Advice on what I screwed up!

[Canton]

I have a Plextor 716A drive, Mstudio 2.613 (actually the whole Karaoke Suite), and just installed the new Vogone version (which was working fine, by the way). When importing existing CDG songs, and then placing them on the play tab OR in the List to Burn a new compilation I have a problem where sometimes the graphics or audio will not play--- or after the burn and opening them back up from the CD (Verbatim media)-- I also experienced the same problems. In other words, a combination of:

1. Nothing
2. Only graphics
3. Only audio

I had Roxio software also installed from another hardware install, and also noticed a Adaptec EZ Cd creator software that was resident.
So I did a un-install from within the "Add/Remove Programs" in Windows 2000 Professional--- of both these programs, thinking therin lay the conflict. Well-- I made matters worse now after a re-boot. The system is "old hound dog" slow in all respects, and I cannot open any cdg songs from within Microstudio that will play correctly. Maybe my uninstalls took out drivers or corrupted the ASPI?

Not sure, but I need help. I'm trying to create 34 songs for an important Girl Scout venue this weekend.

Thanks in advance for any advice,

Mike M.
Northern California

P.S. Sorry if this "Double-posted" --I did not see any evidence of the posting showing up the first time.

[George]

First I'd try doing a system restore to a time when all was working prior to installing Roxio.

Then make certain all available Microsoft Service packs for your Windows 2000 are installed.

Also make certain you are running DIRECTX 9.0 or higher. This is also a free download from Microsoft.

Don't know which version of Roxio Easy CD Creator you have, but version 5.0 contains a product called "TAKE TWO" which was problematic all over the lot, and Roxio dropped it from Version 6.0. At one time they offerred a free upgrade to 6.0 for 5.0 users because of this problem. Don't know if this is still in effect or not, kinda doubt it as it was a while back this all took place.

Hope this helps.

George

[Canton]

Thanks George--- but

How do I go about doing a system restore? I had a evaluation copy of Norton Ghost on this PC that I also uninstalled at the same time as I removed the Roxio and Adaptec products.

I'm assuming a system restore would have required a prior backup to a CD or different hard drive partition. And of course....I didn't backup the system before I had these problems. So that option is out. Does Microstudio install it's own ASPI driver? I tried a re-install , but with no change.

Best regards,

Mike M.

[George]

The program automatically records computer settings daily, and when programs are added, deleted, etc.

If 2000 is the same as XP in this area, you click START, HELP AND SUPPORT,
which takes you to a page that has several options among which is UNDO CHANGES TO YOUR COMPUTER WITH SYSTEM RESTORE.

Am hoping system restore will reverse any detrimental changes that took place, and installing the Windows 2000 service packs and updating DIRECTX(if that hadn't been done) will get you up and running.

To select which ASPI to use with Microstudio, you open Microstudio, click TOOLS, ASPI DRIVERS, which opens up a dialog box to select the drivers. Usually the MTU INSTALLED DRIVER is the one to use.


George

[Canton]

George,

It appears there is no such feature in W2000-- from what I gathered on the Web via google searchs. So-- I'll confirm tonight what version of DirectX I have, and then follow your advice on setting the ASPI driver from within MStudio, and hope for the best.

Thanks!

[MTUSUPPORT]

When you place a Karaoke CD in your Plextor, open Microstudio, click on the Play Tab, Select CD-Rom drive. Then click the Refresh TOC button. Once the tracks for the drive show, what happens when you click on Play, to try to play a file? Does it play correctly, or does it show some graphics and then stop?

I am not understanding exactly what your problem is.

[Canton]

Last night I downloaded DirectX 9.0c (had 9.0 already present). Then I made sure I had all the service packs installed for Windows 2000. I went to Bigfix.com, downloaded the program, and "subscribed" to the W2000 site. It prompted me to download the latest version of Media Player, which had a Adaptec driver as a plug-in. I tried changing the ASPI in Microstudio from the MTU one to the default---re-booted Microstudio but still had the same problems. I then un-installed Microstudio, and did a fresh install...but still no change. Changed back to the MTU ASPI.

However--- these changes did improve the overall speed of the PC back to where it was before all of these problems surfaced. This is what is going on:

Opening an existing CDG file from the hard drive to play within MStudio will sometimes work fine. But then-- say I delete that same song from the Play tab screen, and bring it back in from the Hard Drive again. This time it may not play the graphics, or will play the graphics but have no audio. I will put an existing CDG in the Plextor 716A drive (I've tried a number of commercial Karaoke disks), and import a track or two-- and send to the Play tab. More often than not it will display a black screen w/audio. It MAY display the graphics, but with no audio. OR-- it may simply display the black screen-- and just hang. Then(in this last case) after about 60 seconds the play screen will simply close.

Crazy thing is that even a CDG file on my hard drive that I produced about a month ago-- that always worked fine in the past--now will only play the graphics.

I went into DirectX Diag, and changed the acceleration-- no improvement. Device Manager shows no hardware problems. I even went into my Windows Start Menu, and made sure there were no other DVD or CD burning programs loading up. When I downloaded, and installed Net framework 2.0-- as instructed to do before the new version of Vogone I just purchased--- would work, Vogone worked just fine. But MStudio is driving me nuts!.

[MTUSUPPORT]

I am not sure what else to tell you to try. Was Microstudio working on this same computer, Hardware combination before?

The only things the player use are the DirectX, Video Card drivers, Audio Card drivers and the OS file system. If you are trying to play form a CD directly from the drive, then it also will use the ASPI drivers.

I guess I really need to know if it worked at one point on this computer.

[Canton]

Bryan,

Yes it was working. I started a project to import 34 songs from existing CDG disks. I went through the whole drill. Imported each--gave a name--each came over from the Plextor drive with no errors. Sent them to the Play Tab and the Custom Assembly Tab. Played them each to make sure that they were working and burned them to a CD. Then played them each in Microstudio--from that burned CD. Then I repeated the same procedure on the second 16 songs (except I admit-- I did not play each song off the second burned CD in Microstudio to confirm the integrity--not thinking there would be any problem). So-- after also burning these 16 to disk and playing them on a Karaoke Machine it was obvious that there were problems. And so I started opening up each one in the Song List folder with Microstudio and saw some had graphics, some audio-- but none with both.

puzzling...

[George]

Can you play a CDG track directly from the Plextor as SUPPORT asked a couple of posts ago?

George

[Canton]

Well, guys- I'm at work and won't be able to confirm that until tonight as the Computer is at home (unless I can sneak out of here at Lunch and try it). Really appreciate all the effort in trying to get to the bottom of this!

[Canton]

Ran home for lunch and did the following. I launched the program--clicked on the Play tab--hit TOC refresh to read all tracks from a CDG in the Plextor drive. They all play just fine. Then I went to the Import Tracks tab, read the CDG there, picked two tracks to import and titled them. Went to send them to the Custom Assembly and that went fine (the pop-up said so). Clicked to send then to the Play tab...and up popped a message saying it could not complete the operation because I had no project open. So-- I went back to the Custom assy tab and opened a saved project and tried again to send them out of the Import Tracks screen--- but received the same message. This has not happened to me before. I did not have the time to try and burn a CD-- but wanted to at least try and provide some more information as a result of earlier postings.

Thanks for any assistance

[George]

O.K., now if you don't mind wasting a cdr, try the DUPLICATE DISC feature and see if you can successfully copy a CDG disc.

You may recall that to duplicate a disc, Microstudio burns an image to the hard drive, then burns it to a cdr. Be especially interesting to see if it will burn at all from the hard drive.

George

[Canton]

I downloaded the latest drivers for my Nvidia GE Force2 video card, the version 1.09 firmware for the Plextor, and then the latest driver for the
M-Audio Delta 1010LT audio card. I made changes from within Plextor Professional as called out in the troubleshooting section on their web-site. I disabled Windows Media Player.

And I suppose all this was worth doing in any case. But-- the thing that I changed that made more sense than anything else in explaining the problems I was having --had to do with the default Codec sampling that was set in the M-Audio card. It was at 22,050 and I re-set it to 44,100 hz. Now the audio quality is excellent, and no more dropped audio or graphics.

Took me all of 2 minutes to burn 16 songs!

Thanks to you guys for helping me to open my mind to what could be causing this problem. And I tweaked the performance of my hardware along the way!

All the best,

Michael M.

[George]

Glad you nailed it.

George