Text Won't Play
 

When I use the Play function, all I get is the title of the song when I download a cd+g file from the hard drive and not even that when I pull it off a cd+g from my Plextor cd-rw, but nothing after that. I can hear the music, but the words don't appear on the screen. I thought this application was supposed to turn my computer into a karaoke machine? What's going on?

P.S. I have been able to burn karaoke discs using the recommended drive and media, which I bought from MTU.com, though the copies are vastly INFERIOR to the originals (lots of color noise, broken text, took FOREVER to write). Not sure what I'm doing wrong -- maybe write speeds; I don't know.

What version of DirectX are you running?

Microstudio 2517 requires DirectX 9.0 to run.

To chech it, click START, RUN, type in DXDIAG, and clickOK. Near the bottom of the first page it tells you which version you have.

If you need to upgrade, it's available at no charge from Microsoft's website.

If that doesn't solve your problem, we're going to need as much info about your system components as you can give us.

Take care,
George

Please read...
 

Click here to read an important FAQ so we can help you faster.

Attrike,
If you are getting worse copies than the original when you copy the disc in the Plextor drive, then this is due to the media that you are burning to. What brand of Media are you burning to? Are your discs that you are copying, originals or copies?

If you copy discs that have already been copied, it will take longer than if it is the actual original disc.

You can check the Speed that you burner is set to by doing the following.

1) Open Microstudio.
2) Left click the Drives Menu (top of the screen beside Help)
3) Left click Speed Selection
4) Make sure that Auto is checked for both the Reading and Writing speed.
5) Click Ok.

Now try to burn a disc again and it should then be faster at copying a disc.

As to your Problem with the Graphics in Playback, what type of Video card do you have in your computer? Have you run all of the Windows updates? If not then you will need to do this.

You can run the Windows Update, by connecting to the Internet, Left click your Start Menu, Left click Windows Update.

When the Page comes up, Left click Scan for Updates. Then select all of the updates and allow them to install. You may have to do this multiple times to get all of the updates for your system.

Once you have done this let me know it has been fixed.

DXDIAG tells me I am running DirectX 9.0b. I am running on a Dell Dimension 8250 with a 128 DDR ATI Radeon 9700 TX video card, lots of memory and hard disk space, 7200 rpm drives, and I am using the Plextor drive and MTU Silver CDR Media I purchased directly from MTU. I can't think of any hardware problems that would cause this problem, and my Windows software is set to update automatically, so I think I've got the latest and greatest. Very baffling........

I am burning to the recommended MTU Silver CDR disks that I purchased directly from MTU along with my Plextor drive and Microstudio 2.517. I am copying from both originals and copies which doesn't seem to matter when I try to use the play feature. It only matters on the read times. On some of the copied disk I try to copy, the read speed will slow way down on the last couple of tracks; sometimes it will stop entirely forcing me to go from a disk duplicate operation to writing individual tracks and aborting the ones that won't copy. Write speed is high at all times.
I am using the auto read and write speeds, although I tried slowing down the read speed, but copies would still hang up.
My video card is a 128 DDR ATI Radeon 9700 TX and I have all the Windows updates. The play function just won't work with originals or copies taken from either the CD+G directly or from the hard drive. Any other ideas you might have are appreciated.

Try downloading these latest drivers from ATI. Here is the link to their website. The drivers are located at the bottom left, under Latest Catalyst drivers: http://www.ati.com/.

The only other thing that I can think of is go to Dells website and get the latest drivers for your motherboard. They may be called the Chipset drivers.

I had to go to Dell site to download the latest drivers for my ati card. They are not the same on a dell as they would be if you bought an ati card and installed it yourself.:)

Why from Dell
 

Imcmains,

Have you tried installing the latest driver on the ATI website like MTUSUPPORT suggested?
The latest catalyst version is 4.4 dated April 7/04 versus the latest driver on the Dell site which is A01 dated 2003!!

Would you happen to have a Sound Blaster card? Could it be an acceleration problem?

Another thing, with your tag number you might want to check for latest Bios update on the Dell site?

Good Luck

Thank you for the suggestions. I downloaded the latest video drivers from ATI and Dell, as well as updating the bios. They didn't help, except that the Dell drivers gave me a better picture (The ATI drivers showed a 60 Hz shimmering refresh on the screen even when set to 85Hz!).

HOWEVER -- I tried the Microstudio DEMO program and it worked PERFECTLY, displaying text and colors in perfect synchopation to the music. Why would the demo work but not the full version???? Therein lies the solution to the mystery.

False alarm. Now I can't get either the demo or full program to work. I find it interesting that it worked once. Don't know what I did; don't know how to repeat it. I'll keep experimenting around.

Attrike,

Just for kicks, go in to Direct X again, click on the DISPLAY tab, and disable DIRECT DRAW ACCELERATION.

George

Thanks George for the suggestion. Unfortunately, it didn't work. To isolate the problem, I took my plexor drive and attached it to my laptop loaded with the same Microstudio software. All the Microstudio functions, including play, worked perfectly, so my problem is in my desktop system somewhere. Maybe I should just attach external speakers to the laptop and call it a day. I've updated all the drivers, bios, etc., on my desktop computer with no effect. I've tried changing resolution, refresh rate, and color bits on my video options without effect. Feels like there is some basic conflict between my chipset or other hardware and Microstudio.

ATTRIKE,

Do you by any chance have Roxio Easy CD Creator 5 installed?

There's a program in there called Take Two that has been so troublesome that Adaptec has removed it from Version 6.

If you have it, try uninstalling it and see if that's the culprit. If it is, a version 6 upgrade which does not include Take Two is available at no cost to Version 5 owners from the Adaptec website.

We're all obviously on a fishing trip here, but somebody just might hit on it.

Take care,
George

Attrike,
On your Desktop computer do you see the Black Play window pop up when you click the Play button or does nothing happen?

Do you have Dual display setup on this computer, without another monitor attached?

To check this Right click on the desktop, where there is no Icon, left click Properties. When the Display Properties dialog opens, click Settings. Under the Settings Tab, click on monitor 2, if it has a check next to "Extend My Windows Desktop to this monitor" and there is no other monitor plugged in at the time, uncheck this. Microstudio will put the play window on the Second Monitor if you have this checked, and if there is no second Monitor then it will not show the screen at all.

Well, I've updated Roxio Easy CD Creator and checked that my display does not include a second monitor. I've updated my bios and video card drivers. I've tried every combination of video card settings and directx9 settings without success. Thank you all for your help, but Microstudio Play just won't work on this computer. What is particularly irksome is that every once in a while, the play function will work on a song, but it is not repeatable! I hate to say it but as enjoyable as it is to try and figure this one out, I'm out of ideas.

Just for Kicks, What brand and model of cd player do you have on your computer.

also go to the start button, open run, type dxdiag. save the file, and attach the file to your next post. I CAN TELL A LOT ABOUT WHAT IS HAPPENING FROM THIS FILE.

Play imported cdg's
 

Does Microstudio play the cdg files that are imported, or even better, the cdg files that you can create from KHPRO? If yes, then it is probably the cd rom itself.

gduns,
I have two internal players:
SAMSUNG DVD-ROM SD-616T F308
HL-DT-ST CD-RW GCE-8481B

And my Karaoke burner:
PLEXTOR CD-R PREMIUM 1.04 (via USB 2.0 Port)

I've attached my dxdiag.txt file.

Thanks for your help.

Re: Play imported cdg's
 

jahern,
I've only tried playing *.cdg files from my hard disk that I have imported from a CD-G via the import tracks function, and from tracks directly on the CD-G. I guess I bought the cheap version of Microstudio, since KHPRO is not installed on my computer (nor Kpro, keyrite, or vogone).