Sufferfest Mk2

Tonymufc

Just a quick one seen as the other thread has been locked. Do you need a specific turbo trainer for these. I.E. like the tacx set up? Cheers, Tony.

mamba80

No, just a PC/laptop and run the mp4 file whilst you sweat away, they just give you a series of excersions from 1 to 10 to work at and listen/watch to some high tempo music/pro cyclists in dif races. Consider it a poor mans VR trainer.
I like em!

Tonymufc

Good stuff cheers mate.

bigpikle

even run them on your iPod...

dabber

I burn them to a DVD-R and play on a blu-ray player.

andyrr

Quick Q on these - what are people playing them on (PC-based) ?
I've used Windows Media with additional codexs and also used VLC - the WM used to work ok but now I'm finding that they sometimes start ok but the video then doesn't progress, with VLC I hae more luck but I see it starts ok but if I want to skip forwards sometimes the sound does but the video does not and sometimes it works ok.
This on a netbook with Vista.

Lookyhere

perfect with win7- 3gb mem (using WM10) and xp pro with 1.5gb mem + VLC
as it used to work ok, maybe your out of memory (loaded some new programs recently?) or got some Malware, eating up your processor.

Tom Butcher

I use the VLC programme they suggest. For the OP - you'll need some decent volume on your PC (ordinary laptop speakers often not enough) or listen through headphones if you put the laptop close enough to the bike. You can just use your own music of course.

The other thing I think would be helpful would be if you have some measure of how hard you are working - rear wheel speed or power - so when it says put in an effort of 6 or 8 or whatever you know what that is.

Dave_P1

I've been using QuickTime to plays the vids without any problems.

andyrr

Netbook last night with as little running along with VLC (closed Skype application and removed some other games programs etc) seemed to be ok and then a full anti-virus scan removed some malware so hopefully it's just a slight lack of memory and is resolved now.

Chris`I

andyrr wrote:

This on a netbook with Vista.

Possibly the worst combo going TBH, Vista sucks on Netbooks. If you can afford it I would upgrade it to Windows 7 as that runs far far faster and will play the MP4 video more efficiently. If you cant afford that then try exiting all programs you dont need and make sure antivirus or defrag arent scheduled for when you are using it for Sufferfest and make sure you use VLC rather than WMP as that uses less resources. Also look into seeing if you can upgrade the RAM. Not sure how much it has but probably not a lot, so any more it can take is nearly always better.

I use my PS3 and big TV, works wonderfully as PS3 natively plays them so I have them arranged in a Sufferfest album ready to go when I am 8)