Karaoke Forums

I tried to save money by buying a less expenvie Book program.
Bad idea. JUNK! Now I need to buy the Latshaw program anyways.
I downloaded the Latshaw Song List Generator demo and fooled around with it and it is so far superior to the piece of trash Tricerasoft is selling it's funny. One of the main things that makes Latshaw's so much better is that the information used to create and format the book is drawn from the file names, not the tags. If all of your filenames are correct you have a very good book. I formatted EVERY filename {artist} - {title} - {manufacturer code}. Latshaw also has much more flexible formatting and layout capabilities. Most of the discs I ripped have terrible tag information or very little. I had to correct thousands of file names and put them into the format I wanted, a very tedious and lengthy project.

I also got to the point where I understood how to use KJFilemanager, it helped me a lot. Took me a little while to fool around with it before I got the hang of it, but it works well, does a lot and saved me many hours.

I have to say, "My hat is off to Mr. Latshaw!". Good job on the software you make-it works very well.

How much is the Latshaw program?

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I am the ONLY SANE 1 HERE

Latshaw's Song List Generator is very limited. If you want the best, this is it:
http://www.karaokeware.com/fasttracks.html

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Electro-Voice Evolve 50... Taking Sound To The Next Level.

I never liked any of the canned book makers. Usually have something wrong that i'd need to fix anyway. I like entering the data myself, if something is wrong, it's my fault and have no-one else to blame. Also helps me learn what I have as far as selection because I remember typing in the title & artist.

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

Thank you Alan. I just looked at their website and program features from your link.
It looks very good, but I have a question. Does it scan you computer or is it capable of scanning your computer to find what you have and then construct the book from that or do you need to tell the program what discs you have based on their database?

It makes me realize that selecting what book software you want to use should come before ripping and correcting filenames, it could save you a lot of time and work-I wish I would have realizd that when I started this project.

What would be even better is a ripping program that would access a database like this-one that is correct- and format every song ripped into the format you want like last name, first - title - CB etc. A lot of discs I ripped came up Track 1, Track 2 etc.

Even if it was in the format First name - Last - discID, KJfilemanager and Renamemaster can change the format to whatever you want or need. This would save countless hours.

What would be even better is if the maufacturers would have just taken a few minutes and put good filenames on the discs in the first place. That's dealing with ancient history though since the bulk of Karaoke songs and discs were created a long time ago.

You have to manually import your songs into FastTracks. You can do this by either entering the manufacturer's disc ID, or enter song titles manually. You are able to choose which format to use such as "CB1232-01 - Beatles, The - Let It Be". FastTracks works best as a companion to CompuHost. It then lets you export a CSV file (from CompuHost into FastTracks) where you'll be able to print your song books. The CSV file contains all of the songs you have cataloged in a designated folder for your hosting software (CompuHost). This makes creating songbooks a snap. I'm not sure if any other manufacturers hosting software will let you that, though.

Anyway, this is the combination I've always used and the two programs work beautifully together. Of course, everyone needs to find what works best for them. Good luck.

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Electro-Voice Evolve 50... Taking Sound To The Next Level.

I bought fasttracks and it is a very good piece of software. However, if I were a first time KJ starting out, I would still probably buy the latshaw product.

Why? because the editing features of fasttrack SUCK MAJOR you know what.

Every software I have tested has proper multi-edit features EXCEPT fasttracks. Case in point, if I want change all the tracks that have a ", The" in the title, with Fastracks, I have doto either do it on a per disc, or for each artist.. It won't just search through my whole catalag and change everything.

Make a mistake entering a series of discs? There is no way to delete a series of tracks, you have to do it one disc at a time. Sometimes its just faster to completely start over, altho this seems like a complete waste of time.

Despite having voiced this concern, and seeing others do the same, Invicion refuses to budge on this issue.

KJFile Manager is simply the best IMHO. I have tried them all (and bought them all). KJF manager has the best editing features. I wish they would add song book data. I use KJPro for the file names, which seems to be most common. KJPro uses "Last Name, First Name", but with KJF Mgr I just comma flip the names to "First Name Last Name".

mrmarog, the more I use KJfilemanager, the more features I find that can help me. I just figured out that once you have all your file names correct, you can have KJFM write all the tags for the artist, title and album. This is a big deal to me and a very smart feature to have. Saves a lot of time and typing. The comma flip artist has saved me MANY hours.

I agree, KJ file manager is great for editing and a great program.

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Electro-Voice Evolve 50... Taking Sound To The Next Level.