KHP4 running slow

[is14fun]

I was using the program and completed several projects when the program started acting up. I edited the lyrics and when I played the screen, the highlighting was way out of sync. I tried to redue the song, but each time I do, the sweep is maybe 3 to 4 seconds late. I rebooted but that did not help. I am running XP home on a HP Pavilion zd 7000, 512 ram with 5.2 gigs of free hard drive space. I remember something about temp files and maybe they need to be empied. Program was working fine up to this point. Any help would be welcome

[George]

Click on START, RUN, and type in DXDIAG, and click OK.

Click on the sound tabs at the top(sound 1,2,etc) and reduce the hardware accelleration slides on the sound devices. You may have to trial and error this. I'd go two notches to the left for starters.

See if this puts the sweep in sync. It has helped in many cases.

George

[is14fun]

Thanks, George. That seemed to help. Not on the old project but on new ones. I have two questions I need answered.
1st: When I edit the lyrics after I have placed the sweep, does the changes to the lyrics page affect the timing of the sweep. Or in other words, must I make all changes to the lyrics before I tap in the sweep? (add page breaks etc). That's what happened to my last song, I added some page breaks and lost the timing on the sweep. Removing the changes did not restore the timing.

2nd: I am having trouble at the end of a song. The highlighting seems to stop before it reaches the end of the lyrics. My guess is I have confussed the program by changing the start and end on these words and caused an overlap betwen words. Therefore, I need to know more about the adjust arrows.
When you advance a underlined word, does it move the end of the word also or does it stretch the word. If it advances the whole word, does it move all the words on that line? So If the whole line is slow, must I advance each word (begininng & ending) on that line or will advancing the first word do it?

I have two suggestings to MTU:

1. We should be able to retap the sweep at any point in a song. Now, If we make a mistake, we must redo the whole song. That's a real pain partically if the mistak is at the end.

2. It would be helpful to be able to see the time sweep of each word. That would give you a visual indicater for adjusting words and make it easier to duplicate timing on repeted lyrics. It would also show if you have overlapping timing between words. I think that is what my problem currently is. As a lot of lyrics are repeted, it would be great to be able to copy and paste the timing on these lyrics so they would always be the same.
Bob

[George]

1-Making changes to the text does have it's limitatiions, and can cause an out of sync sweep. I've had it happen to me a time or two, but can't recall exactly the circumstances.

I wouldn't think you could insert any additional lines of text, split too long a line into two lines, insert page breaks and things of that sort without having to sweep the song over.

I've deleted words, added apostrophe punctuation marks, substituted words for another, corrected spelling; things of that nature with no problems.

2-Notice you have < and > to adjust both the beginning and ending of the sweep on a word, so you can control both individually. Let's say you start a sweep too soon and finish it just right. In that case you'd only need to use the > on the adjust start line.

Hope this helps,

George

[admin]

Originally posted by is14fun
1st: When I edit the lyrics after I have placed the sweep, does the changes to the lyrics page affect the timing of the sweep. Or in other words, must I make all changes to the lyrics before I tap in the sweep? (add page breaks etc). That's what happened to my last song, I added some page breaks and lost the timing on the sweep. Removing the changes did not restore the timing.

ADMIN ANSWER: changing pages or any amount outside a line will cause all sync past that point to be wrong. Keep your sweep edits to within a line. Consider retapping the lyrics. I assure you that each time you retap, you will do a better job. A 3 minute song takes... 3 minutes to retap. Think about it, if you spend 30 minutes trying to edit the sync, you could have retapped it 10 times... actually more if you terminate if you KNOW you goofed part way through. MTU has been a leader in editing for 35 years... word processing first, then audio editing, now Karaoke lyrics editing. I assure you, retapping multiple times will give you a better job, then do slight editing on the remaing few "non-perfect" areas.

REMEMBER... better is the bane of good enough!!!

2nd: I am having trouble at the end of a song. The highlighting seems to stop before it reaches the end of the lyrics. My guess is I have confussed the program by changing the start and end on these words and caused an overlap betwen words. Therefore, I need to know more about the adjust arrows.

ADMIN ANSWER: Please take some time and read the manual on the Edit Screen, and the < and > tools. They are very powerful, and must be understood to use at the "demading" level you are asking for.

AN IMPORTANT POINT: When you select multiple words to adjust together... they all adjust together. If you need to adjust one word, only select that word.

When you advance a underlined word, does it move the end of the word also or does it stretch the word. If it advances the whole word, does it move all the words on that line? So If the whole line is slow, must I advance each word (begininng & ending) on that line or will advancing the first word do it?

I have two suggestings to MTU:

1. We should be able to retap the sweep at any point in a song. Now, If we make a mistake, we must redo the whole song. That's a real pain partically if the mistak is at the end.

ADMIN ANSWER: Ahhh... yes that is your desire, and we understand. We spent $24,000 last year trying to add this in, and show adjustment gaps between adjusted words (answer to yor question #2 below), and PREVENTING conditions where you might accidentally try to overlap the sweep of adjacent words. We had to totally rewrite the graphics display code (the most complex of it all) and added incredible power to it. And the result was... it got so complex that we can't fix all the bugs in the code now! Further, the market for such a demanding product, at current market prices, simpy won't ever pay back the investment. KHPro 4.103 is a very excellent tradeoff of costs-benefits-performance-ease of use. It is a stable product that does an excellent job for its price. Our Karaoke Pro Workstation was $14,000 three years ago. At $90, it takes a WHOLE LOT of sales to pay back a $24,000 development - with more to be spent!!!

Also keep in mind... Rule #1 of Product Development... more features makes it harder to use. If we finished KPro 1.025 and released it, the added complexity would make it much harder to use for the majority of those who want to create their own CDG songs. That means we have higher demands on our support, requring more staff... and thus it must sell for a higher price. Those are hard and fast rules of product development I have learned the hard way, over the past 35 years and 130 products developed for microcomputer hardware and software.

2. It would be helpful to be able to see the time sweep of each word. That would give you a visual indicater for adjusting words and make it easier to duplicate timing on repeted lyrics. It would also show if you have overlapping timing between words. I think that is what my problem currently is. As a lot of lyrics are repeted, it would be great to be able to copy and paste the timing on these lyrics so they would always be the same.

ADMIN ANSWER: See my answer above. We created a database of the lyric words and their sweep start and stop timing for each word, or partial word. It would allow copy/paste. However, again... it is so complex now that we can't afford to fix all the remaining bugs at todays market price.

No one wishes more than I that my dream KPro ... worked on for 4 years, would be released. One day we expect to.
Bob

[jdefino]

1. I inserted the lyrics.... and edited.
2. I added the music (.wav)
3. completed the "title page"
4. Completed the "Credits page"
5. I clicked "Place Lyric Screen"
6. I tapped the space bar to a satisfactory application..
7. pre-viewed the product.

The Title page scrolls across the screen as the music starts...
but takes too long. The lyrics load SLOWLY, as the "vocals" begin.
highlighting starts as the text reaches the third line..way too slow.

I switch to the Adjustment page... click start..
the lyrics highlight correctly and smooth until the middle of the second line then begin to slow.
and just freeze by the third line.. as the lyrics move forward to the next page?

None of the adjusting buttons seem to have any effect?

I have the MicroStudio Suite. Updated to the current versions.
I have a 1.50Ghz 512 Windows XP (Professional) with a Plextor CD-Rom.

I've already made two earlier CDG's (before my last upgrade). And everything worked great?

Any Ideas?

[admin]

Originally posted by jdefino
I have the MicroStudio Suite. Updated to the current versions.
I have a 1.50Ghz 512 Windows XP (Professional) with a Plextor CD-Rom.

I've already made two earlier CDG's (before my last upgrade). And everything worked great?

Any Ideas?

Specifically what did you upgrade?

Read this post and follow its suggestions.

[jdefino]

I am currently running the MicroStudio Suite:
Keyrite 1.4.0.0
Vogone 2.2.1.0
KHP 4.1.0.3
and recently upgraded the
MicroStudio to 2.6.0.4

I also took the driver upgrade suggested in this forum.
(I believe it was suggested in the MicroStudio forum).

[jdefino]

I also changed my sound card to a Sound Blaster.
And added new stereo speakers with a sub-woofer.

As an earlier poster stated...
When I play the wav with windows, sound Blaster, or Nero, it plays fine... but it took me several tries to "tap" through.. because the song would start out fine then after about one minute.. it would begin to "stutter".. I STOP.. Restart and it's fine...

however, the end product from the "lyric place" tapping is lesss than satisfactory.. as explained in my earlier post, in this thread.

About a month ago I made a satisfactory CDG, using a vocal version of this particular song... The graphics and music worked fine.... But now I can't repeat the process with a vocal reduced version ?? (vocal reduction accomplished with my VoGone).
The Song is "Angel in Blue"..by J. Geils.. It has a very long instrumental intro.

any help would be greatly appreciated in solving my glitch.

[jdefino]

ADMIN:
I Followed the link you supplied, and followed the directions..

however:
From the desktop..through troubleshooting... then on to "Start..Run.. etc
after typing DXDIAG... clicking OK

I got two error windows:
1. DLL C:\WINDOWS\System32\KsUser.dll is not a valid Windows image
2. DXDIAG Error: Problem getting extra Sound info, result code=0x8878000a

After closing both of these error windows, the resulting info befow stated :
total memory= 480.MB Ram

[jaddams]

Originally posted by Jdefino
I got two error windows:
1. DLL C:\WINDOWS\System32\KsUser.dll is not a valid Windows image
2. DXDIAG Error: Problem getting extra Sound info, result code=0x8878000a

1. Make sure you have all Windows updates installed,
2. Install all latest sound card drivers.
3. Reinstall DirectX and reboot.

The first error you are receiving indicates a possible problem with older or missing OS files.

The second error indicates a possible problem with Direct Draw files...

These suggestions could help you.

Good luck,

Jon

[jdefino]

jaddams.. thanks for your input..
I opted for a windows "system restore".. and "turned back time" ..4 days.

I ran the DXDIAG again and had no errors.. but I am still getting 480 mb ram for my total memory.. not the 64 suggested by the moderator?

I have all the current windows updates, as well as the current sound drivers. I didn't re-install the DirectX because the intergity there seems to be fine.


I also just discovered that the "Out Of Timing" CDG highlighting.. is occuring on any CDG disc I try to play with MicroStudio and not just the one I recently "created" with KHP?

[jdefino]

My computer uses DirectX 8.1
and I have the
ProSavage DDR (S3 Driver)
I seem to recall complaints about the S3?
Could this have any contribution to my problems?

[George]

Try reducing your sound card hardware accellerator, and see if that helps.

Click START, RUN,type dxdiag and click OK, then open the SOUND tabs and reduce the accellerator settings.

You may have to play around with those settings.Hope this helps,

George

[jaddams]

Jdefino,

You should consider buying another card. Read this Thread about the S3.

Once you change the card, upgrade you DirectX from here.

Regards,

Jon

[jdefino]

Thanks everyone.....

jaddams:
I'll look into the new card (replacing the S3)
Would you have any suggestions for an alternate?

George:
Your suggestion of moving the slide left 2 clicks did the trick.

I completed the cdg.. it plays fine.

Thanks again to you all.

[jdefino]

As posted earlier.. I recently installed a "Sound Blaster" card, with new higher quality speakers... This is my current default... Is this sufficient?

[George]

Glad to be able to help....enjoy

Take care,

George