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My Just the Jokes commentary is too fast, or the jokes don't make sense to what's happening on screen.

Here are the most common things that can go wrong while watching a movie with our audio commentaries, and ways to fix them.

1. The commentary is running faster than the movie

If you live in North America (and even in some other countries like Japan) chances are your DVDs are NTSC - also known as Region 1. NTSC is a broadcast standard and basically involves the frame rate of your DVD; in other words, how fast the moving pictures are actually "moving" from one frame to the next. If your MP3 commentary seems to keep getting ahead of the movie, and you have to constantly pause and resync, then chances are you're using the PAL version. (Which is not what you want, in this scenario.)

Solution: Just make sure you're using the NTSC format of our commentary MP3. You can re-download your files as often as you want, so head back to your Library and get the correct version. More information about DVD region codes can be found at this Wikipedia article

NOTE: If you are watching along with a Blu-Ray, you'll also want to use the NTSC version of our commentary, as Blu-rays tend to move at the same rate as the original source movie. 

2. The jokes don't make sense to what's happening in some parts of the movie.


Some filmmakers just make too much movie for their initial theatrical release, and so later they release a "Director's Cut" or "Extended Special Edition" to help make more money bring their true artistic vision to the masses with newly added scenes, or some scenes removed. (We're looking at you, George Lucas.) If the version you're watching syncs up with the riff at first, but the jokes suddenly stop making sense in some parts, it could be that you're watching a different version of the movie.

Solution: Check that riff's product page for notes regarding whether we've used a Theatrical or other edition of the movie, and make sure you're watching that version. We include a link on each product page to the correct version of the riffed movie on Amazon for your convenience.

3. Watching a stream (Netflix, Vudu, etc.) or an iTunes download of the movie and losing sync

Because of the multitude of streaming services out there, it can be difficult to ensure sync with all of them. For instance, Netflix Instant's streaming version of The Hunger Games moves just a hair too fast compared to the DVD; this causes our MP3 commentary to go out of sync.

Solution: Unfortunately there's no easy way around this, and you'll probably need to track down the DVD instead.

4. The movie came from a questionable movie source, and it won't sync.

If you "found" your movie somewhere shady while sailing the high seas, there's a possibility that whoever encoded it did so at a different frame rate than is standard for movies, or possibly even created their own "director's cut" with extra scenes added in, like Dr. Frankenstein piecing together his monster. If that's the case, you might consider finding yourself an official copy to use instead.

Because RiffTrax commentaries are written and recorded to the most widely available version of a movie at the time of the riff's release, we can only guarantee sync with that particular edition. Sometimes we will try to create new versions or edits of the riff if our original source is no longer easy to acquire through outlets like Amazon, Blockbuster Video, or Quikster.

Solution: We highly recommend getting the same DVD we used to write our riff, and trying again! (And consider making a donation to restore balance to the Force.)

Did none of these help?


Submit a help ticket if none of these apply or you continue to run into sync issues, as that might also mean a new version of the DVD has been released, and we might have missed it.

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