Change Sweep Color - Solved by FREE MTU Option Color Files

[frenglish]

Don't get me wrong, I think Karaoke Home Producer is great but ... The Yellow sweep does not work, or is not clear as a contrast color and this is a major problem. I need to know if an upgrade will eventually change this yellow stream to a darker color. All the rest of the program is perfect for my needs.

[bose]

I fully agree here, but it is a problem that MTU are addressing if you read all past posts. Apparently they are working on some new features (free for existing customers if we help them sell more copies of KHP - so get promoting it).
These features may include selectable truetype font and background colour, sweep colour and text colour.

Who was it who decided on yellow?
Come on, own up.

Bose

[admin]

me

[frenglish]

I understand a change may be on the way with the sweep color but is it possible to get a timeframe because if it is soon, I could probably get you 3 or 4 sales to my immediat entourage.

[admin]

Read my post in this forum and vote for one of the 4 colors proposed. We can do this within 1-2 weeks based on how fast we get your color votes!

[b]VOTING IS CLOSED![/b} Red and Blue are now supported. Go to the Karaoke Home Producer download page and scroll to the bottom. Read the instructions and download the two color executable files.

[bose]

Why do we need to vote? I though we could have selectable sweep colour?

[Brian Corr]

I was hoping that we would be able to choose font, background, border and sweep colours and perhaps even font styles in the new version. Everyone has their own prefrences to what they want. Please let us have these small custom factors.

[frenglish]

I fully understand that it is less complicated to simply change the sweep colour than change the program to give the user a choice. I am fine with this. I am also impressed with the speed of Admin reply. Thanks alot, I will be helping you to sell this program. By the way my vote is for colour grey or even black.

[BANDL]

I believe that there is another problem (other than the color itself) in the sweeping. That is the width of the letters. If we could use bold rather than the regular font, we would see much more color (regardless of the color)and it might be easier to see the sweep.

Hopefully when the new version comes out we will be able to choose between bold/normal fonts as well as the font type.

BANDL

[admin]

Gentlemen, may I have your attention. Frankly speaking...

There is a very big difference between 1-2 [font color=red] weeks[/font] as I stated above and 4-6 months which is when you can expect to possibly see variable colors and fonts.

It is easier for us not to make any change. However, many users have pointed out that yellow is too light. Thus, we WILL change it. I am receiving a significant number of votes for colors. I am surprised that you, who are most active, have chosen so far not to vote.

Bandl, when we upgrade so you can select your own TrueType font, you can make it anything you want. The default we chose - Arial Narrow - was because many of the professionals we work with chose that font for their work. It allows more characters on the line. We may or may not add Bold Italic and Shadow to the next version, based on the complexity (= cost) and the impact on the market and customer support. If you want to vote for a feature addition, go now and post it in the Karaoke New Features Forum. Then, when we begin the final spec for V2.2, we will see your request.

Also, do not underestimate the negative financial impact KHProducer can have on our Karaoke Pro sales, and the production sales of songs by our professional clients who paid $10,000 or more. If you want all the features that Karaoke Pro has, buy Karaoke Pro. We haven't sold 100 copies of KHProducer, so don't think I am making up our development costs on KHProducer. The customer support demands are 10x greater than Karaoke Pro also.

Also, the majority of our KHProducer market is not extremely, technically sophisticated. To significantly change the human interface is something I do with GREAT CAUTION. This weekend I discussed this upgrade with our programmer who will do it. We evolved to a possible solution that will allow us to offer a separate program for those who want it that will enable you to easily change the font and colors that are used for a song. We actually implemented this same technique in our Karaoke Pro workstation that today sells for $12,000+.

This offers us another advantage, we have to pay for the new upgrade in some way. This optional function set will be less in demand, and thus will not significantly aid in new sales. I expect that you gentlemen don't agree with this, but after 30 years as a businessman, product developer and marketer, you will have a very hard time convencing me that I am wrong.

Also, if we increase the complexity of the User Interface, we pay for it daily in support calls. NOT a good thing! You MUST understand this is the reality of business. Unlike development costs that have an ending at release, support is an ongoing daily cost. MTU offers superior support at this time for free. That will have to end if we get overwhelmed. Adaptec is proof of the drastic change a company will eventually make when support demands are overwhelming. I am ACUTELY aware of this "business law" and am doing everything I can to reduce our support costs, while still providing free support. I have alienated several $50 Microstudio users because I refused to give them hours of free, custom integration support that would require diagnosing and solving their unique problems.

QED! Go vote now... please.

[BANDL]

I voted for color changes as soon as I found out that voting was available.

I understand that the weeks vs months problem in working the upgrade. I have no complaints. In fact, I would not mind paying for an upgrade that will give us font flexibility. I believe at at some point MTU might have to go to version 2.0 which means some payment involved for the upgrade.

BANDL

[Brian Corr]

I too would pay extra for an upgrade which included colour choice for fonts,sweeps, backgrounds and foregrounds. Centred text and choice of fonts would also be worth the extra cost.

[Scoob7809]

Upgrade: I would be willing to pay extra for an option package that would enable the following:

Outside border changed to blue to match the rest of the screen. The background color is not really important.

Centered lyrics would be more asthetically pleasing.

Scalable font, at least. Selectable font could be pushing it.

Better timing support (might be workable with scalable font). Also found that timing is improved with use of CTL key at end of verse.

A "redraw" indicator that would show where the 4th line is. Even (maybe) shrinking the input text window to show 4 lines at a time would be a better indicator(?)

Sweep color: If it is that much of an issue, change the background to black, the words to white, and pretty much any color would show up better. The outside border is already black, why not the rest of the window? Hmmm...

[admin]

In studying the program come to change the default color, we made a very interesting discovery within the code!

I hope to post here this afternoon with a very happy announcement for you.

[BANDL]

I am looking forward to the surprise!

What could it be?
An easy way to change screen colors?
An easy way to change fonts?
A way to correct your mistakes without having to start all over?
A new way to loose weight while drinking beer?

Any of these will be very welcome!!!

BANDL

[bose]

You never know, it might be free copies of Karaoke Pro for all existing Home Producer users. Then again, it might not.

[admin]

It's done! Go to the Karaoke Home Producer Download page at http://mtu.com/support/downloads/khpro/code.htm (you will need your username-password to enter). Scroll down the page. You will find two files to download. Executing either on your system will change the Sweep color to that of the executed file, and the Border color is the same as the Background color for both files.

The technique we are using for this interim solution does not allow other colors. When we tried Fuchsia and Lime, they both came out the same as blue. Tried tweaking the colors but to no use. Anyway, you now have Blue or Red choices, in addition to the default Yellow.

[Scoob7809]

Thanks admin! I dloaded the files, and they work great!

Now, if we could just get centering.. *ducking*

Thanks again admin.. now we can color!

Scoob

[Cid_cat]

To the support staff,
I recently installed KHP V1.105 and downloaded the files to change the sweep color to either red or blue. My problem is that I tried a search to find the .kss files with no luck. Is it hidden somewhere?? The instructions would suggest that it resides in the root directory but still no luck.

Any help is appreciated.
Cid

[admin]

KHP requires the default.kss file to be located in the C:\ (root) directory. That is what is proposed, so DO NOT CHANGE THIS. It must install here for KHP to find and use it.