If you are a USA Cycling member, you can get the Rides:Southern California DVD for free through June 30 (you still have to pay shipping).
Just go to the Member Benefits section of the usacycling website once you are logged in for instructions on how to get yours.
I’ve just added a new workout that corresponds to the Rides – Southern California DVD available from Endurance Films.
http://www.trainerroad.com/cycling/workouts/rides-southern-california
Once you have the DVD, there are a few ways to use it with TrainerRoad.
Option 1 – Play the DVD on a TV or second monitor
The first is great if you have a TV and DVD player in the same room as your bike and your computer.
Just play the DVD on the TV and start the workout on your computer. The copyright warning screen should show as you begin the workout. You can also use the beginning of the first interval (RPE 5) at 0:52 in to sync the video to the workout.
Option 2 – Play DVD on the computer
The second option is the same as the first except you’ll use the DVD player on your computer to play the movie. This works best with the player in the horizontal mode. I’m using Windows Media Player in the screenshot. You’ll still need to sync the workout to the video. Unfortunately Adobe AIR (the platform TrainerRoad is built on) doesn’t have a built in DVD player, though.
Option 3 – Copy movie to hard drive and play it in TrainerRoad
The third is to convert the movie on the DVD to an mp4 (h264 format) file on your hard drive. Using a program like handbrake, you can copy the movie from the DVD to the hard drive in h264 format. When browsing for the source, it isn’t immediately obvious which one is the main movie but by looking at the file size and clip length you should be able to find the largest one, which is the actual workout. There’s also a preview feature in handbrake if you are unsure. I use all the default settings but you may wish to tweak them for higher video quality or smaller file size.
Once the file has been saved to your hard drive, open the TrainerRoad workout and browse to the movie. This method is nice because it should eliminate the hassle of syncing the the workout to the video each time.
Let me know in the comments how you like it and what other Endurance Films titles you’d like added.
-Reid
