Karaoke Forums

Hi,

Anyone running Karaoke off of these cheap external hard drives off of a laptop.  Any caching issues such as skipping, etc.

What software do you recommend to use?

Drawbacks going digital???

Can you display KJ rotation software and CDG simultaneously?

We have setup 3 laptop systems with laptops. Most software unzips the files into a folder into the internal HDD Hence no cache problems.. I never did a show with it but I have run wireless and acquires the songs from a tower.. No problems...


Roxbox...


Ripping the cd's

The cdg screen is made small and by selecting always on top it is displayed on the host screen..

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no problems with MY setup, but it depends on the laptop. ANYTHING underpowered might have performance issues. If you're trying to do TOO much such as other windows open, making karaoke files, antivirus, anything chewing up processor or memory power, yeah, you're going to have an occassional hiccup!

the karaoke software is almost always intended to have the cdg window in a 2ndary screen. Some recognize it and initialize the window, where in winamp, you just move the screen over to the 2nd video (tv).

Software is as individualistic as the people in the country!! lots of diversity, and no one REAL way to do it. Scan these threads... you'll see lots of varying ideas and reviews...

Only drawback currently with digital is those that compress to lower than 128 KBPS... and most won't go below 192 nowadays with the abundance of larger hard drives!

http://www.autokdj.com/

The above works quite well with WINAMP and, like Winamp is FREE (donations appreciated and accepted)  Before downloading AUTOKDK, I believe that you must first download WINAMP!  If you don't already have WINAMP, consider some of the plugins that are available for it.

I used a laptop with a LaCie USB hard drive.  This never actually happened during a show, but I was very paranoid about the power cable coming unplugged from the hard drive.  There was just something about their cable that I didn't like, the connection just didn't seem that secure.  I ended up buying a dedicated tower for karaoke, and if I ever have a catastrophe, I can use the laptop as a backup.

As for software, I use Sax & Dotty.  I was using autokdj, but I found that if you have a good sized library, when you are searching for a song, the video on the singers screen can hang a bit while it's searching.

Cheap????  I dunno about the cheap ones, but my maxtors work fine.  Caching issues would be a PC problem I use Sax & Dottys Show Presenter w/ WinampWent Digital a couple years ago, and no problems thus far.  I had more problems with CDs skipping from scratching/dust/smudges and bouncy floors.  Usualy the pople that have Karaoke PC problems are also using the PC for home use.  If you are going digital, you should have a decidated PC that is for Karaoke, and Karaoke only.  It shouldn't be use to let the kids play games on, surf the WWW, or any other things; JUST KARAOKE! Yes, if you have a computer that can do two displays with EXTENDED DESKTOP, not just dual monitors that show the same screen.