Karaoke Tool BoxBy Ken Wilson
In the last issue we covered PC based Karaoke programs, turning your PC into a Karaoke machine and CD+G compatible CD burners. So you downloaded WinCDG Pro, bought a CD+G compatible burner and hooked your PC into your stereo…now what? It sure would be nice to be able to display the lyrics window on a TV screen wouldn’t it? Okay, you need a video card with a ‘composite’ video connector. It’s also called a phono plug or RCA jack. This will allow you to plug in your PC monitor, and run a separate cord to your TV. I recommend the Matrox G550, www.matrox.com, an excellent video card with 2D and 3D acceleration, at well under $100, but many others are available. It is important to enable ‘dual monitor support’ and ‘extended desktop’ in your display properties. The video card manual will help you with this. You can always e-mail me at Sing@Croaky.org if you get stuck. Once you have this working properly, you can play Karaoke CD’s in your CD-ROM drive and watch the lyrics on TV, just like a real Karaoke machine. But what if you want to store your Karaoke CD’s on your hard drive? Well guess what? WinCDG Pro has a little known feature called KMF Lite, which will allow you to extract the music and lyrics from your Karaoke CD and store it on your hard drive much the same way MP3’s are stored. It compresses each song into a small file (about 4 megabytes) and plays it back with the same quality as the original CD. Cool huh? This probably won’t work very well on older systems, less than say 800 MHz, so if you really want to do this I suggest you upgrade your PC. Having lots of memory (RAM) is important too. No less than 256MB for optimum results. One component you will need that is not supplied with WinCDG is a ‘Lame’ or ‘Blade’ encoder. This is the program that compresses the file from 50 or 60 megabytes to just 4 or 5. You will have to download and install this file yourself. You can get it right from Croaky Entertainments’ Tool Box section at http://Croaky.org/toolbox/ Now that you have your home PC all geared up for Karaoke, you’re probably just busting to tell someone what a genius you are ;-) so I recommend a few Karaoke based message boards. http://Jolt.Karaoke.com is a good one, and so is our very own http://groups.yahoo.com/group/sandiegoskaraoke/ a local San Diego message board. This magazine has an excellent board too. Just drop in at http://www.sandiegoscene.com and click on ‘Messages’. You can also post a message to me at http://Croaky.org on our bulletin board. There is a wealth of Karaoke information out there on the Internet. Grab a cup of coffee and do a little surfing. You’ll be amazed at what you find! And don’t forget to drop in at http://Croaky.org and post a link for us if you find something really cool. Next issue we’ll take a look at making your own Karaoke disk from a regular music CD. See ya then! Ken Wilson
|