Karaoke Forums

For those who use Compuhost, I'd like to know what you use for interfacing from a separate CD+G player to your computer for the purpose of using the "external Lyrics Source" feature.

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EveningStar Entertainment & Events
JR & Michele LaPorte
Peoria, AZ

Apparently no-one does!

A/B switch then eh?

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EveningStar Entertainment & Events
JR & Michele LaPorte
Peoria, AZ

I believe this will work at least it was the one referred to in a question I asked on Invicion's forum
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications ... &body=MAIN .

I haven't tried it because my rack has zero room for a cdg player.

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The Line Array Experiment is over. Nothing to see here. Move along.

Thanks for the reply Danny, I appreciate the input. As I have so many regulars who bring their own discs, I'll need to maintain my player. I've had this program for more than a year and a half, and now I'm just getting around to loading the library. I still have to upgrade the software. I have ver. 1.65.10. Now we're up to 1.76 and I have yet to use it professionally. I do look forward to using it though.

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EveningStar Entertainment & Events
JR & Michele LaPorte
Peoria, AZ

compuhost SHOULD have the ability to rip a customer's track. If they had you the disc, you SHOULD be able to rip it even while playing another! If not, it only takes 15 seconds or so to rip a track even at low speed... do that between singers as you're calling up the next singer!

I haven't arrived at that level of expertise yet. But your response does bring something to mind. You mention approx 15 sec per track. I'm curious about that time. I've only just started to rip my library. And it seems to take about 17 minutes to rip an entire disc (plus or minus a minute or two depending on the length of the songs on the disc). At the moment I'm ripping to Compressed MP3+G (Zipped Fires I believe). Is there a quicker ripping mode which will run at the 15 sec per track you speak of? Or is that time limited to ripping to a virtual memory?

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EveningStar Entertainment & Events
JR & Michele LaPorte
Peoria, AZ

I bought this and installed the software driver(s) and set up the video grabbing in compuhost. But I seem to be having a problem with interference from my on-board camera. When I activate the external button, I find I'm looking at myself through my camera. When I change to the DVD Maker device I get a black screen most of the time; but I have actually gained external input twice so far. Is there something I should be doing to my computer to prevent my on-board camera interference?

I know you don't have firsthand experience with the external graphics Danny, but possibly someone else in this forum does?

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EveningStar Entertainment & Events
JR & Michele LaPorte
Peoria, AZ

I'm curious if anyone here would know if a computer has any pre-configuration requirements prior to successfully operating CompuHost?

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EveningStar Entertainment & Events
JR & Michele LaPorte
Peoria, AZ

JR2423, I have Compuhost, with the capture device that you have. I also have a web cam on my computer. Here's what you need to do to make the capture device to work. Start Compuhost, with capture device connected, go to file in the main Compuhost screen, click on system devices, then click on capture device setup, you'll see webcam, click on the dropdown arrow, and click on the capture device. click on save and exit. This should have your capture device working. Connect the external player, click external on the Compuhost screen, and start playing the disc player. That should be it. Good luck.

Rosario
Serenity Now Karaoke

Thanks Rosario, I have done that but still get a black screen 80% of the time when I should be getting the lyrics from the other player. When I shut down and turn it back on the system sometimes defaults back to the camera. After speaking with some computer techies here at work, I think I need to disable the camera so that there's no way it can work its way back in. They say I should disable the internal soundcard as well. Thanks again, if you have any more thoughts on the subject, I'd be happy to hear them.

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EveningStar Entertainment & Events
JR & Michele LaPorte
Peoria, AZ

You might only have to save the default.cfg with your settings on that particular device.

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The Line Array Experiment is over. Nothing to see here. Move along.

I asked this earlier but didn't get a response so just in case you missed it I'll ask again.

I know each disc will be slightly different depending on the length of its songs, but how long (on average) has it taken any of you who use CDG Ripper to upload one disc? And, at what speed and bit rate are you doing it?

Currently I'm uploading at CDG Ripper's recommended settings of Compressed MP3+G and 192 Kb/sec. At this setting it takes me approximately 15-17 minutes for one disc. I am also uploading from my laptop's CD/DVD Drive.

I'm thinking that two possibilities for the long upload time are either the Upload settings, or the drive.

Any thoughts?

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EveningStar Entertainment & Events
JR & Michele LaPorte
Peoria, AZ

15-17 minutes is not an unusually long time to rip an entire disc, depending on how many tracks are on the disc.. I believe the speed is mostly dependent on the cdrom drive. I know it is in my case, I have four cdrom drives, all ranging in speed when ripping cd+g discs. The fastest, an old Plextor drive can rip each track on average in 40-45 seconds (11.25 minutes for 15 tracks), while the slowest, an HP drive takes upwards of 1:25 minutes per track (21.25 minutes for a 15 track disc).

Good, that gives me a benchmark to work from. And I didn't mention that I was speaking of a 15 track disc. But the plextor you mention might be an option. I'll look into what is available in an external version. As I am looking at 1k+ discs to upload, a decrease of thirty seconds (or more) per song goes a long way to reducing the overall time of the job. Thank you for the input tbreen.

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EveningStar Entertainment & Events
JR & Michele LaPorte
Peoria, AZ

jr2423,

I might add that the old Plextor is a CD ONLY drive. I believe CD/DVD combo drives are generally slower than CD ONLY drives at ripping CD+G discs. Unfortunately CD only drives may now be hard to come by.

Good luck

That's interesting to know. I'll keep that in mind as I research.

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EveningStar Entertainment & Events
JR & Michele LaPorte
Peoria, AZ