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.

[WaltR]

Quote: "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."

My computer meets all the requirements tha MTU lists on there product page. The only thing I see now that I don't remember seeing when Hoster 4.00 came out is there reference to AMD processors. I may have over looked this but I don't recall seeing this mentioned when 4.00 was released.

As far as the CD importing for music, it seems like way to much work to load into Microstudio first then songverter, etc. It is very easy to load them in Windows Media Player. I don't see the gain just to play some video why the song is playing. When I imported them into Hoster, I couldn't find them anyway, anyhow. Search by name; I.D. ect. This isn't important to me. The lyrics being in sync is. I will wait until 4.10 is released. If the problem is corrected, I will use it. If not, I will move on. Until then, I will be more comfortable using my multi-disk cd player with a graphic converter. The only down fall is that I lose the songbook feature of Hoster but I have the cd's filed in my machine as Hoster has them referenced by book I.D. I did this just in case I ran in to problems so I can still use my songbooks. There are karaoke players on the market with hard drives built into them. I don't know much about them at this point but they do sound interesting and they are cheaper than a new computer.

Thank you for you time,

Walt

[ddouglass]

Have you been able to import CDG CDs into Hoster with that drive? I know these are Audio CDs but remember Hoster is looking at them as CDG not Audio. Did it report they were imported?

[EmilioM]

Running AMD Athlon 64X2 dual 4200+ 2.2Ghz 2.0GB ram NVidia GeForce 7300G5. Ever since I've gotten the 4.xxx series, I've had problems with it. I've had the lyric sync problem like everyone else but not as bad as earlier versions. And when I restarted Hoster to correct the synch problem, I lose the singers/ song list so I have to write it down before I restart to keep my rotation correct. Also once in a while when I open Hoster, Windows opens a box that says there is a problem with the Hoster application and closes it down. Usually the problem is corrected once I restart again. Now I have another problem which I've had happen before. While running my show Sat. Feb. 7th, about midway through I went to search for a song, and Hoster couldn't find the songs database. I couldn't find any music with the search box. The only ways to get to the music is to either go through the book ID window which doesn't help because there are no titles, or through the singers database which doesn't have 1/10th of the music of my songs database. I have gotten all Windows updates, tried redownloading Hoster 4.006 and rebuilding my database to no avail. By the way, I am running Windows XP Pro, not Vista. I went to Hoster 3.4 and I can access all the song from the search box. It's like the database in 4.006 got wiped out, even though the music is still there. Any suggestions, I would really hate to have to wipe everything and start all over.

[ddouglass]

Originally Posted by EmilioM

Running AMD Athlon 64X2 dual 4200+ 2.2Ghz 2.0GB ram NVidia GeForce 7300G5. Ever since I've gotten the 4.xxx series, I've had problems with it. I've had the lyric sync problem like everyone else but not as bad as earlier versions. And when I restarted Hoster to correct the synch problem, I lose the singers/ song list so I have to write it down before I restart to keep my rotation correct. Also once in a while when I open Hoster, Windows opens a box that says there is a problem with the Hoster application and closes it down. Usually the problem is corrected once I restart again. Now I have another problem which I've had happen before. While running my show Sat. Feb. 7th, about midway through I went to search for a song, and Hoster couldn't find the songs database. I couldn't find any music with the search box. The only ways to get to the music is to either go through the book ID window which doesn't help because there are no titles, or through the singers database which doesn't have 1/10th of the music of my songs database. I have gotten all Windows updates, tried redownloading Hoster 4.006 and rebuilding my database to no avail. By the way, I am running Windows XP Pro, not Vista. I went to Hoster 3.4 and I can access all the song from the search box. It's like the database in 4.006 got wiped out, even though the music is still there. Any suggestions, I would really hate to have to wipe everything and start all over.

Emilio please start a new thread with this. The original intent of this thread was when the next release was coming out not to fix problems.

[admin]

XP - VISTA - WINDOWS 7...

MTU LOVES XP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We have XP systems ourselves, so we will continue to test and support XP for the foreseeable future.

VISTA IS BAD NEWS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Worst decision Microsoft ever made, and they and Wall Street KNOW IT. To the extent that WIndows 7 code will run on Vista, we will continue supporting Vista. Some of our Beta Testers have Vista and MTU has 2 Vista systems, but we don't see any "special" fixing being added just for Vista after about a year or so (don't hold me to that).

WINDOWS 7..... seems to be Microsoft's saving grace. IF.... they don't mess it up like they did Vista. So far, ALL MTU software products run on Windows 7 (we have a Beta version in-house). So far, Hoster 4.09 runs on it. We are ready for the Windows 7 roll out, which appears will be Sept-Oct. 2009 (Sept. 1 goes to the OEMs who make the computers we all buy). I just heard that Microsoft now says they will allow "downgrade to XP" from Windows 7 into 2011. That's music to our ears. XP is THE BEST for Professionals today.



Hoster Lyrics Sync...
Gentlemen, we hire human programmers, not robots, and I am human also (Pres of MTU).

Humans make mistakes. I made a BIG one by hiring a "consultant" last year... who already knows Hoster very well from years of working for us as needed.

1. He was to replace our "CDG Render" display with a new Direct-X player... FAILED... and lyrics sync was adjusted 18 times before I finally let him go and we reverted back to our tried and true CDG Render code.

2. He was to replace our Video player with a new Direct-X player... it too FAILED. My senior programmer took our older video player and made it appear in our new "Show Display", which does take more RAM and a faster processor, but makes it many times easier to set up a show.

3. He was to upgrade our audio player to handle 2+ audio streams for crossfade... FAILED! This set Hoster back almost a year on getting crossfade working and released. FYI: Hoster 4.09 DOES allow playing 2 audio streams so the core "upgrade" is done and released. We now begin this week (after 4.09d releases) on adding the fade ramps, timing, etc.

We threw out months of his work in half a day as we reverted back to the 4.07 code, but retained the 43 new-upgrade-bug fixes our other staff had added that became 4.08. Yes, it was a setback, and yes, 4.08 had a bad sync problem as it turns out the consultant had "tweaked" our sync code to try to make his "audio mixer" work with Hoster's lyrics.

That my friends.... is why we came out with 4.09 to fix the 4.08 sync problem. It did, but it had a few quirks of it's own, so we released 4.09a... 4.09b... 4.09c... and Lord willing, tomorrow we'll release 4.09d. It's summer time, Beta Testers are swamped, some are sick with Cancer, some have retired from doing Karaoke shows so the QUANTITY (not the QUALITY) of testing has suffered. Each person tests in their own style. I carefully choose a diverse group of users - technical/non-technical - fast/slow computers - XP/Vista - (you get the picture) to insure as best I can that we get a good cross-section of testers.

We are adding a few new testers to our group right now as some of our great testers won't be able to return to testing due to health issues taking all their focus. It's very real life and we do the best we can with the resources available.

So, there you have my treatise on our sync problem and Windows versions. I truly believe that 4.09d is stable for everyone. If not, we'll do a 4.09e.

We are already underway on 4.10 with crossfade, which is why we can't do 4.09, 4.10, 4.11... 4.12.

Dale mentioned 4.20. Yes, there are a number of powerful features we have in mind that probably should advance the version by a full X.1X increment. But that's fodder for another treatise.

[JNS02]

"We are adding a few new testers to our group right now as some of our great testers won't be able to return to testing due to health issues taking all their focus. It's very real life and we do the best we can with the resources available."

How can one become a beta tester?

[ddouglass]

MTU hand picks their testers. They mainly look for people that are active and helpful in the Forums. Also it helps to be fairly knowledgeable about computers and the operating systems as well as the MTU programs.

[ddouglass]

Dale mentioned 4.20. Yes, there are a number of powerful features we have in mind that probably should advance the version by a full X.1X increment. But that's fodder for another treatise.

OOPS!! I got confused on versions. Sorry about that folks. That was Microstudio and already released.

[Beavis]

admin,

i wish i had the time to beta test for you.