Karaoke Forums

Happy 30th birthday CDG.

Even SC is putting out MP3 +G versions of their songs so there's getting to be little point in ripping CDs. Who would be interested in changing graphic formats to something less complex, smaller and less error prone? I'm thinking something text based.

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Okay, who took my pants?

It already exists with Aegisub. Check out all the swanky text effects.

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_q ... ffect&aq=f

I knew it existed in many forms. The question is if anyone wants to switch? I just can't see using CDG anymore if the trend is towards computerized karaoke. No more artifacts or timing errors, swanky text effects if you want them, file size likely to be under a kilobyte, changing lyrics in a text editor, more colors, faster refresh. I can think of a zillion advantages and only one disadvantage, that it won't play from a standard CDG player.

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Okay, who took my pants?

And that is the one disadvantage that will forever keep the predominant format from changing.

There is a standard that is in use all over the place -- DVD. Readily available, players everywhere -- and it still hasn't overtaken CDG in the US. (Though it has other places.)

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[color=#ffff55]Mickey J.[/color]
Alas for those who never sing, but die with all their music in them.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Wouldn't that follow only for the folks who are disc based?

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Okay, who took my pants?

It'd be cool if we could get a "resubbing" scene together somehow. Just a group of like minded KJ's who would want to re subtitle replacements for the crappy CDG we use now. We could create and share subs with each other for existing karaoke.

We'd just have to agree on a format and get to work. I'd be down weed, but I doubt many others would be. It'd be a pretty monumental task.

We'll, that one conditional "Yes" vote. Anyone else?

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Okay, who took my pants?

That's the delivery mechanism. The format is -- wait for it -- video! Flexible enough for you?

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[color=#ffff55]Mickey J.[/color]
Alas for those who never sing, but die with all their music in them.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

You've lost me.

The question is, are computer based folks ready to dump CDG for another format? The only reason for the CDG format in the first place is that it would fit on a music CD without affecting the tunes. If you take away the restriction of having the music data on a CD and someone proposed using this graphics format, you'd think they were nuts.

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Okay, who took my pants?

That's the whole point. Formats are out there, widely adopted players and all. It's just inertia -- no one has the incentive to convert the huge existing library for miniscule gain. No one really wants video behind karaoke lyrics, and if they do there are video backgrounds available. CDG is adequate for lyrics from the singer's point of view.

And no one cares about the problems of the programmer, that's to be sure. There are plenty of packages that write CDG format, so the users creating the files are happy. It ain't gonna happen.

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[color=#ffff55]Mickey J.[/color]
Alas for those who never sing, but die with all their music in them.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Now I see your point. The singer doesn't care about the graphics format. The KJ might care about it if they understood it but.... The increased functionality would be useless to most. Basically "if it ain't broke don't fix it. "

Okay, that's one "NO" vote.

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Okay, who took my pants?

after going through the trouble of ripping thousands of songs from discs to hard drives; who now wants to go through the trouble of converting all of those songs to another format entirely. They would basically become VCD's and we all know what happened to that idea, as far as karaoke is concerned.

I think you both miss the point...

It all goes back to "Showmanship" What if your karaoke was named "Bruce's red hot karaoke" and with a copy and paste of some code, you could have a burning text effect like this..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpcUhWC6v30

Or Micky loved micky mouse, what if you could have a little animated mickey turning the letters like Vanna White?

And Bruce, you may not want to go through every single song, but like I said above, get an army of us dedicated to re-creating the lyric timings, share them centrally, and we could do this.

Mcky I gotta agree on using video. It would be too hard to get every hosting program out there to support some new format. Thing is though, rending the video would be left up to the KJ (since video files are insanely big) That way we'd save both bandwidth, and KJ's could add whatever transition effect they wanted to. They'd just have to download a small text file with all the text timing.

I don't particularly care for CDG because it's so butt ugly. I've been playing with aegisub for a few years now, and the effects are breathtaking sometimes.

Take a look at all the karaoke effects do-able with it.

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_q ... fects&aq=0

and again, I could probably re-time a few songs a week. If we had consensus on this, we could do it.

And weed, hope you don't mind me sort of hi-jacking this. I've been thinking along similar lines for a while.

This is relevant to my interest

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I can neither confirm nor deny ever having or knowing anything about nothing.... mrscott

There are quite a few formats out there that are much more superior to CDG but I think it's more of the company that makes these format want to protect them and try to force people to not change. You see other country having adopting quite a lot of different style. There are also LRC file go with MP3 like CDG except it uses text instead of graphic.

I remember a few months ago. There's a thread showing a software at http://walaoke.com with the ability to play a different formats but the thread was being deleted.

True, there is a lot of LRC but how much of it is already synced to true karaoke versions? I mostly see them named and synced to the original songs, which doesn't always time right with a karaoke reproduction.

Actually, I was thinking more along the lines for converting existing CDG files to text with timing data. A graphics to text ripper if you will, rather than re-timing all the graphics by hand.

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Okay, who took my pants?

James Taylor says..."But singing works just fine for me". I'm perfectly satisfied with CD+G. The "lyrics on fire" effect was totally distracting for me.

While it's true that that a lot of LRC that are synced to the original songs. It's the same that the people who makes a CDG version will have to create those timed lyrics anyway. But if they are to modify the LRC for their karaoke versions, it would be much better. Typos can be changed easily. No more boring and crappy text.

The special effect with fire and all that is cool to look at but the so when you are trying to sing but having better quality text is easier to the eye.

I know a lot of people don't like to have video background and all because they think it's a distraction. It's because many of them think they already know the words and don't need to have anything extra in the video. I already wondering why they even need the progressive highlight instead of just displaying the text if that's the case.

Since technology was not there before, we stuck with CDG. Now we are more capable and other country are adopting it. I wonder why we don't.

I have a friend who plays in a popular band. He's played on the big stage for years. When I showed him karaoke, he was wowed. He immediately wanted to up the production values, give it real sizzle. Knock people's socks off with DiamondVision screens, etc.

I finally got through to him -- karaoke is about the singers getting up and singing. There are 64 singing slots per show. Karaoke is self-limiting -- it isn't going to draw large numbers of high-dollar tickets. He was a bit deflated after spending all that energy trying to get me to see why it should *sizzle*.

I just don't see what spending large amounts of effort on production values do for you. Sure it's kind of whizzy, sure it's kind of nice. But playing a video at the song break with a snazzy effect or quick zinger, and you get basically the same thing. And the show is about the singers and how you relate to them. It isn't about video effects -- they are too busy watching the Wii bowling at the next table.

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[color=#ffff55]Mickey J.[/color]
Alas for those who never sing, but die with all their music in them.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.