V2.200 can crash with bad cdg discs - newer V2.20x fixes this

[johnny00]

Hi,
I tried to make a custom disc by adding one and one song using the custom disc program in microstudio. When I'm not sure if I can sing one song, I go to play and play the track.

Something funny just happened! I tried to play a song and suddenly my screen turned in to windows desktop and all the icon`s were 1" big!!!!!!!

I've never seen this before or after. I just wanted to tell you.

[Hepcat-19]

I just started using the program last week and it has happened to me several times...I've had to shut down completely because the system wouldn't respond. But that's been the only bad experience I've had.

[gez]

Yes lads i have had the same thing happen to me. All of my icons have got a lot bigger then i have to close down and start all over again.

[johnny00]

I know what`s making our problem!
we all do have cd`s with scratches on. if there is one scratch in the cd,it takes some time before the lamp on the cd burner stops to blink!! if you hit "add song from cd" before the blinking stops it locks you down ....
so it is for me.

[MTUSUPPORT]

To help us try to fix the problem with the player not working correctly on your systems, if each of you could do the following for me:

The DXDIAG.exe program can tell our tech support staff many things about your computer hardware and software. Please follow these steps to run this program:

1. Click the Start Menu and the Run command
2. Type in DXDIAG and click the OK Button
3. This will open the DirectX DIAGnostic program that will gather and show your computer data
4. Once the information is collected, click the Save all Information button at the bottom
5. A Save as dialog box will appear
6. Change the Save in directory to C:\My Documents. Change the filename to dxdiag from Yourfirst Lastname (example dxdiag from Joe Smith)

Email this file as an attachment to support@mtu.com.

[admin]

The karaoke cdg format is incredibly complex to display. In a karaoke player box, they add special hardware to decode the cdg "coloring palette". To play this on a PC computer, we had to write software to do this. What a nightmare that has been.

In writing software, there are always tradeoffs that must be made. One that we made, designed to reduce the processing time, was to reset your display resolution to 240x320 by 8-bit color. This is very close to the karaoke display, and had significantly less display pixels (dots) to draw. This is the fastest way we could write the code. BTW: This technique is used by many computer games.

Another tradeoff we made was to use the lowest hardware and software we could get away with. That means that just about any computer display card could play karaoke cdg songs with Microstudio. This has basically been correct, but everyone wants to play every karaoke song, and there are some popular ones that just cannot play on the lowest performance video cards. We decided to make our player work right, requiring a modern video card.

We are now working on the problem in this thread; namely that when something goes wrong (yes johnny00, you are right about scratches ) in the cdg palette, we have added more error checking to gracefully handle problems instead of crash. Microstudio V2.103 can crash with the display resolution still at 240x320x8-color, and that is why your icons are very large. That is what each of you are experiencing in this thread.

Additionally, we have a few examples of extremely complex karaoke cdg songs that will not play in Microstudio, even on very powerful computers. Studying these files has given us great insight as to what to do.

We are redesigning the program structure, and rewriting it. V2.20x will require a better display card that V2.103 would work with. You folks may have to upgrade your display card, because you are experiencing the problem. However, don't go buy anything yet. Run DXDIAG and email it to us as instructed above. This will tell us exactly what you have, and you may not need to upgrade your display card.

We are requiring a better display card to overcome the problems you are experiencing. We have improved the program so you can terminate the play operation when it goes wrong. V2.20x "should" be far superior, not crash and leave your display in the current state that happens, and should play every karaoke cdg song that we now have problems with; i.e. just about anything that can exist as cdg can then be played.

Given the depth of computer science technology we are using, and the problems that must be overcome, I'm not too concerned about someone else easily coming up with a competing cdg player. It is one whale of a beast!

Our target is to release the new version before April.