4.10 release ?

[ddouglass]

Originally Posted by WaltR

The music files that I was speaking about are imported cd's. I tried to import them directly from cd to Holster into a folder (My Music). I assume that Holster converts the WAV file to KMA. When I go to the "My Music" file they aren't there or at least if they are there they are hidden. I had a few already in Windows Media Player but recently I have been getting request to do some DJ shows so I thought I would try Holster. Since the few I loaded into Holster didn't work for me I have been loading my cd's into Windows Media Player and it works very good.

When you import them directly (at least currently) with Hoster the CDA file is read and then the output is written to a KMA file in whatever location you choose. You also are assigning a BookID at the same time. So the files you should be looking for would be DiskID(that you assigned)-Track#.KMA. These would also be imported as CDG type which means they play in the Lyrics screen with a blank background (whatever color you chose for it).
Have you tried to play any of them?
The best way would be as I said with Microstudio, which will create a WAV file with the whatever parameters you set it to, such as Artist - Title, etc. Then you can import those into Hoster from the Hard Drive. That way you can have them play in the Audio display where you can set the background to whatever you want it to be.

Originally Posted by WaltR

Also, I am curious. You said that you were a beta tester. I know that there are many beta testers. How do all these problems not occur when they are being reviewed by so many beta testers? This is not meant to be a wise remark. I am wondering if the beta testers are using only high end computers and possibly these problems aren't showing up. Just a thought.

This is a good question. However, with only 20 or so Beta Testers (and not all of us have the time to test all the time) with most testing on multiple computers it is apparently not enough to catch every problem. Consider how many variations of computers available on the market between Gateway, HP, Dell, IBM,Custom built, and who knows what others; XP and Vista; Intel and AMD; motherboards; video cards; sound cards; and who knows what else. The numbers are staggering. I worked in an Air Force technical school where we had literally thousands of computers in classrooms. Many of them were identical machines, yet they would react to updates and programs completely different.
Do we miss bugs when testing - yes. Anything that shows up in testing is fixed before it gets released, but sometimes we don't happen to stand on one foot with our left arm out and have the program run backwards to see a bug only specific to that situation. Far fetched but you see what I mean.
Everytime a new release of this version has come out the lyrics and audio are always in sync for us all. When it gets out to the mass of users then differences of their computers are what cause most of the problems.
Are we using mostly high end computers? For the most part yes because we want to present the best possible show. We are all Professional KJs like you and some of us have more knowledge/training in various computer fields than the rest.
Hoster as well as most quality programs have gone from the Pong stage of development to the high-end action packed 3D game stage. Which means program size has grown and minimum computer requirements have also had to be configured. Ten year old computers will barely run XP and Vista only laughs at them. This is why the minimum requirements have gone up so much.
A lot of the problems we have seen in the forums of late have been with Laptops. They are great because everything is compacted into a very small case complete with monitor and mouse (if you like touchpads). They are bad because they are compact which prevents the use of large capacity hard drives, a maximum memory capacity way below what is available for desktops, and keep all that heat from the processor, the memory, the hard drive, the disk drive, and the general circuitry of the motherboard all confined in that small space with one tiny fan to blow it out of the system. (Sorry for the run-on sentences)
Now why is Hoster having problems with laptops? Bigest problem that shows up is that they tend to use "shared" memory for the Video. This means the Video has to borrow from the main memory to function which lowers the available memory for the processor. And to run Dual screens takes even more resources away (in sync on single but not when you use dual is very common).
The next problem is the power supply. This is usually just slightly over the minimum to run the internal equipment. They don't take into account adding external disk drives, hard drives, mice, keyboards, and anything else you want to add via USB. Of course the common ones we use and also the most power hungry would be the disk and hard drives.
I didn't mean to ramble on so long but you asked. I believe MTU has picked a good cross-section of users with enough experience to find and test for most common use problems. The unusual situations and computer variations will never be easy to find no matter how hard we try. My favorite thing I see in the forums is it worked in earlier versions, why not now. This is like comparing the Model-T to present day Ferrari. Hoster has a totally new display setup that isn't anything like the previous versions.