June 3 Viewing Party?

[wyswysia]

@Vader

I don’t know that any of us could be trusted to relinquish that power!

I promise to never abuse that power. Ever.

[Chris_Combs]

I built a thingie thing years ago to allow my friends and I to sync watching YouTube videos together. So here are some notes for Ivan to file away as specs to hand off to some unsuspecting underling in the future:

Inputs are: video title, URL, and start time (in the server’s timezone)

Have the video player / countdown timer in its own element so it can get AJAX-called for refreshes (I just used a frame because it was easy and I knew it worked for my three users).

On page load: display video title, and if start time is in the future, show a countdown clock, and refresh every whatever because I don’t trust Javascript to sync over long periods of time (mine also changed the refresh time based on the available time, so it would refresh more frequently as the zero hour neared because it was more important to be in sync then). If start time is in the past, calculate number of seconds it’s been, play video and skip to that time.

Also have a “sync video” button under the video so that if you had some buffering nonsense or whatever, the playback will move to the place it’s supposed to be.

I hate hearing that anybody does anything manually. It makes my heart sad.

[tommy_gun_servo]

Has anyone tried streaming their VHX MST3K episodes through Scener yet? Someone setting up a theater watch party sounds like a possible solution. Scener – Watch party tips

Edit: It’s SUPER clunky (since it involves going into the “inspect” menu and finding the embedded Vimeo URL of the episode you want to watch and putting it in the “Custom Link” option on Scener,) but I think you can use Scener with the VHX version of the Gizmoplex? I assume I accidently found the beta version of how the Scener link in the Gizmoplex proper is going to work.

[perfectfaceforradio]

Thanks

[perfectfaceforradio]

Thanks!

[perfectfaceforradio]

@wyswysia

It’s your birthday, so you’re free to run amok. HBD!!

Thank you! (As if I wasn’t already )

@MichaelRobertson

HBD, PFFR!

Thanks!

[CLANG_Potroast]

That’s actually my favorite part of the episode. Helps take my mind off all the gratuitous pet roastings.

[imdwalrus]

[optiMSTie]

@JakeGittes

Personally speaking, I’ve been concerned that we’ve been taking advantage of someone’s kindness – we got it once, now we want it all the time. We’re already getting a Kingadome showing every 2 weeks, and on off weeks, we can just as easily do this on our own through the bunkers.

I sure as heck don’t want Ivan feeling like he’s stuck doing this each and every Friday… I very much appreciate that he’s gone out of his way for us, but I think we need to show some consideration in return. We can set a time and use the bunkers.

@Lesley

It’s worth noting that, to the best of my knowledge, these screenings can’t be scheduled in advance. Ivan has to be physically present at his computer to start them, and then he has to hang out and keep an eye on the stream. And he does so much already, y’all. I’m just trying to protect his time a little. I hope you understand.

Agreed wholeheartedly on all of this.

Just to hop back in the Wayback Machine for a second: doing this on our own is exactly what we did with the totally unofficial and completely unsanctioned City Limits open thread, where everyone cued up the episode at 8PM ET (5PM ET) on Friday, April 22nd:

James Earl Jones! Kim Cattrall! Rae Dawn Chong! The Far Side Gallery! Your 4/22 OPEN THREAD for the TOTALLY UNOFFICIAL AND COMPLETELY UNSANCTIONED Friday Night Rewatch of CITY LIMITS, tonight at 8PM ET / 5PM PT! Shhh!

[citylimitsskullhelmet] Rent-a-Center Salieri invites one and all to the Super-Secret Absolutely-Unauthorized Unmistakably-Unofficial MST3K Friday Night Rewatch of City Limits! Tonight’s rewatch is SO UNOFFICIAL… [HOW UNOFFICIAL IS IT?] It’s so unofficial that there won’t be a livestream set up for this one. That’s right, we’re doing this all on our own here, completely independent of the-powers-that-be! The idea is that we’re all going to be watching our own copies of the episode (my sourc…

And it worked out rather nice, too.

@JakeGittes

And thank you Ivan for everything you do.

Amen to that.

[FlyingSquid]

We also had some people watching on the Gizmoplex and some people watching on YouTube and it still worked out.

[optiMSTie]

@FlyingSquid

Birthdays today:

@perfectfaceforradio
@OneBradyLady
@FlyingSquid’s daughter, who just turned 12. (I had to wedge her in.)

Happiest of birthdays to the birthday folks today!

[imdwalrus]

Though, that’ll be a little harder to synchronize now because of the additional material added to the Vault Picks. Still doable though!

[FlyingSquid]

We could just all watch on the Gizmoplex.

[CLANG_Potroast]

I think I’ll be working that day. [grumble]

[FlyingSquid]

That’s ok, I’ll probably be asleep.

[Amanda_Gregory]

The run time would be the same if we all play the vault pick rather than the original episode itself, right?

[KHalleron]

I belonged to a group that used to watch ‘The Big Valley’ together, and if some of us were watching on Hulu instead of DVD, we’d just say, ‘Ad!’ and the rest would pause until the ad was over.

We can do this if we want!

[Deiseboi3k]

I appreciate the effort that goes in from Ivan and everyone else behind the scenes, turning these forum organised attempts at organising our own fan run events into actual legit kingadome events. Things will become easier for the fans to setup once the watch party features are fully operational and I’m sure we can work amongst ourselves to put the show together for the 3rd.

On a note though, surely there could be a semi automated process with a program written to react enough to play the movie at a certain time, compensate for lag, register if it freezes etc. Not saying it’s easy but something worth looking into for the long run

[FlyingSquid]

They’re working on it. There’s a ‘party watch’ function in the Gizmoplex which hasn’t been implemented yet.

[ArtCrow]

Happy Birthday, @perfectfaceforradio!