer scans the DVD for a few seconds, then you’re off and running.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

When you look at the RiffPlayer itself, you might notice immediately that there are two separate volume control sliders; one for the DVD and one for the riffs. This comes in handy. On one of my test systems, the riffs were playing noticeably louder than the DVD. A simple lowering of the riff volume and raising of the DVD volume solved the problem. On my other test system, I experienced the opposite problem. The riff volume was low, and I had to raise it. Once I got the volume levels set, everything was good.<\/p>\n

The new RiffPlayer almost entirely eliminates the need to sync up the RiffTrax to the DVD. But during my viewing of Eclipse<\/em> my laptop experienced a momentary glitch, causing the tracks to be out of sync. At first I didn’t know what to do, but when I looked closer at the RiffPlayer I noticed an icon labelled “Resync.” Sure enough, when I clicked on it the RiffPlayer quickly scanned the DVD again and the two tracks went right back into perfect sync and I never experienced the problem again.<\/p>\n

After Eclipse<\/em> ended, I wondered if the player would work with previously released RiffTrax titles. The answer is yes and no. If the RiffTrax download included a sync file, everything worked great. In tests without the sync file, I received an error saying that the file couldn’t be found. RiffTrax has helpfully created new sync files for many of its older titles, and it has also created a list of DVDs that currently work with the player. You can find more info on the RiffPlayer page<\/a>.<\/p>\n

For those of you who have been daunted in the past by having to manually sync RiffTrax files to DVDs, you can’t do any better than the RiffPlayer. It’s the best way yet to get the full RiffTrax experience at home, short of having Mike, Kevin and Bill standing in your living room to riff the DVD for you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

RiffTrax recently asked me to review a beta version of their new RiffPlayer software and I enthusiastically said “sure, okay.”<\/p>\n

Full disclosure: In addition to the RiffPlayer, RiffTrax provided me with a commercial copy of The Twilight Saga: Eclipse DVD and associated RiffTrax MP3 and sync files. But I’ll try to not hold […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rifftrax","odd"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mst3kinfo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11409","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mst3kinfo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mst3kinfo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mst3kinfo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mst3kinfo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11409"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.mst3kinfo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11409\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mst3kinfo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mst3kinfo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mst3kinfo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}