It is so much fun when all the friends go to nearest movie theater or multiplex and enjoy the movie over generously buttered popcorn. But this is not always possible and sometimes you are stuck in your room trying to watch a video or movie on your small computer screen. Even then you can enjoy watching the videos together with your friends by synchronizing the video playback through a small tool called Syncplay. And if you cannot find popcorn, you can always try Doritos.
Syncplay synchronizes the video playback of a group of people over the Internet. Any number of people can watch a movie, even if you are not in the same place and are located thousands of miles across the world. When anyone in the group pauses the movie, it is paused automatically for all the people. When someone skips the movie scene, it is changed for all friends and so on. You can combine this with VoIP software like Skype and you can also talk directly about the movie. Overall effect is as if you all are watching the video sitting in the same room, reacting to movie scenes, chatting and laughing with each other.
Here is how you can use Syncplay:
- All of the people in the group must download and install Syncplay on their computers. You should also have a supported media player like VLC Player or Media Player Classic (MPC-HC) installed. Portable versions of Syncplay or media players can also be used.
- Anyone in the group should launch Syncplay and configure the settings, server address (select one from the list), room username, room password and room name. Also select the full path of the supported media player. After this click on Store configuration and run Syncplay.
- All other participants should repeat Step 2 using the exactly the same configurations.
- This will open the media player window from where you can open a video file (press Ctrl+O and select a media file). The video file must be present on the computer of all the participants. The playback of this video file should be synced across all the participants in the group.
To make things a little more interesting, you can use Skype or some other VoIP client to talk to each other while watching the movie, you can use Chromecast to watch the movie on your TV screen, and of course, you can open a big bag of Cheetos or Doritos too.
You can download Syncplay from https://syncplay.pl/.