I see a lot of posts here about how limited KHP is in its output. Seeing a set limit tends to provoke imagination.:w The results of this imagination follow.

* Use the Pause Sweep feature liberally. It's good for more than pausing the display during instrumental breaks - it can ensure that a sweep covers a word only for as long as you want it to. For instance:

Once... *pause* There was this kid who...

Press CTRL (pause sweep) after the first "Once..." when you know the singer's supposed to stop saying that word. Do this again for "who..." A singer will feel goofy if it looks like they have to sing a one syllable word for several measures. :g

* You can write duets in KHP, even though the sweep can't change color. The subset of Arial Narrow that KHP uses doesn't allow for special characters that are normally available in the typeface, but simple things like "[M]:" and "[F]:" are possible:

(Spoken)
[M]:Baby, I've been sleeping
with your sister.
[F]:Oh? Which one?
--- page break ---
[M]:All of 'em.
[F]:Oh, well I've been sleeping
with your best friend Jake!
[M]:Yeah? Well... me too!

* Add blank lines when useful. If a verse only takes up three lines of the screen, use the lower three lines. You'll find you need to press Place Word a few extra times but the result looks much better. If a verse takes up more lines than four, spill off the lines into the next screen leaving the top lines untouched:

You won't get no dessert
'till you clean off your plate
So eat it!
Don't you tell me you're full!
---- page break -----
---- blank ----------
Just
Eat it! Eat it!
Get yourself an egg and beat it!

These are just a few of the ideas you can apply to shine up your KHP projects.:c Oh yeah, all the sample lyrics here came from Al Yankovic tunes, and they're his property.:t

Using the lower lines of the four provided, I've found that during fast songs, the screen repaints faster.

Also, using as many lines as you need...don't try to cram too much info into four lines!! One, two or three words are very easy to follow and again, the screen repaints quickly. Any more than that, the singers get lost.

Cid_cat

Some additional suggestions
 

I agree with GordonF that "a set limit tends to provoke imagination".
I have come up with some ways to make the KHP songs look better.

1- I always make the title screen NAME OF THE SONG IN CAPITAL LETTER and the original interpreter and/or writer in lower case on the next line. I center both lines using some characters that seem to work in my system and display on the screen, these are the "." (of course), • (alt249), ¤(alt15) and a few others.

2- Since I do not like to have to sweep thru the title and author, I found a trick that works well. First import both the lyrics and the .wav file. Then hit the "Place Lyric" button. Next comes the tricky part: Depress the "start" button BUT DO NOT LET GO OF THE MOUSE BUTTON. With the mouse button still depressed move the arrow out of the "start" button. Now the song will not start but you can hit the space key to sweep through the name of the song and the author. Now you are ready to start the synchronization as always. What you will get is that those words that were swept when the "start" button was depressed but not activated, will show on the screen WHITE and will never change or sweep.

3- As I described in a previous message, if you us "*" followed by a space, you can sweep individual syllables in a word. For example in* di* vid* ual, will show without any breaks but will sweep one syllable at a time.

Hope this helps

BANDL

Re: Some additional suggestions
 

> 2- Since I do not like to have to sweep thru the title and author, I found a trick that works well. First import both the lyrics and the .wav file. Then hit the "Place Lyric" button. Next comes the tricky part: Depress the "start" button BUT DO NOT LET GO OF THE MOUSE BUTTON.

I found a less awkward way to do a full screen of unswept text on the start. It doesn't involve doing yoga on your desktop to achieve it either. :)

Do three (only three) lines and a blank line followed by the start of your lyrics:

-----start-----
"Eat It"
M. Jackson, A. Yankovic
Private CD+G by GordonF
-----blank-----
-----page break-----
- - - >> How come you're always
such a fussy young man?
Don't want no Cap'n Crunch
Don't want no Raisin Bran
-----page break, etc etc-------

Before pressing the Start button, click the Place Word button with the mouse enough times to cover these first three lines, then click Pause Sweep once. Note that neither the spacebar nor CTRL key work until after you press Start. Then, when you're ready to play, press Start and press spacebar when it's time to erase these first lines and start placing your lyrics.

The end effect is three lines of unswept text at the very beginning of the CDG. If the singing starts real soon, you might want to add some empty audio at the start of your wave file to give time to draw that first screen. Also speaking of your wave files, a good sound editor is a must, even something like Creative's Wave Studio from the AWE64 kit will do.

Also note the prompt at the beginning of the lyrics - that's another trick I use at the start of songs and after instrumental breaks, to prompt the singer when to start singing. I use Pause Sweep liberally when placing the dashes for an "instant change" effect, except I let the sweep drag through the ">>" characters a little bit. I notice that SGB uses this trick in their disks, which makes me wonder what kind of cheap software they're using.:w

MTU: Don't you be fixing these 'bugs' because they're actually features. :g

[font color=red]MTU Hears you. If we do away with these for any reason, we will try to insert the functional equal in an "approved" manner.[/font] :w

Probably deeper than I would have gone but good information. I might like to see some of the work created by MTU users...wonder if there could be some kind of exchange forum????

Since I'm only using KHP to make CDG's of local artists, there are no copywrite rules involoved.

Thanks for the information guys!
Cid

Thanks and ...good idea Cid_cat
 

Well...
Sometimes you can't see the forest because of the trees. I had never depressed the "place word" button before the "start". So now I'll have to change!

Cid_cat
I have produced over 100 CDGs since I got KHP, they are >90% spanish songs that cannot be found in commercial CDGs. I have also produced CDGs from Karaoke tapes that I had bought to use in my first Karaoke tape player (ancient time, before CDGs!!!). These tapes work great because the sound is very good and the lead singers are only on the right channel, so I can remove that channel and replace it with a copy of the left one. I end up with a mono recording but that's OK. I use the recording with the lead singer to place the lyrics (It's really easy that way!). Then remove the track and add .2 to .3 seconds for a sweep delay. It works very well.

I am willing to swap songs...How do wew do it? For starters we can swap the list of songs that we have produced by e-mail. Then we could send the zipped CDG files the same way. Would it work? I'll be willing to try it. Is it legal? I don't know. This would be for testing and evaluation purposes only, so It could be OK


Thanks

BANDL

I might be a little embarassed to say this but I've only done a handfull of songs with KHP. My free time is limited as I host 5 shows a week right now. Like I said, for my songs, there are no copywrite concerns because the artists have donated their songs and bio information to me, knowing that I was making a CDG.

Either email or snail mail would be an acceptable means of trading. I'd like to see what kind of other responses are received.

Thanks again and we'll keep in touch!
Cid

Exchanging CDGs
 

The problem with this is the sheer size of a 44k sample and the CDG graphics information attached to it. I heard of a variant of the MP3 format that includes CDG information but have yet to see files in this format or a converter for it.

Even if MTU would develop their own MP3+G format for the archiving and exchange of CDG data it would be cool, but then I'm sure we'd have the RIAA and the likes of Sound Choice on their case with further accusations of promoting piracy.:r

Hummmm... how right you are!

However, once we finish our Microsafe security coding and link it to the website, we will have a mechanism to tightly protect producers work. Then, we will do MP3CDG.

In fact, the KeyRite program can nicely be modified to take a CDG file and convert it to a MP3CDG format (and secure the resulting file to satisfy the commercial companies).

Question is whether to use MP3 which we have to pay royalties on every encoder/decoder we provide, or Microsoft's WMA which appears to be free... AND... gives an apparent double the compression of MP3 at the same quality! Thus, 22:1 compression WMA would sound equal to 11:1 with MP3. Very tempting! :w

A 3-minute CDG file requires about 32MB of storage. At 10:1 compression, it drops to 3.2MB and at 22:1 it is 1.45MB. Now that Internet download territory!

Our goal is to provide the tools for producers to make their work available on a song-by-song basis. Who knows, maybe we can even get rid of the discs too!

Karaoke CD+G without CDs... neat.
 

If you're looking for a REALLY free encoder, look at Ogg/Vorbis which rivals MP3. http://www.xiph.org/ogg/vorbis/index.html That, and some lossless compression for the graphics portion and you could come close to the MP3+G format I've seen floating around without infringing anyone's patents.

As for protection, I've heard of some very interesting protection schemes. I can see the need to allow someone to archive their CD+G collection but then restrict unlicensed distribution. I don't know what your protection mechanism is like but I believe you should try to avoid 'security by obscurity' or you will be cracked just like SDMI. There are many free protection mechanisms available that have been thoroughly tested and proven, like what PGP uses. My e-mail address is in the forum database if you want to hear other stuff.


[Edited by GordonF on 01-27-2001 at 10:12 PM]