Looking for integrated on-screen live video commenting.

February 6, 2009 10:04 PM

Did I dream up this MST3K video player, or does something like this actually exist?

Years ago I remember seeing something which was a video player but had characters on the bottom where you could type in comments on whatever was playing, and it would display them below the video that was playing.

The reason I ask is because I have a night with friends every month where we play video clips on a projector at a local bar, and I'm trying to find a more streamlined solution for some sort of live commenting feature. (I'm on a mac, but running parallels with xp as well)

Right now we have this sloppy solution of using niceplayer, loading the clips up in the playlist, and then using this buggy program that keeps windows in front, and just using stickies to comment.

Does this fantasty MST3k-like software, live subtitling, or anything like it actually exist for these purposes?

posted by LongDrive to computers & internet (10 comments total)

I remember this. I don't know where it is, or what it was called, but you are not crazy, or at least not for this reason. Just saying that for support. :)
posted by rokusan at 6:05 AM on February 7

Ive never tried but it sounds like the rifftrax software does this.
posted by damn dirty ape at 6:18 AM on February 7

I have seen a flash-based YouTube-clone that was enhanced in a specific and important way.... you could leave comments about the video you were watching, but you could also drag the playhead in the video to attach your comment to a point-in-time. When others came to watch the video, they'd see the video (optionally) with everyone else's comments, "pop-up video"-style.

Ugh, I can't remember the name. Now I'll have to post my own question.
posted by Wild_Eep at 7:50 AM on February 7

You did say live, or real-time, which is the key here. What you're looking for is called a character generator, and I've seen consumer models by JVC out as far back as 1990 (at the time $500, so probably bargain-bin stuff on eBay by now). That would allow you to type up stuff on a feed of NTSC video that you're passing through the device.
posted by crapmatic at 8:21 AM on February 7

I remember this software too! Unfortunately, like rokusan, I don't remember a damn thing about it other than its existence. Two votes for the not-crazy. :) It was a long time ago, I'm pretty sure. I've tried Google searches with 'MST3K "Windows 98"' (because I don't think it was quite XP-era), 'mst3k windows download', etc., but haven't had any luck finding what you're looking for... most of the links that crop up are for RiffTrax or for downloads of old MST3K episodes.
posted by Kosh at 8:23 AM on February 7

MP4 video files support time-stamped captioning, subtitles, etc; there are provisions made for text as a media type throughout the standard. There absolutely should be products that allow you to do this, like damn dirty ape I immediately thought of rifftrax, but reading over the page he links to it appears they only do voice-overs. Maybe something like Jubler?
posted by doteatop at 9:28 AM on February 7

You're probably thinking of the Mac app:
Peanut Gallery- "The Online Interactive Multi-User Movie Theater Simulation"

Being in a research lab of MST3K fans, we tried it a few years back on a mixed 100BASET 802.11b network and it worked pretty well- so on 'recent' hardware it will probably be pretty usable. Just wish it had Servo and Crow silhouettes...
posted by oldefortran at 10:39 AM on February 7 [1 favorite has favorites]

Nikoniko Douga let's you do something like that. You can add text on top of videos that are playing and then save them. The sites all in Japanese and you need an account (500 yen a month) to watch the videos. It's from the founder of 2Ch.

Here's the English Wiki article about it.
posted by sleepytako at 5:52 PM on February 7

It was Peanut Gallery!!! Amazing.
posted by LongDrive at 10:56 PM on February 7

Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to work either :)
posted by LongDrive at 3:56 AM on February 8