Making desktop image show after a song plays

[novakaraoke]

I need help with the 2.209 upgrade, when I open Hoster and start a show the desktop image does not show up on the tv when song stops playing, I did the info in the manual and it works 1 time. when I shut Hoster down and bring it back up it will not show desktop again. Do you have to resize the darn screen everytime you open Hoster? I never had this problem till I downloaded the 2.209 upgrade. Randall

[admin]

To my knowledge, the resized play window is persistent, retaining its size and location where you change it to after a song plays. By shrinking it down, you can have the desktop appear.

If it is not working this way, you may want to install 2.212. Something is wrong with your current installation.

However... I may be wrong and a bug crept into 2.209. Maybe a user who does this can comment on 2.209 or 2.212's performance.

[novakaraoke]

I resize the screen and when I close Hoster and open it back up it does the same thing and I have to resize it again. I never had to do this before loading
2.209. I downloaded 2.212 last night and it still does the samething. Randall

[CochrellGary]

I'm not sure if this is what is being experience by others with the screen persistence but this is what happens to me and I don't think it's a bug. I think it's a feature of the dual display card remembering it's last setting.

When I unpack my laptop at home I don't hook up a second screen (TV monitor). When I play a song the laptop viewing area becomes the lyrics display (full screen), this is normal. I double click the lyrics screen and resize to a small screen in a lower corner as described in the manual.

Now when I fire up Hoster at my next gig, with dual screens, after the first song has played the singers screen is black and blank. The blank screen is an empty lyrics screen, no wallpaper displayed. I have to move my cursor to the blank screen and drag it to my laptop screen where I resize it and move it to the lower right corner. I do this one time and now the singers screen displays the wallpaper after each song has finished. This setting remains persistent from one gig to the next as long as I don't start Hoster in single display mode.

Could this be what others are experiencing?
If not, please excuse the ramblings of an old KJ .

Gary

[novakaraoke]

I Have this problem when bringing up Hoster with the tv hooked up. If I just close Hoster and don't shut down the puter, when I reopen Hoster and play a song I still have to resize the screen. I have to resize everytime I open Hoster. With the version before 2.209 and 2.212 I never had to resize it at all after the first time, I went through and made all the changes to prevent audio dropouts and was wondering if I set something thats making it act like this. Randall

[CochrellGary]

Randall,

I'm sure you do this already but make sure that your TV and/or TV modulator is turned on before you turn on your computer otherwise the dual display card won't detect the second screen.

Gary

[novakaraoke]

It's all on, the tv won't work if you don't have it hooked up, I think the problem is the the puter is not saving the changes when I shut down Hoster. It worked fine till I made suggested changes to prevent dropouts, I don't know whice one to change back so it will work the way it should, Hoster is a great program, I haven't had any crashes or problems running shows since I first started back in April. I can live with resizeing the screen on start up, I have over 8600 songs on the hard drive and I really like the shuttle I bought from MTU. It's a great piece of equipment. I was trying to prevent dropouts while downloading songs from singers disc. I don't use the PHM or CHM disc, I buy all Chartbuster and Sound Choice and the play back quailty is great. I do have some singers that bring in all kinds of cheap disc and have had no real problems playing them for the singers. Thanks for the help, I'll try undoing the changes one at a time and see if I can figure this desktop thing out. It should hold the changes but it don't. Randall

[admin]

We didn't upgrade the display code between 2.127 and 2.209.

We massively upgraded the Hoster 2.209 thread priorities to overcome the audio dropouts, which helped a LOT! We further tweaked the threads and their priorities in 2.212, which has mostly eliminated the audio dropouts for everyone.

I would prefer you install and try to use 2.212. It is a free download from your download instruction email link. See if it has any dropouts while playing. Then, undo the changes we suggested.

Please... let us know what you find today if at all possible. We are finishing up 2.213 to go out for testing tomorrow. We want to make sure this is not a problem with the Hoster persistence saving the screen size/location, versus your computer modifications.

[novakaraoke]

The disc that came with the Shuttle that i ordered in March says 2.127, but I'm sure you guys used an upgrade and I don't remember the version no. I downloaded 2.209 and it worked fine till I made suggested changes, I have downloaded 2.212 and used it at one show last night, I had a problem I've never had, I hooked it all up as I always do had every on all screens, amp and all the other equiptment, I put in song and clicked play, the screen changed and started playing the song but I had on audio, it 30 min.s of turning the shuttle on and off to finally get the audio to work. It was in the shuttle as I put a recorded disc in my cd recorder and the amp played fine, it worked fine here at the house before going to the show last night, I turned the shuttle on and off at least 5 times before the audio came back. I had minimal dropouts while downloading singers songs from their disc, it flutters the music when the importing cdg window jumps on the screen and when the writing kma file screen jumps on the screen, and when it closed the kms window, it was just a split second, kinda like a jitter, all in all it worked fine through out the show after i got started. Randall

[novakaraoke]

Hi guys, had new problem Sat. night, Hoster crashed 6 times on me when importing singers songs from their disc.I'm running the new version, 2.212.
I would start a song playing and then start the add track and Hoster would shut down completly. I would open Hoster back up and wait till the song playing was about half way through and then start the add track and it would add it. If I started the add track before a min. of song had played Hoster would shut down, this happened 6 times Sat. night. I am still having audio dropouts everytime I add singers songs from their disc, they are minimal but there still there, so far I had better luck with 2.209, I'm still trying to figure out whats going on with 2.212. The shuttle I bought from you has only been online 2 times to download upgrades of Hoster and the only thing it's used for is to run Hoster. I have not added any other programs to the shuttle. It is the same way that you sent it to me except for making the suggested changes to the operating system and importing my songs into the Hoster program. I never had Hoster crash with 2.209 while adding songs from singers disc, I just had audio drops. I also have noticed a big difference in audio output since downloading 2.212, before I never had to use more than a 1/4 of my volume control on my amp, Sat. night I noticed having to turn up the volume control to over 1/2 way to about same volume, I need some help with this program, Thanks Randall from Nova Karaoke.

[admin]

Well, we crawled into the display control code and found the persistence operation was a real mess. It had evolved and was never "cleaned up". We spent the time and it is now clean, and 30 lines of buggy code removed.

Read the Hoster 2.213 upgrades and you will see we have totally revamped the Singers Display Window performance. Initial Beta Testing reports are favorable.

As to your problem with 2.212 in your last post, I'm wondering if there is a cable that is now lose in the Shuttle. It sounds like it was working, and now is not the same. Hoster didn't change, so the hardware must have.

I'll flag MTUSUPPORT to read this thread and comment.

[novakaraoke]

This morning I get error message: deF001.hst-Hoster: Windows Application Error
The Instruction at "oxoo476c68" referenced Memory at "oxooooooc". The Memory could not be read.
and the other error message is: Error Signature, APPNAME:Hoster.exe APPVER 2.2.1.2 MOD NAME: HOSTER.exe MODVER 2.2.1.2 OFFSET 00027c83.
I'm Still having Hoster shut down every once in a while while adding tracks from singers disc. It seams it will only shut down while playing a kma. file, it has never shut down while playing added tracks and adding more tracks, and it only shuts down if you start a song playing and immediately start the add track button. I have noticed that you don't have to have a song playing to add tracks from cdg's so I will add songs from singers disc when I call them up to prevent Hoster from shutting down on me at shows and to stop audio drops. It will take a min. or 2 but at least it won't be as bad as having someones song stop before they get started singing. Randall

[novakaraoke]

Has anyone ever defraged a system on which Hoster is installed ? I defraged the shuttle with Win. XP Home and I noticed it was moving kma. files in the process of defragging. I wrote down some of the song numbers it was moving and after it finished defragging I fired Hoster up and brought up some of the kma. files, what I found was that it was moving files that I imported and had never played since importing them. My question is why would am improted file that had never been played be some place where it shouldn't be. I know all of the files I imported into Hoster went into the song. database for Hoster as I checked often to make sure they were all going to the same place. I didn't have any problems last night at my show the Hoster worked great, no drops and no crashes. I was just wondering if anyone had ever encountered this before. I mentioned in an earlier post that I had noticed a difference in audio volume since downloading 2.212, I figured that out, under accessories I went in Volume control and turned it all the way up and this solved the problem with the audio level, I did not change it before downloading and had never been in the volume control before but when i downloaded the new upgrade i noticed the audio difference, I read the 2.213 version stats that were posted and the fixes, I am waiting on it to become available so I can see the changes. I hope you guys will comment on the defragging, Thanks Randall.

[kedmison]

Novakaraoke,

I have the MTU laptop, and I defrag mine about once a month. Just good house cleaning. And yes I have seen take place what you described. No, I don't know why it does that either. I figure as long as Hoster does what it's supposed to then I won't worry about things the computer does that I probably wouldn't understand anyway.

Kelly

[CochrellGary]

Google on Defrag:

"Defraging" a hard drive simply optimizes or organizes the placement of files on the physical surface of the drive itself. In the course of using your machine your system writes data to the HDD, your computer automatically writes your data to the first available spot on your HDD. As the days and months pass your HDD will tend to get very "messy" or fragmented.

A fragmented HDD takes a little more time to read then a defragmented drive. Your HDD will have to grab some data from one part of the disk then grab some other data from another part. In a nutshell your HDD becomes disorganized and the HDD has a rough time finding things easily, this ultimately causes your machine to run slower.

When a "defrag" program is run it really just puts the pieces back together, and organizes your HDD so that your data loads faster. It's generally considered a good idea for the average user to defrag once every 3 months or so.

Gary

[admin]

I don't know if MTUSUPPORT formats the hard drives we send out with C and D partitions or not. I expect D is also there.

Windows stores "temp" files all day long on the partition it is installed in... for stuff you're never aware of. These take up little bits and pieces of storage on the HDD. Then, when you import a song, Windows puts it in the largest contiguous space it can find... if one exists. If not, the file gets stored a piece here, a piece there, a chunk over yonder. This is how a file gets fragmented.

As Gary points out, the defrag reorganizes the disc volume and makes everything contiguous again. When a defragged .kma file is accessed, the HDD head doesn't have to move to all the different places where pieces and chunks are stored. They are all in one clean, continuously readable area without any major head movements.

Where files end up after defrag will ALWAYS be in the same folder. Where that folder is on the disc volume may change... and its not something you need to be concerned about, or that you can control. Defragging is something MTU did on our MTU-130 computers we use to sell back in the early '80s. It is a fact of life with computers. Defragging monthly is an EXCELLENT idea!

[novakaraoke]

I downloaded the new version 2.213 Sunday and working with it I really like the new features, and it seams to be working fine. I do have one question about the search feature, When you put in an artist last name only it will bring up all of the songs on the shuttle that I have of an artist with the last name, but when I put in the last name and then the first name It will only bring up the last few songs added the the database, "Example" jackson will bring up all songs with the last name of jackson. I then put in jackson alan and it will only bring in the last 3 or 4 songs imported into Hoster. The 2.212 version would not bring up an artist for me at all if I put in the last and first name, is there some thing I missed or is this how the search feature works, when putting in a song title it would not bring up the song, if I used one word in the title it would bring up all of the songs with that word in the title, "example" live like you were dying would not come up, put in live like and all the songs on the drive with live like would come up. I really like the search feature and I caught on to using it this way quickly, I was just wondering if this was the way it was designed to work, I will say keep up the good work on the Hoster Program, I've used it 4 months and already could not see going back to handling disc again unless I absolutely had to. Randall

[MTUSUPPORT]

Make sure that you don't have a Screen saver turned on, this can cause the program to crash, I just found out.

I am playing songs in Hoster and have imported 3 songs, wihtout any problems. I am unable to get mine to crash. Make sure that you have upgraded to the very latest version of Hoster 2.213, Release #3 will be out today.

[novakaraoke]

I Haven't had any crashes since defragging and downloading version 2.213. I have noticed a problem within the import tracks Disc ID # box, when trying to put in a new disc id thats newer than Hoster has on it, the numbers will only go in backwards, and when you try to back space the numbers out it will only let you backspace 1 number at a time and the flashing cursor jumps to the left side of the box everytime you try to backspace, with all numbers back spaced out and trying to put in new numbers they go in in reverse. Something happened in the new version because it didn't do this in the last three versions of Hoster I've had, I have to enter the new Disc ID #'s and type in the Title and Artist as I am loading the Disc as soon as they come out and 2.212 or 2.209 didn't act this way, check it out and let me know if it's in the Hoster 2.213 that you have or is the malfunction just in the 2.213 that I downloaded. I downloaded the 2.213 version on Sunday 8/1/04 and I imported new songs on 8/4/04 thats when I noticed this problem with the Disc ID # box, This is the only thing I've had any problems with so far, I did notice last night at my show while adding cdg songs from singers disc I didn't have any drops at all, I will keep this in mind at shows this weekend and see if it continues to act the same way. So far so good. Thumbs UP !!!!!!!!! Randall

[MTUSUPPORT]

Novakaraoke,
Hoster 2.213 Release #3 has been released. Click on your Download Link to get this new version. It has fixed the last bug that you are running into, about importing Discs.