Play a Customer-Supplied Disk At a Show?

[GordonF]

I've used MTU's stuff to make homebrew CDGs for three years, so I appreciate all of the hard work these guys do.

There Mr Cox: Don't say I don't say anything nice about MTU. Really, you guys do good.

Anyway, a local KJ circuit started using Hoster in 2004 - I recognize MTU's handiwork anywhere. I wanted to bring my homebrew CDG to play at a show. The first place's KJ needed his manager to play my disk but he managed OK. The second place's KJ - same circuit - flatly refused to play my disk. She didn't tell me if Hoster couldn't play it or if it was just a policy decision.

Is there some kind of instruction sheet I can hand to a KJ that will show them how to (quickly) play a disk I bring with me to a show?

I thought Hoster would play a disk directly as well as import one as long as the disk was a straight CDG like Microstudio would make, assuming the machine's CDROM could read CDGs.

[gduns - with the Lord]

PLAYING a karaoke song from any cdg is simple in hoster. Aparrently they havent read the manual. If they are going to continue hosting with hoster they should get used to it.

There are KJ's who will not play from a disk that isnt an original. this may be the case with the second place.

I have also seen kj's that wouldn't play anything not on the computer. If you are hosting a show, and customers are constantly bombing you with their own disks, it makes it kinda useless to use hoster in the first place.

I am a KJ that uses hoster. and I prefer to play from the harddrive it saves a lot of trouble.

[S. Parks]

If they don't have issues with your copied disc, I think it's laziness and poor form on their part. Being owners of Hoster, and MTU products themselves, they ought to have a healthy respect for someone who wants to make copies of their originals (so they don't have to carry them out and subject them to the hazards of the bar), after all, that's what led most of us to MTU's products. I just hope folks don't get so fat and happy with all the niceties of using Hoster, that they forget how to cater to the needs of the folks that make their show possible. That would be sad indeed. Of course it is possible I suppose that the CDG capable drive they use to import is external and not with them for convenience purposes, therefore they truly would not be able to play your copied CDG disc.

[George]

Wouldn't be too quick to judge.

Be interesting to see where the liability really lies if the copied cdg is a bootleg copy. Is the KJ then responsible for playing it, knowing it to be not an original ?

I believe opting to play only original discs a sensible business decision.

Just an opinion.

[admin]

If you haven't read this page on the latest legal research, please do so now. It will remove the scales from your eyes. This work was done by one of the world's leading digital rights legal experts using WestLaw and Nexus-Lexus legal research databases. It is the current definitive work.

All existing court rulings documented in this review substantiate that you have the right to perform with a copy of a CDG disc in public... and from a hard drive too!

[George]

All well and good ADMIN, but that does not fit this discussion.

Yes, you have the right to use a back up of an original you own, but what about a stray non-original disc brought in by a stranger??

Different horse, wouldn't you say?

[admin]

I don't see any other issue here. The published legal research clearly proves it is legal to play a copy. The Host can legally play the copy. If the Singer doesn't have the original at home, they are illegal, not the Host, and there is no legal impact on the Host.

[GordonF]

Thanks for the answers to date. It helps.

To clairify, I'm aware of the legal matters and the CD-R I bring with me to Karaoke places is always homebrew stuff I've done, with MIDI music or music I've commissioned, Karaoke Pro 4 and Microstudio, all done from scratch. If a KJ has legal concerns beyond that, I'm not going to argue and I'll just take my disk elsewhere.

It's the ones that don't have legal issues, but are just apparently clueless, I'm having problems with. One of these places has a KJ that used to always play my CD-R, and my original Sound Choice disks I bought (before they added their "protection"). It doesn't seem like a legal or policy question with these guys, unless policy changed sometime after they started using Hoster. Especially with the bought disks I have, how hard can it be to pop it in and play?

Assuming of course, the CD drive they used to import their own tracks is installed and working of course.

[gduns - with the Lord]

Do keep in mind, that if it is the last track on a multisession disk you are trying to play, that could be why they are hesitant. Unless they have been modified, the track will not load into hoster.

[GordonF]

OK, I fetched the Hoster 2.127 Manual and found the above mentioned chapter. Minus the multisession stuff (which is irrelevant to me since I don't have any multisession CDGs), it's only three pages.

If I'm reading this correctly, a host can add a CDG track to their current playlist while other things are still playing, just like they could for HD tracks. However, the CD tracks are kept in temporary memory only and are deleted once they're played or removed from the list.

Have I read this correctly? Can I hand the KJ my disk, and can they preload up to three songs from it and queue it like any other track in the database?

[crazycarl]

You Are correct , but they must have 3 songs (I believe) in front of yours before hoster will load your songs
crazycarl

[GordonF]

Originally posted by crazycarl
You Are correct , but they must have 3 songs (I believe) in front of yours before hoster will load your songs
crazycarl

According to the Hoster manual that was fixed in Hoster 2.124 and later. Anyone still running into this problem currently?

[MTUSUPPORT]

Gordon,
That problem was all fixed.

[emwalter]

Hi all! Been a long time since the last time I posted. Well, I have an interesting problem, and I searched to see if anyone else mentioned this.

I have several disks that some time back, I put some fairly large labels on, and in trying to remove them, I destroyed three disks. Now, to my problem. I have been able to remove a great deal of these stickers, without damage, but the disks are slightly off balance. Not enough to make them vibrate or hum, but enough, I have discovered when importing, to make it difficult or impossible to import them since they spin too fast (and cause read errors). At the speed they normally spin at (1X or 2X, in my 300 CD Jukeboxes) this is not a problem. Apparently it is a major problem with Hoster.

I discovered this quite by accident. I was importing one of these CD's into Hoster a week or so ago, and I discovered that as I approached the ourter edges of the CD, I was getting some serious read errors. I was getting frustrated, as this meant that I was going to have problems with half my collection (I had stopped putting stick on labels on my disks, a couple of years ago, and up 'til now, they had not been a problem). This one particular lable, was a bit loose (it was old and dry), and I was able to peel it off, when I re-inserted it, all errors dissappeared. I then went back over the first half of my collection (again) and peeled as many of the labels off that I could (thus the 3 damaged disks I currently have, much to my extreme annoyance). In the mean time, I was using the speed selector on the pull down menu (disk properties) to slow down the disk speed, so there won't be as much vibration on the ones I could not peel the lables off of, only to discover, the read speed selections do not appear to work. HELP!! I still have about 60 to 70 disks I can't peel the @#$#dang labels of of without fear of damaging them. I was hoping that with the slower speed, they would read correctly.

One other question, is there any way to maintain a rotation with the people still in their original rotation position as they add songs to their list without having to maintain a seperate manual rotation (pieces of paper stuck on a board, and as the singers add songs, place the new paper on top of the original ones, thus maintaining a rotation? I think this is the single biggest issue, or maybe that feature is there and I missed it?

If anyone can help me, I would appreciate it>

emwalter

[gduns - with the Lord]

em,
If I understand your question correctly,

I add tracks to the playlist as they are given to me to me,

I usually have 2-3 rotations set ahead, and I grab and drop songs into the playlist as i go.

If a new player comes in, I can add his songs, and drag them up and add them to the rotation.

I always have a bunch of selections at the bottom of the list to drag up and start another rotation as needed.

I have a sheet on the table with singers names as they come in, and use it for a rotation. slips are kept, and given back to the customers at the end of the evening, so they don't have to look them up again next week.

[LOU K.]

I have upgraded to 2.127 and when i have a playlist going and try to add a singers cdg it starts to play and slow down the hard drive song playing and i get a ATI conflict because the graphics and sound. I tried shutting off normalizing and compressing suggested by MTU SUPPORT that didn't help me. I'm hoping the nest upgrade will fix it for me.

[emwalter]

Yep,
That is pretty much how I do it now. it would be nice if Hoster would do that. All they would need to do on the database side is add another table, that would be populated as the night progresses by singers joining in the rotation, but make the table unique, so no duplicates. This could then be tied to the table that tracks the singers/songs they choose (one to many). Of course the easy part is the database, it will require coding to make the new tables work. One other thing I noticed, if a singer brings in a badly scratched or corrupted disk, it will lock up Hoster. That would bring the show to a screeching halt, until you ended the task, and restarted Hoster (on extreme occasions, I have had to reboot, but thankfully that has been extremely rare). I noticed that if a disk does not read at least one block's worth, you cannot interrupt it (you might be able to if you waited a long time, don't know, I did not wait much longer than about 30 seconds before ending the task). that is probably why the KJ mentioned in one of the other posts, did not want anyone to bring in their disk, it could lock up Hoster.

All in all, I do like Hoster, just because I critisize it, does not mean I don't like it, I just want to see a few minor bugs to be swatted.

Type to ya all later,

EM

[emwalter]

Originally posted by LOU K.
I have upgraded to 2.127 and when i have a playlist going and try to add a singers cdg it starts to play and slow down the hard drive song playing and i get a ATI conflict because the graphics and sound. I tried shutting off normalizing and compressing suggested by MTU SUPPORT that didn't help me. I'm hoping the nest upgrade will fix it for me.

I noticed something similar to that myself. It does that with my desktop, where I have a much larger monitor (and higher resolution), and the second display is to another monitor (not a TV) at a lower resolution. I notice it when I move my mouse away from the Hoster screen. But, since I don't use my desktop for shows, it does not bother me. My desktop has a G-Force 2 (Extasy Everthing) card. I do not experience that problem with my laptop (it has a G-Force 4 card). Also, the laptop has a much faster processor (2.4 Ghz P4) as oppoosed to an AMD Thunderbierbird 1Ghz processor.

EM

[Beavis]

make sure your video card drivers are up to date.

do not use the windows updates for the video drivers.

go to the manufacturers site and get them. In your case use ATI's site!