Karaoke Forums

Hi all! new guy here...

I've been roaming this site for a while, but now have the guts to post a question.

Long question....I have over 200 Karaoke DVD disc in my collection. They are of high quality music videos with karaoke features. I've always host karaoke parties at my house but recently, friends just got tired of my traditional setup consisting of a DVD player, a mixer, and Amp. Each time someone ask to sing a song, they have to go digging through all my DVD disc to find their songs, and after about 2 or 3 songs, they quit! So one day I decided to rip my DVDs into AVI/Divx files and play them back from a computer. Let's just say it didnt go so well. The ripped songs were fine, but playing and managing the song were a nightmare. I literally had to used Window Media Player to play the songs and outputed to a mixer, and when the song ended, I would click on the next song to play!

So my questions are:

1.what can I use to play and manage my AVI and Divx files?

2.I'm building a HTPC as my Karaoke PC. I'm using the newest Intel motherboard with a i7 cpu that has HDMI and S/PDIF optical out. What other external hardware do I need?

3.I've seen some mixers that has USB ports, are these worth trying?

4. I know that there are a bunch of karaoke software and I've read some of the members recommendations, but what is best for AVI and Divx files?

Thank you very much, I love this site!

I know for AVI files Swift Elite will handle it. I am not sure of divx.

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

Thanks for the advice!

I was just reading through the user manual of Swift Elite and it does support AVI and Divx!

On page 7 of the manual:

Video and CDG:
MPEG Video Format: - MPG, MPE, MPEG1, MPEG2, DAT, M1V (make sure to have proper codecs
installed)
Movie Format: - AVI
VCD Disc DAT files: - DAT
DivX Video Format: (MPEG4 video with MP3 audio which requires installation of additional
CODEC) – AVI, ASF
VOB: – You must have a non-encrypted MPEG2 codec.


This program seems very deep and complicated! I have to read up on it some more.