Writers' Workshop General Chat Thread

[Beth Pavell]

Here's a question for you tech guys - what's a good media player for playing DVDs? Long story short, I have a collection of DVDs that I simply can't use at the moment and the choice of possible players is, well, bewildering

VLC has never failed me.

I heard it was full of malware ... need I download it from somewhere in particular?

 

[Flaze]

VLC, that's the one that I was talking about.

And you should scan first beforehand just in case.

 

[diamondpearl876]

Here's a question for you tech guys - what's a good media player for playing DVDs? Long story short, I have a collection of DVDs that I simply can't use at the moment and the choice of possible players is, well, bewildering

VLC has never failed me.

I heard it was full of malware ... need I download it from somewhere in particular?

videolan.org is the official site. I wouldn't use any 3rd party places.

You can scan if you want. I haven't been able to buy virus/malware protection for years and I've never had a problem with it.

 

[Misfit Angel]

I'm going to second VLC. That thing is capable of playing anything, even boardgames. As for it being full of malware, I'd imagine that applies to third party plugins only. Like diamondpearl876, I've had it for years with no issues, aside from the annoying habit it has to skip the first 0.5 seconds of MP3s.

 

[FullMoon]

I embarrasingly haven't actually owned a Smash Bros game prior to WiiU, but I remember playing Brawl a bit with my cousins. Again, I mostly just played as Lucario in my admittedly limited experience of the game. I didn't really know how to play at all then, though, so said limited experience is basically irrelevant.

So what exactly are the differences between Ness and Lucas? I've been playing as Ness a bit and I kinda like him. Is he much worse than Lucas was?

Lucas was very different from Ness in how he attacked. His recovery went further and rather than just dealing one strong hit, it hit many times as it dragged the opponent and ended with a strong hit, his PK Fire exploded instead of leaving a wall of fire upon contact and many other things.

The only real similarity between Lucas and Ness was their Final Smashes and the forward Smash attack, except Lucas attacked faster in exchange for power and it was a stick instead of a baseball bat. He was different enough from Ness to be almost a completely different character instead of a clone like Lucina or Dark Pit.

 

[Kelleo]

Ooh, Smash Bros. talk! I main Ike. And Luigi. :3 Luigi's been my main since I started playing Smash with Melee. Ike, of course, was added with Brawl. I LOVE Ike to no end and his games are my favorite games of all time, so how can I not play him? <3

Luigi was my favorite video game character growing up and he's still a favorite, so I have to keep him around. He's awesome. :3

Therefore, Ike and Luigi are my favorite video game characters of all time.

The only characters I dislike/hate are Greninja, Lucina, and Peach though. Not too fond of Charizard either, but he has Mega Zard X now, so I've lessened my hate for him over the past year. I also never really liked Marth's design, but I've hardly touched his games, so I can't say for sure whether I like him or not.

 

[Beth Pavell]

Mus be something to do with the disc drive itself, 'cause VLC still won't play the discs. *sigh* I haven't got the patience to figure this out

 

[FullMoon]

The only characters I dislike/hate are Greninja, Lucina, and Peach though. Not too fond of Charizard either, but he has Mega Zard X now, so I've lessened my hate for him over the past year. I also never really liked Marth's design, but I've hardly touched his games, so I can't say for sure whether I like him or not.

Never play against me, ever. Because I play with all three of them =P

 

[Arkadelphiak]

So I met my Literature professor a few days ago . . . coincidentally, he has the same name as a completely original villain in one of my stories. So that's fairly amazing.

 

[diamondpearl876]

Mus be something to do with the disc drive itself, 'cause VLC still won't play the discs. *sigh* I haven't got the patience to figure this out

This happened with my old computer, and they said I'd have to replace the whole motherboard or something to fix it. Sorry for the bad news.

 

[AetherX]

I had the same problem with my last laptop. I ended up just getting a USB disc drive. Nobody really uses discs anymore so I bet you could even get one fairly cheap. I'd send you mine, but the cost of shipping would be more than it was worth.

So I met my Literature professor a few days ago . . . coincidentally, he has the same name as a completely original villain in one of my stories. So that's fairly amazing.

Don't trust him.

 

[Beth Pavell]

I had the same problem with my last laptop. I ended up just getting a USB disc drive. Nobody really uses discs anymore so I bet you could even get one fairly cheap. I'd send you mine, but the cost of shipping would be more than it was worth.

I might do just that. I've got a £30 Amazon Gift Certificate that I have no idea how to spend anyway

 

[Kelleo]

Never play against me, ever. Because I play with all three of them =P

Good reason for me not to.

 

[Misfit Angel]

Mus be something to do with the disc drive itself, 'cause VLC still won't play the discs. *sigh* I haven't got the patience to figure this out

Maybe it's a certain physical quality of the discs that your drive refuses to work with? I know for me, season one of Game of Thrones takes about 20 minutes to load while pretty much my entire library of DVDs works just fine on it.

 

[chaos_Leader]

So I met my Literature professor a few days ago . . . coincidentally, he has the same name as a completely original villain in one of my stories. So that's fairly amazing.

Ha! sometimes that happens. One of the stories recently added on the archives here has a villain team named "Team Chaos", and well, just look at my user name

 

[Soulmaster]

Mus be something to do with the disc drive itself, 'cause VLC still won't play the discs. *sigh* I haven't got the patience to figure this out

Make sure they are normal DVDs and not BluRay. VLC still has trouble with BluRay stuff.

Other than that, sorry to hear this. Hopefully something works out.

 

[Beth Pavell]

Oh, I never buy Blu-Ray. It seems to be certain discs, annoyingly. Most annoyingly, my documentaries >_< Since external disc drives are so cheap I may well buy one anyway on the offchance that it works

 

[VeniaSilente]

Can only third / fourth / nth VLC. Seems to be able to pick up anything and can convert video too when needed. Startup and load times are a bit of an annoyance, but only a bit - 10 seconds matters not much when wanting to watch a hour and a half long movie.

If available, Mplayer seems to do well too, and plays wonders with heavy framerates, though its support for external subtitles and that kind of stuff is either lacking or difficult to access.

On the subject of actually writing things, a friend of mine invited me to cowrite a PMD-esque fanfiction of his, I'm really hoping this plays out well. Other than that I should get back to my own stuff, I haven't written a thing in about three months. I mostly partly blame the summer and client requirements at work, they leave me pretty tired.

 

[Vivillon]

Back to Smash, I really want Pichu for DLC. Come on, you know you want it!!! #pichuprowess
Really, though. I love Pichu. It's so much fun to juggle the opponent with him...
EDIT: What? Hashtags crate links? I had no idea...

 

[BlitzTrain]

On smash, I've been working on learning Greninja lately, I think I'm making decent progress. Before that I played Pikachu a bunch due to lack of roster on the demo, so he's my alt at the moment. Still deciding on who else I want to focus on learning, so many options!