Quarantine time, forced isolation time. If like me you got stuck in a studio by yourself, and you want to see a movie with your girlfriend more than 700km away, then the solution is Syncplay. This app allows you to play a video in sync between multiple computers, connected remotely via a central server.
Syncplay allows you to synchronize the viewing of a video
Syncplay is a free and open-source software that allows you to synchronize multiple media players remotely, so you can watch a movie or TV series together. It is available for Linux, Windows, MacOS, and BSD. Supports VLC, mpv, MPC-BE, and MPC-HC. Since the video itself is not streamed, all participants in the instance must obviously have the same video downloaded locally (and the related subtitle file). In this guide I show you how to do it using the official servers, however, it is possible to create your own, perhaps using a Raspberry, following these instructions.
It works just as expected:
- The position and the playback status of the video are synchronized, therefore also the pauses, for example;
- There is a chat system;
- the video automatically pauses if a user's connection drops. To activate this function, just put the appropriate tick in the Play / Pause menu;
- There are options to compensate for any lag, for example, the rapid advance in case of delay, present in the synchrony card;
- You can also synchronize the display of a video from the network. However, the domain must be included among those admitted, from the synchrony tab, in the section dedicated to trusted domains.
Syncplay is distributed in AppImage format or on the Snap Store. For those who prefer the first format, simply download the file from this link and give it permissions through the appropriate menu accessible from the file properties, in the permissions tab. Then a double click will be enough to start it.
Once launched, just enter as the server address one of your choice between syncplay.pl:8995-8999, the name of the shared room, any username and make the connection. The interface, as shown in the screenshots, is really simple and intuitive.
PS: I take this opportunity to wish you all a happy Easter. Let's all hold on at home for a little while, everything will be fine!
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