Karaoke Forums

I have a question in regards to the vocopro V Bank firstly has anyone used it?
If so how have you found this machine top be in a professional situation only.
I was leaning towards a laptop but have been told by a karaoke supplier that these are not recommended for karaoke hosting.
I would appreciate your thoughts and suggestions
If I did go with the laptop what software should I use to rip Laser discs as well as my normal cd+g discs
What software do you recommend and if I use a computer I don’t want the audience to see me operating on the computer on the big screen are there two separate screens one for the audience and one for the operator.

I run a laptop with zero issues. Have been doing so for 2 years. I would not have changed laptops but my first one got stolen. I now have it locked up when not in use. But no issues on it lasting me. If you're worried about overheating use a laptop cooling pad. I use an external to store my music. You can do so much more with a laptop than the VocoPro and VocPro isn't a recommended brand anyway as some here will tell you.

You can DJ with a laptop. Keep track of your rotation with certain softwares and other things that make the laptop a better choice than a hard drive player like the VocoPro.

You are going to get varying recommendations for software. I use Compuhost but there is also Karma, JustKaraoke, Swift Elite, Karaoki, Sax & Dotty's, RoxBox, Siglos Professional and MTU' Hoster. All have demo's. Try them all and then decide which one has the features you want in a Hosting Program.

Oh yeah and before I forget, most laptops have dual Display capabilities. So on your main laptop screen you have your program control panel and on the other is your singer's display

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

Thank you Danny for your reply
I will try these programs out
What software would you recommend that will rip my big old Laser 12 inch discs and vcds as well as cd+g

I edited my post above while you responded so see my response on hosting programs.

As to copying your laser discs and VCD's I am not sure how to do that as I only run CD+G. For CD+G I run two programs to rip depending on my needs. CDGRip form the makers of CompuHost is my main one and I also use PowerKaraoke if I run into a mediacloq disc.

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

There is a program that will rip video discs called VJripper but I think it's only for DVD's.

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

I have never had a problem running laptop or pc for my shows.
As far as laserdiscs, I bought a program called Snappysoft and you will need a video capture device hooked to your computer. But it is time consuming as you have to rip them in real time and name the files as you go - worth it when it's done though. MTU Hoster plays and catalogs the videos perfectly into it's search along with the regular cdgs.
As far as hosting software, it's purely subjective to what your needs are. Most of them have demos out to try out beforehand. Not many will actually play video files so check that out as well.

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LIKE Lonman on Facebook - Lonman Productions Karaoke & my main site via my profile!

Anyone whose telling you that a computer is not good for hosting karaoke is trying to sell you something that is within inches of becoming obsolete. You'll find the vast majority of hosters here use computers for their hosting and I don't know anyone that would want to go any other direction.

As far as converting your Laserdiscs, you'd have to have a laserdisc player and a television encoder interface that you could play it through to record it on the computer. As Lon said this would be a long tedious process as each one would have to be played and recorded real time. If you have enough of a laserdisc library, it may be worth the effort to save you some serious cash, but you'll have to decide on that.

Hope that helps.

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DJ Tony
Let It Rip Karaoke

most songs that were on laser discs have already been produced in CDG Format so I would just try to replace them that way. After all, time is money. At this point in time; I don't think that ther are many songs that have been lost on laser.

While this is true, many singers still prefer the laserdisc recordings over the cdg's. I tried removing the laserdiscs from my library a few years ago while replacing the versions with cdgs (thinking song manu wasn't a huge issue), I almost had a singer revolution on my hands .

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Yep, they LIKE the videos for sure,, especially ones like "Linda Rondstadt's Blue Bayou",,, if ya don't know what I am referring to,, watch the Pioneer video, and go to the end,, you will laugh yourself silly..

Laptops are the best way to go. I wouldn't EVER want to do anything different at this point in time.

Ah good ol 7-A-1, yeah this is a fun one to introduce to new crowds - especially since out of all the karaoke around here, I can count on one hand the kj's that still run video.

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Okay. Then just download them from the internet. If you already own the discs, there shouldn't be any legal issues to deal with when you play them at your shows. Pioneer is out of the karaoke business anyway so I don't think they'll be sending anyone around to check on KJs that are playing mpg files from their PC.

Except the problem with downloaded videos is the quality to begin with. I actually thought about this, but listened to and looked at a sample and it plain sucked. secondly the entire collection is not out there plus I have discs from other manus besides Pioneer as well. So doing it myself - although time consuming, yielded much better results in both sound and visual and I kept my entire collection.

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Hello everyone
Thank you so much for your response you have all been wonderful.
So each of you, what is your favorite hosting program and why.
I have a program on my home computer for fun its called karawin. I don’t think it would be functional enough to host shows. I have never tried though.
I have started looking at the trial versions you have all recommended.
This is what else I would like to do.
I make lots of my own backing using midi in calkwalk then convert to wav,or mp3 once this is done I use a lyrics editing program write the words then add the guitar chords timestamp then save it to the wav file or mp3 file.
It then plays just like karaoke in karawin with the chords. I thought it could be fun to add these file to the host program and take a guitar along for people who can actually play guitar something different. I have now tried these files in Compu host, Kama and just karaoke none of them read the lyrics part that I have produced. What would you do to change it so that it can be read? I saved the word files on note pad and saved a cdg exact same name a wav or mp3 then zipped. I have another question does anyone use mac computers to host shows if you do what programs do you use.
God I have just read what I have written if my grandfather was alive he would think I was from Mars haven’t we come along way in the last 5 years with technology.

Too many threads with this question. Only answer is try them yourself - most have demos.
http://www.karaoke-forum.com/viewtopic.php?t=20629

If it's a true cdg file named the same as the mp3/wav, it should play in any of those players, if not I am thinking it's not a correct cdg format.

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I just checked up on those laser discs. They take up more than a GIG for each 28 song disc. Lets just round it out to 30 GBs of space for roughly 560 songs. Yikes!!! The same songs in cdg format ripped at 128 would only take up about a little more than 2GB. I'll pass on those.

Did You make any Springsteen songs on Cakewalk???? Just asking. . I'd make the graphics files for them if they were songs I didn't have already.

Yep my entire collection took 250gb by themselves. Good thing I have a large hard drive to accomodate.


Good thing you don't have to do it! But really not a big deal with todays hard drives, 2TB for $100, not an issue anymore.
I wouldn't rip at 128 anymore, this was fine when hard drive space was expensive. My 120gb drive cost me over $400 5 years ago but it was a 'big' drive back then. I am actually thinking about re-ripping everything into wav+g files - especially with hard drives being as cheap as they are these days.

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At present I have done Palao Nutini stuff and some melissa etheridge, cold play, Pink what are you looking for in springsteen

Two things. First off hard drive space is cheap. You can get terabytes of space in the $100-200 range, so the space they take up would be the least of my concerns if it were me. Second, who is ripping at 128k anymore? The artifacts from compression are very audible at 128k, so to anyone thinking of ripping discs I'd suggest higher quality than that. I used to rip all mine at 192k and have since moved that up to 256k. There's no reason to sacrifice quality for hard drive space.

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DJ Tony
Let It Rip Karaoke