Genre???

[fairway01]

Hi,

1. Unless I'm doing something wrong, you may need to release update #4 to version 2.213 of Hoster. I attempted to update the genre of a particular song (also the language & duet settings) by clicking the edit song button (Note: I did not use the arrow keys to change the selection). Upon the change I clicked apply, re-built the songs DB & closed/re-opened Hoster. The language & duet settings displayed the changes correctly, but the the genre did not. The genre defaulted to 'Acappella' which is the first one in the genre drop down list in the edit songs screen.

When you attempt to edit the language/genre/duet of other songs (after you have already done one) it is carrying over the settings from the previous song changes you have made. I would think that when you attempt to change another song it shouldn't fill in the above fields with your previous entry (it should go back to what the default is as if you hadn't touched those fields to begin with). The language pulldown should be blank, the genre should be unknown & the duet should be blank. To me, this is a significant flaw that needs to be addressed.

I will also re-list below some other items that I noticed and posted earlier but never received a response to:

MTUSUPPORT Added: This works correctly for me. Go to the Edit Songs dialog, select a song. It reads the Attributes for that song out of the Database. If you select a song that has a language of English, and Genre of Unknown. This is what it should show as the current selection.

2. When you are working with a list of songs in the edit songs window (using select multiple) and click the top row in the grid (such as clicking the grey song bar column in the grid) it is not sorting correctly. I'm not sure if this is by design, but generally if you click the bar once it sorts from Z to A and if you click again it the sort goes back to the default A to Z. If this is what it is supposed to do, it's not working right. I was working under "Select multiple" and then performed a search (song with the word 'love' in it) where multiple entries would appear in the grid if that makes any difference at all.

MTUSUPPORT Added: I have tested this and this is a bug. This has been fixed in Hoster 2.214, soon to release.

3. I imported a custom assembly of track 15's that had muli-session protection. I gave the disk id# a value of 'Track15sV1' and subsequent discs had V2, V3, ect. After successful import I forgot about it without testing. At a later date I tried playing one of these songs in Hoster and got the red error label. After further investigation I determined all the songs that had the disk id# (listed above) were bad. I re-imported them with a different disk id# and they all worked. Just curious, but are there any naming covention restrictions with the disk id# and what would be wrong with the label above? Nothing about this in the Hoster manual that I could find. Note: I had a disk id named 'Track15s' that worked just fine so the problem occurs when you append the V# where # represents 1, 2, 3, ect. Is there a max length set in the pgm or something else I need to be aware of?

Admin Note: Read the answer in this thread The files were moved, which then caused them to show ERROR in the Playlist when they tried to play. Click the Build Songs Database to fix this, and include the new folder/drive where the songs were moved to.

4. I just completed an import of over 200 cdgs in Hoster using the default settings (no normalization). I just found out that Hoster has been updated to 2.213 version #3 and that the default settings were not right.


"Change Settings Defaults - In the Import Tracks screen, the Change Setting button allows enabling/disabling the built-in Compressor-Limitor-Normalize operation. It turns out the default settings were not what was recommended in the Manual. These have been changed to the Manual defaults. "

Is this going to be a problem for me and am I going to need to re-import all these tracks (I hope not)? Does this new default setting improve the sound quality?

Update: In the 3rd release of Hoster 2.213 the defaults are what they were in the 1st release of 2.213 so I'm a bit confused. Can someone shed some light on this please?

MTUSUPPORT Added: These settings were found to only be incorrect on a new install of Hoster. If you had a prior version installed before 2.213, then you should have had the correct settings. If your files sound fine, then I would leave them. If they sound bad, you may want to redo them, or try different settings in the Change Settings.


5. Believe it or not I used to use my Microsoft XBOX to do karaoke. It was extremely limited, but it had a cool feature of scrolling an image of musical notes that looked like it was fading/moving from front to back of screen as the lyrics played in the forefront (the musical notes kind of scrolled like the starfield screensaver in windows). The lyrics occupied the middle part of the screen and the musical notes appeared on the outer edges of the display (top, bottom, left & right). The lyrics text and the musical notes did not touch/interfere with each other's space, so it was not a distraction to the singer; just added another dimension to the experience instead of the bland background that normally appears. Does anyone know if something like this is available when playing songs in Hoster like some kind of animated gif or background image instead of the plain colored background? It just seems to add another dimension to the karaoke experience.

MTUSUPPORT Added: This is not yet available in Hoster. Something similar to this has been requested and should be in a future version of Hoster.
Thanks,
T

[bjswaim]

I experienced the same problem last night that fairway01 did in his item #1 concerning the genre of each song changing to "acapella." It took a lot of time to edit all my songs and now have to do it again, but will wait to do so until there is a fix for this, hopefully soon.

[MTUSUPPORT]

I have posted answers to these above questions in red.

[fairway01]

Hi Admin,

I'll reprint your response for easy reference:

"Once you change this and click Apply, it is then written to that song and the songs.mdb database. To check this, close the Edit Songs Dialog. Go to the Play List, select the BookID for the changed song. Hoster will display the attibutes for the song below the selection for BookID on the Playlist. These should read the exact same as you just changed them to for this song. If they don't on your system, please let me know."

Thanks for the quick reply. What you have described as a solution in #1 above I have unfortunately already tried. When I change the attributes and apply them, goto play list and select the id associated with that song it defaults to 'Acappella' the first choice from the genre drop down list. I didn't notice this before, but it seems that the duet setting is also not working right. If I check duet for a song and apply, goto play list, find song for book id the duet field says 'no.'

[fairway01]

Hi Bryan @ MTUSupport,

I have an update to #1 above which I will relist here:

"1. Unless I'm doing something wrong, you may need to release update #4 to version 2.213 of Hoster. I attempted to update the genre of a particular song (also the language & duet settings) by clicking the edit song button (Note: I did not use the arrow keys to change the selection). Upon the change I clicked apply, re-built the songs DB & closed/re-opened Hoster. The language & duet settings displayed the changes correctly, but the the genre did not. The genre defaulted to 'Acappella' which is the first one in the genre drop down list in the edit songs screen.

When you attempt to edit the language/genre/duet of other songs (after you have already done one) it is carrying over the settings from the previous song changes you have made. I would think that when you attempt to change another song it shouldn't fill in the above fields with your previous entry (it should go back to what the default is as if you hadn't touched those fields to begin with). The language pulldown should be blank, the genre should be unknown & the duet should be blank. To me, this is a significant flaw that needs to be addressed."

I appears that any changes to the genre and/or duet will take effect as long as you don't rebuild the DB. When when you choose to rebuild the songs DB the changes will get whiped out (the genre defaults back to 'Acappella' and duet goes to 'No' if you had it as 'Yes.' I'm guessing that it shouldn't function like this?

Thanks,
T

[bjswaim]

I am also having the same thing happen to me as fairway01. Everything was ok until I ran "build song database." Then when I went back into either the playlist or edit songs, the genre for all songs was "acapella" and none of the duets were clicked any longer.

[bjswaim]

I just edited the first 5 book id's in my list with pop and duet. I applied each. Then I went into the playlist and looked at each entry and it showed the pop and duet. Then I rebuilt the song database and checked in the playlist again. Now, they say acapella and no duet. This happens each time you rebuild the song database. I assume this may be a bug. I'm surprised that no one else besides fairway01 and myself has posted concerning this.

[S. Parks]

mine have behaved the same way. I view this as a minor setback though as it does not influence how my show looks or sounds to my clientel.

[bjswaim]

Bryan......Just curious if you have tried rebuilding the database yet to see if you also loose the edits. If so, is this something you are planning on addressing and do you have a possible release date for the fix. Not trying to rush you, but can't edit and print books until this is addressed. Thanks for all you guys hard work and dedication to us KJ's.

[S. Parks]

I have seen this issue too, however, the problem you speek of, does not appear in your printed books, only on the KJ's screen as they run Hoster... I may be wrong but as best I can see there is no issue. Genre is not even listed in your book. If I misrea d this and am missing the point here I am sorry. This will have no effect on printing your books at this time.

[bjswaim]

I understand that the information about genre isn't printed in the books. However, eventually we will be able to print songlists that are specifically for a certain genre (i.e. duets, country, etc.). I print my books currently using excel with title, artist, duets, country, standards, spanish, christmas. So, when we are able to do this with the song book program in hoster, I want to already have all of my edits completed in hoster. And, at this time, if I edit now and then have to rebuild the database, I loose all of my editing work. Will wait for a fix.

[S. Parks]

Point well taken, but I don't think that would stop me from using the program. To me, printing the books out by Genre would be cost prohibitive. Not to mention the the average guy who's all tanked up at your show, who won't seem to grasp why he can't find Kryptonite, by 3 Doors down in the Country Book, when he knows it was there last week. The average patron I see has a difficult time with just "title" and "Artist".

[bjswaim]

I have the genres I mentioned before all in each book. My shows have a very diverse crowd at each show. The country people want to see just country so they don't have to flip through all the other titles to find a country song. Then the crowd who sings only standards what to find these quickly. And it goes on. Therefore, it is more advantageous for me to print my books with these genres in them. Just keeping my customer base happy. Also, the cost isn't that prohibitive for me because I will not do a "bar" gig for less than $250 (4 hours) and my private parties are $500 (4 hours).

[admin]

Forgive me for not reading all the post here. I wanted to establish the facts we have now found and fixed.

1. The Build Songs Database is executed every time the Apply button is clicked in the Edit Songs dialog.

2. Sometimes, apparently randomly, the edits to the header parameters were NOT upgraded.

3. We have found the errant code and fixed it in Hoster 2.214.

Sit tight. We expect to start beta testing 2.214 this weekend.

[MTUSUPPORT]

There was a bug that was found in this, that would only occur under certain conditions. This is the reason that some people have found it and others can't reproduce it.

Also, when you make a change in the Edit Songs command, there is no need to Rebuild the Database. These changes are automatically made to the database.