Freebox Jukebox

E-Touch General Category => E-Touch User Guides and FAQ => Topic started by: coffee on May 20, 2007, 03:27:22 PM

Title: Manual for Karaoke?
Post by: coffee on May 20, 2007, 03:27:22 PM
Hi Everyone

Can somebody maybe help with a proper manual for using the Karaoke funtion.
I have questions like how to set everything up, how to rip karaoke from my karaoke DVD's, do I need any special drivers, want format must I use, is there any plugins or something I can use to help with the volume, what is mp3+G, how do I select certain sound tracks( those witout the lyrics or words ) and rip it and can I still tag it using betatag.

I haven't used karaoke so far because I have never worked with it before, so it's all new to me. I would really like to get it going for my Jukebox and start playing with it.

Thanks
Coffee
Title: Re: Manual for Karaoke?
Post by: netcat on May 20, 2007, 04:58:13 PM
I can put somthing together if you give me a couple of weeks
Title: Re: Manual for Karaoke?
Post by: coffee on May 20, 2007, 05:31:04 PM
I will appreciate that. No worries, I'm not in a hurry.
Title: Re: Manual for Karaoke?
Post by: Barcrest on May 20, 2007, 06:58:57 PM
For true karaoke you need to use MP3+G, do a search on the web and there a lot of tutorials and info on that format. For it to work you need to install the included karaoke driver.
Title: Re: Manual for Karaoke?
Post by: coffee on May 20, 2007, 07:57:20 PM
Thanks for the info Barry, I'll start playing with it some time.
Title: Re: Manual for Karaoke?
Post by: netcat on May 20, 2007, 08:25:02 PM
You can use audiograbber to extract mp3+g from most karaoke cds

in my experience however videos usually end up with some interference, but results may vary depending on drive you use

Title: Re: Manual for Karaoke?
Post by: coffee on May 20, 2007, 08:33:33 PM
Netcat, thanks man that is a great help. I have something to start with. It was my biggest concern.
Title: Re: Manual for Karaoke?
Post by: Barcrest on May 21, 2007, 02:41:14 PM
Make sure you don't rip at too fast a speed and the graphics should come out better.
Title: Re: Manual for Karaoke?
Post by: netcat on May 21, 2007, 10:25:36 PM
I spent several weeks trying to sort out the distorted videos problem with AUdiograbber, as you progress into the higher tracks the problem appears to get worse, I also tried at low speeds and with a multitude of IDE & SCSI drives.

Although I have seen many may posts recomending lowering your reading speed, in my experience it didnt make any difference.

I am not attemting to discourage you, I just dont want you to think you are doing anything wrong.

There are drives out there designed to read and write Karaoke tracks, unfortunatelly I have never had one in my hands.
Title: Re: Manual for Karaoke?
Post by: eist1 on May 21, 2007, 11:28:28 PM
Coffee,

I use Power CD+G, it works pretty good for me, haven't had many issues.
Title: Re: Manual for Karaoke?
Post by: Barcrest on May 21, 2007, 11:41:04 PM
http://www.karaokeware.com/CDGRip.html

That one appears to be free you might want to give that a shot as well. I need to rip some discs my self that i have lying around so i will be testing out some of the ripping software soon myself.

This is how i used to do it... I know this method works.

http://home.earthlink.net/~ladyhaven/main2.html
Title: Re: Manual for Karaoke?
Post by: coffee on May 22, 2007, 04:09:38 PM
Thanks Barry, Eist1 and Netcat. I will take a look at all off them and see what works for me. Your help is greatly appreciated.

Coffee
Title: Re: Manual for Karaoke?
Post by: coffee on May 24, 2007, 09:51:21 PM
I'm pleased to say that I got my Karaoke working and it is awesome. I can't believe I didn't do it earlier.
Thanks again for all your advice. I will try and put some stuff together from Kizer's manual together with Netcat's hints and tips. We'll sort something out together for the manual.
Title: Re: Manual for Karaoke?
Post by: Barcrest on May 24, 2007, 10:16:17 PM
Excellent dude. Hook up 2 mikes and your away... I used the metal hose covering you find on showers to connect the shower head to the main unit. It's threded both ends and protects the mic cable. Good for a commercial usage. I also hardwired them to be on as well and then used a karaoke amp to control them rather than the next to usless pc mic input...
Title: Re: Manual for Karaoke?
Post by: netcat on May 24, 2007, 10:24:45 PM
Also if interested a while back I paid for barcrest to add a function to turn on MIC line (on PC) when playing a video) this was bcause most of my karaokes wher in MPG format at the time.

one of thes days I plan to re-bribr him into modifying it so MIC turns on only when anything under the Karaoke category is selected.

Also if it doesnt work for you when selecting the MIC ON option on the config screen of frebox, Barcrest has modified the app so it runs a third party utility for me instead, in this case a proggy that turns on and off my Microphones
Title: Re: Manual for Karaoke?
Post by: coffee on May 24, 2007, 10:48:15 PM
Yes that is the next thing I have to sort out so you can expect a few more posts from me on this issue.
I'm just glad it is working now and I am very impressed. You have to remember that I have not previously worked with Karaoke at all so it is all new to me.

Big smile    ;D
Title: Re: Manual for Karaoke?
Post by: Barcrest on May 24, 2007, 11:00:30 PM
Karaoke is somewhere i have quite a lot of use of having run hosted them in bars for years. Give me a shout should you need any help.
Title: Re: Manual for Karaoke?
Post by: coffee on May 25, 2007, 04:39:03 PM
Hi Barry

I got to the stage Netcat's refering to. "The Mic Inputs" I saw what he was talking about and I will second the motion to let Freebox turn on the mic when a karaoke song is selected. I don't understand what this "proggy" is that Netcat is talking about. Can you PLEASE put this in your "to do list" PLEASE.
I will gladly donate for this feature because I feel it is very important.

Coffee
Title: Re: Manual for Karaoke?
Post by: netcat on May 25, 2007, 06:14:23 PM
Let me explain.

The VB library Barcrest used to turn on and off the Microphone, apparently doesnt identify the MICROPHONE line on all machines the same, therefore although when he was testing it the MIC mute option would properly turn on and off on his machine it would not on mine.

To circumvent this problem I had another friend of mine create a stand alone utility that when run identifies & enumerates all the audio input output devices on your particular computer.

once the application has properly identified & enumarated your devices you can use this same utility to put any one of these lines in a state of MUTE/ON or MUTE/OFF

therefore Barry (very kindly) modified freebox so when attempting to turn ON/OFF the microphone it also has the ability of running one of two batch files.

these batch files run my application and instruct the properly enumarated device to turn ON or OFF (Depending on which batch you are running)

Another idea I had is that as Barry has mentioned in the past MIC line on PCs is pretty bad quality, I could use the MIC jack to activate (or deactivate) a relay this relay in turn could power on or simply allow passage of a Micriophone system that plugs directly into your amplifier

NOTE: This relay idea is higly theorical at this point dopnt really know if it would work or not, much testing needs to be done with this, it all depends on a change in the electrical state of the microphone jack when MUTE is ON or OFF (which I am currently unsure of)


Title: Re: Manual for Karaoke?
Post by: coffee on May 25, 2007, 07:11:22 PM
Hi Netcat

Thanks for your explanation. I have a better picture now of what the problem is all about.
I have one question though. Wouldn't it be easier or better to use "line in" instead of "mic in" somehow?
Or are you refering to the line in? Isn't it easier to switch it on and off with software and maybe more of a standard nature?
I'm also confuised 'cause that options menu refers to both "line in" and "mic" under play options. I have tried it any way I can think of with no success.

Coffee
Title: Re: Manual for Karaoke?
Post by: netcat on May 25, 2007, 10:04:05 PM
Yes line in is a good option.

there are several reasons I personally dont use it.

My motherboard doesnt have LINE IN

Barcrest has also incorporated a feature to turn on line in when nothing else is playing, this is convenient if you want your jukebox connected to a radio or other audio source that will play when nobody has selected anything on the jukebox, line in is a perfect candidate for this function because it is stereo.

MIC line is usually MONO and since we have no need for STEREO singnals when we are using a Microphone it should be adecuate for this purpose while leaving LINE IN (if you have it) available for the other function I described
Title: Re: Manual for Karaoke?
Post by: Barcrest on May 29, 2007, 11:30:11 PM
Personally i use a seperate karaoke amp with mic inputs and feed the soundcard into that. The karaoke amp mixes the mics with the music and also adds echo. This is great but i assume you would want a way to turn the mics off which using this method there is no way of doing.
Title: Re: Manual for Karaoke?
Post by: jeffrae on July 09, 2007, 01:01:02 PM
You could use the output from the midi port to drive a relay and you should be able to see this on all soundcard/midi ports. Or the another option is to use the control pins from the printer port you could then read a value back to see if the relay is actual off

This could also happen by using the serial port control line rts dts

I have used this in the past to drive video switches etc

Regards Jeff rae
Title: Re: Manual for Karaoke?
Post by: coffee on July 19, 2007, 05:24:32 PM
Hi Everybody

What can I do to switch my mic on or off? I have tried the line and mic input but it didn't sound right. I suppose it could be that I didn't have a good mic.
I was also thinking about using a karaoke amp but how can I switch it on when karaoke is playing and off when it's not? With a karaoke amp I would also have to use a third speaker for the voice thru the karaoke amp. That is extra costs that I don't want to make.
Can anyone help me or give me some advise regarding this? I would like the mic to switch on and off with the karaoke and if possible use my existing amp that doesn't have any extra inputs.
The ideal way would be if I can only add a mic to my system but the question is if it is possible?   ???

Coffee
Title: Re: Manual for Karaoke?
Post by: Barcrest on July 19, 2007, 10:49:08 PM
If you are planning on using a pc mic for the karaoke then don't expect good quality.
Title: Re: Rip DVD's
Post by: sorefinger on August 13, 2010, 11:56:34 PM
If you want to rip Karaoke DVD's you can use CloneDVD Mobile or DVD Decrypter & FormatFactory.
for VDC's i used RiverPast Video Cleaner it had an option to use the left or right channel when encoding the
audio so you can mute the vocal channel that a lot of VCD's have.