Preview Play button flickers, program crashes

[Judge]

Whenever I try to change the key of a .CDG file, the Preview Play button starts flickering after I click it, and the program crashes. The only way to restart KeyRite is to get into Task Manager and kill it. A few of my .CDG files work OK, but most cause the problem described above.

I tried re-installing KeyRite, no luck.

Any ideas?

[George]

Can't help wonder, what was the source of the CDG files you're using ?

George

[Judge]

Hi George,

Most of the time I'm converting CAVS (or Charbuster, or Top Hits Monthly) songs that I've downloaded from www.cinet.com.

I thought at first that I was having success using a workaround of first burning the material to a CDG, ripping it back to a .CDG file and then converting the key then, but the last few times that I've tried that, it proved to be no better either.

Thanks - Gary

[MTUSUPPORT]

Judge,
Most likely your .cdg files that you are creating are not compatible with our software. The only .cdg extension that our software supports is what is created from Microstudio, which is MTU's Program not other programs such as Cavs.

[Judge]

Hi Bryan,

What I didn't mention in my original post is that MicroStudio handles all of the same files that KeyWrite can't.

Based on my experience (5 years as a digital audio engineer, and 15 years in software engineering), when one software product works fine with a file type, and another product from the same company crashes with the same file type, then something is amiss.

The workaround I just tried is to burn the CDG's to a CD, then import them back using MicroStudio. KeyRite then can work with the imported files. This works fine, except for all the extra steps and the wasted CD(s).

Cheers - Gary

[MTUSUPPORT]

Gary,
I would agree. But, how were the files created? Were they imported directly from the CD in Microstuido and then taken into Keyrite? If not, then Just try importing one file off of a CD in Microstudio, and then try it in Keyrite, just so that we have a control that we know how the file was created and that it should work.

Let me know what happens when you do this.

[George]

I've been wondering right along if the CDG's in question contain .bin files and not .wav, if Microstudio is version 2.609. That could account for the difference in programs playing or not playing.

George

[Judge]

Hi Bryan and George,

To answer your questions, I:
1. Download "mcg" files from CiNet.
2. Use the CAVS CDG Decoder to create bin files.
3. Rename the bin file to cdg.

I downloaded some songs this morning for a KJ in our organization. I noticed that Top Hits Monthly songs worked OK with KeyRite. Songs from Chartbuster and CAVS didn't (as per my report above).

I parsed the preamble in the mcg file header for both Top Hits and Chartbuster and didn't see anything that glaringly different (other than payload size).

In any event, if any of your other users experience this problem, the workaround that I wrote up above works great!

Cheers - Gary

[gsbkeys]

I am having this same problem with SOME .wav files. I just bought Keyrite v2.0.0.8 a couple of weeks ago.

When I open the file and then click the key change number, the Preview Play button automatically changes to Stop Play, starts flickering, and the whole program freezes, and I have to close using Task Manager.

I have backup tracks as .wav files for condo shows. Some are recorded from my keyboard using Sonar, some are MIDI files mixed down, some are Karaoke files I bought and imported as .wav, a few are originals with vocals removed (with Vogone), some are mp3s converted to .wav.

Some files crash as described, some do not. One crashed, and then later didn't. I have restarted the computer, restarted the program, etc. I even shut down the computer completely and shut down my external hard drive. I haven't been able to determine a common denominator. Has MTU looked into this problem? Is there a patch for it?

By the way, I have a 2-year-old Dell desktop with Windows XP, 80Gig-2GHz hard drive (50+ Gig free), 512 memory, Creative Audigy Platinum EX sound card.

[Judge]

Yes, please let me know if you uncover the "common denominator". You asked if MTU was working on the problem. They've told me that its due to bad or incorrect input files, but that doesn't explain why we both have found that sometimes the same files work and sometimes they don't. I'm in the software development business too, and we call that "wishing the problem away" until more reports roll in.

Now that you've also reported the problem, maybe they'll put more faith in the claim that something ain't right?!

[gsbkeys]

Hooray! I think I found a workaround! It's not too complicated, either.

First, I tried importing and re-exporting the audio file with Sonar, as a 24-bit instead of 16-bit. That didn't help.

Then I used Music Match to convert the wav file to an mp3, then converted it back again to a wav (using MusicMatch), and THAT wav file works! I also tried converting to mp3PRO and back to wav, and it worked also. I still haven't been able to determine the common denominator, though. I thought it might be Sonar, but some of the other wav files I made with Sonar work fine.

I'm not crazy about having to lose quality by converting to mp3, but I am using this for a show in a restaurant tomorrow, and I really don't think it will be that noticeable through a sound system.

I don't have any more time to work on it tonight. I don't usually do things like this at the last minute, but with the holiday, I didn't get to it until now!

[Judge]

When you compile your findings with my earlier ones, it may be that KeyRite is too sensitive to something in the file that it doesn't expect. Other audio/video processing applications that I've worked with "pre-curse" the file and if there's anything amiss - it reports "Incompatible File Type". That's a lot more user-friendly than the software crashing when it tries to process a file that it can't handle.