Just wonderin' how many of you guys use computers at gigs.
I am doing it for the first time on Saturday, and any tips would be welcome.
(I am taking 2 cd players just in case).
I am a bit nervous as it was only yesterday that I sorted the display out.
I have an old geforce2 card and was pleasantly surprised that it is fairly easy to set up with winamp and media player on my monitor, and the karaoke words only on the t.v's.
I am just worried about it being unstable, with windows disappearing, or apps popping up on the t.v !!!
Just in case you are intersted, if you have any sort of geforce card, go to nvidia.com and download the latest drivers and desktop manager help file, and have a mess around.
Oh, one last thing, I am still tinkering, but I can't get rid of the border round the karaoke words. In other words, it is a window and not quite a full screen. If u know how to get full screen, please let me know.

Cheers.

bluntfingers

you'll have no problem running this system.
to get full screen just doublel click on it with mouse or F11 on keyboard.
goodluck:beer:

you might want to download pacemaker plugin so you can chage pitch / speed etc.
good luck
Rob

I currently use a laptop for my gigs and a lcd monitor. I'm in the USA

yep, I think a laptop is the way to go.
At the moment, it looks like I will be lugging all the disco/karaoke gear, plus my tower pc and 17" monitor.
p.s I am off work sick at the moment with a bad back.:D

wear a disguise if you gig soon.. haha

The back police will be out

Everything went well !!
no major mistakes at all.
I was still nervous as hell though !!
kept looking up at the screens to make sure the words had not disappeared !!!!.

Haha.. good job...... I was nervous at first with the pc gigs but now its a piece of cake. Its like second nature now.

I have been thinking about PC Karaoke & Disco for sometime now, can anyone recommend a good setup ie processor / sound card / graphics card etc etc..

Davem1919

any modern pc is good enough. eg athlon or p4 2 gig.
a soundblaster live card for less than 30 quid is excellent.
I recommend any nVidia card with a tv out, such as geforce 2,3 or 4 or fx5200.
The reason is that there is some excellent free software on nvidia.com, specifically for managing desktops.
e.g I have winamp to play the mp3/cdg and I have set it so that the words come up on the t.vs, and the 'computery' stuff stays on my monitor.
it works very well, (well it did on saturday anyway!! he he he), and contrary to what I had heard in the past, you do NOT need an expensive 'dual head' graphics card.
oh....I still have a border around my words, and cannot set it to full screen for some reason, so any help on this would be appreciated.
good luck djdavem.

oh..... p.s
I was using normal cd players for the inbetween bits, but I am very tempted by this pcdj program.
could anybody respond as to whether it is possible to jump between karaoke and music or track to track as easy as it is with a 'real' mixer desk with faders.
The reason I ask is that everything normally seems really fiddly to me with other programs I have used.
eg just fading from one track to another is a real pain, and as for fading from a media player song to a winamp karaoke track......forget it !! I haven't got three hands.

I believe there are compatibility issues with PCDJ and some makes of laptop, I might be mistaken. Could anyone post a sticky with regards to this, playing cdg on laptop and outputting to TV display. Is it possible to have dual display, i.e. on laptop screen and tv output? Any help would be appreciated.

I have been running a PC based system for over a year now.

My main comment is "why use a laptop?"

I have a small platform PIII PC, which is about the size of a VCR, that has allowed me an easy an inexpensive upgrade path, and works great.

When it comes time to upgrade that laptop, you could have bought 3 or 4 of these small platform PC's, and had a better, more stable system.

I added a quality sound card, and a video-in card to mine, so I can feed VCR, DVD, etc. into the PC for added effects...music videos and sports stuff.

Run an digital to analog converter which ties to VGA plug between monitor and TV screens.

My system fits into a standard gig box with a server tray LCD display drawer with keyboard and trackball.

Anyway, when you need that 200 gig laptop hard drive, put the money into a standard desktop in small platform and take a nice vacation with the money left over.

Thats exactly the input I wanted anybody else want to put their case? I have swayed between a laptop and an old tower that I have sitting here with an external hard drive just gotta load up with mp3+g, winamp3 and try it out, thoroughly soak testing it, wish me luck, lol.

oxocubeman,

That old tower should get you going, but may be a bit combersome to gig with.

I tested the theory of going PC based for my shows with an old IBM Thinkpad P 133. It got the job done...at least to prove out the theory.

Thing is, once I played around with the whole thing, I decided I wanted to be able to do full motion video with music, and a few other special effects, so I opted for a good quality work station PC. I would suggest that as you look at it, either build your own or buy a work station PC and upgrade it for karaoke. The work station PC's are tougher, but not set up for audio/video, etc. A good sound card is a must. USB ports are helpful for backing up HD, and for connecting secondary hard drive when yours crashes during a show. Hasn't happened to me yet, but I am prepared.

Boy scout, eh? I toyed with the idea of a shuttle case, the one with the handle but in the end it worked out as dear as a base only unit.I don't have that many venues and the tower could stop at the main weekly one so portability wouldnt be a problem. You say "good" sound card i.e. soundblaster ?? and as to video card what would be the minimum? A TFT monitor is on the list too, I suppse?

trust me, dont waste money on sound and graphics cards, a sound blaster live for less than £30 is easily good enough, and as for graphics, what graphics??, as long as it has tv out and has the software to get different piccies on different screens (plug for nVidia again), it will do.
Honest, I have a good geforce 4 and a 2 year old geforce 2 that is worth about 2 quid, and there is no difference....it's all in the software.
spend the dough on a tough p.c and lots of hard drive space.
am I wrong people ??

You see what I mean, good discussion this but throws up one more point. What software are you talking about? I have a Nvidia card but how to get it to display on monitor AND t.v. I assume theres updated drivers but is that all there is to it/ Doesnt winamp have some method to split its display? I have searched on the net for tutorials but thin on the ground. We need more input, I am sounding more like 5 alive, lol.On the Nvidia site right now, think I can see where youre coming from. I have just installed XP on the old system, have 25 days left before activations ruins things and have to take my spare copy of XP out again so time is of the essence and I will install new drivers to-morrow.

the software is called forceware 52.16, it's under drivers.
also get the desktop manager user guide, it is called nView 3.0 .
Can't remember which page it's on but it's there somewhere.

Nview I found under search along with the managers guide. Reading them l8er tonight, thanks.

Here's what I found. On board sound sucks. Cheap sound cards are also a problem. I was getting buzzing noises over sound system with on board sound. Installed a Turtle Beach card and cleaned it up. Quality equalizer with card lets me taylor sound to venue.

Video is an issue if you want to do more than just Karaoke. True you don't need much to do just karaoke. But, I run DVD's VCD's MPEGs, etc. This takes some on board ram and good video card. What's the point of running from PC if you don't use the whole gambit of Multi-Media available. You can put on one hell of a professional quality show, when your TV's come up with full motion music videos during breaks, etc.

As far as getting the video to the tv's, I use an AverMedia digital to analog converter, rather than a dual port or TV out video card. I find that it is more versatile, and has better adjustments. It has zoom, so I run the karaoke screen a the smallest size in the top left corner of my desktop. Zoom the picture to that spot, and you can run your show from the rest of the screen. I hold my karaoke, music, and video folders open together, and click on what I want.

I also sized my screen saver to the same size window in the upper left corner. Once the song completes, there is a slide show running underneath, that tells of upcoming events, encourages the singers, runs the rules, or what ever you want. I change it out to something different every night.

nice one !
just when I thought I knew it all...... :)
better get some video stuff knocked together he he he.

Go for Alcatech's BPM Studio for your MP3 player. Very stable, professional & easy to use. Can get on Kazza or similar to try out.

Any chance of more info on the AverMedia Converter please m8.

£40 in Maplins for one type, just go to their site and type Avermedia in the search box, looks good to me. You could also try www.aver.com, you just seem to plug your monitor into one end and choose what ouput type you want.

If you go to a digital to analog converter make sure it has the zoom feature with sizing. Some of the cheaper ones won't let you do this. Mine is an older one, and has a remote that let's you size, focus, adj brightness, sharpness, etc.

Also, my slide show under the karaoke window, is running on my destop, not with screen saver. That was an error in my previoous post.

CAUTION, I bought an avermedia scan convertor from Maplins, and it was cr*p.
I took it back the next day, as the output to the t.v was terrible, and it made my monitor display shake.
Maybe it was faulty????
Anyhoo, I was put off by it, and went for the graphics card with t.v out option.
I guess we're never gonna agree 100% on this one !!
I have to say though, I have a lead going from the t.v out on the graphics card, to a scart adapter which is pluged into another adapter which is plugged into a portable telly for the singers, then a wire comes from the first adapter to a projecter in the bar, so it is a bit messy I suppose.
(Oh, the adapters sag a bit so I prop them up with a pair of my daughters' socks!!)he he he.

I do like the idea of video stuff for the inbetween bits though.
Are we talking pop videos? home made slide shows? or porn?
he he he

bluntfingers,

That's why I suggested not to buy the low end digital to analog converters...they aren't very good, and they don't have many features. Mine is an AverKey I think it is the gold version. This is a box that plugs into the VGA port between your monitor and the PC. It's not that little funky remote looking thingy that plugs into USB port. Be careful! The AverKey boxes are designed to run any video sorce to any output. They come with cables for just about every possible combination.

It gives me an excellent picture on the TV. It has overscan and underscan, with zoom. The sharpness, contrast and brightness are adjustable. From an 800x600 PC resolution, the tv screen image is better than normal broadcast at full screen. You can size the picture to the screen perfectly. It works great. On the zoomed image you are working with a box that is 352x288, which is the karaoke standard. This image is slightly better than the base tv scan of 270, so there is no image degradation.

The remote control makes it really easy to set up. You can stand in front of the screen(s) and tune it like your tv at home.

Anyway, as long as you get the results you want from the video card, that's all that matters. When I tried it some time ago, I got a screen that was not centered and had a black border around it. It looked really crappy, and there were no instructions or features to fix it.

Try this link to digital to analog converter:

http://www.aver.com/products/comptv_AVerKey300gold.shtml

gulp, I still got the border !! (but trying to fix it.)
If anybody has read the desktop managers guide from nVidia better than me please let me know how to get full screen on the second output !!
I'll certainly check out that link as your box sounds 100% better than the rubbish that I had.
Anyhoo, is anyone COMPLETELY computerized ?? eg song, to karaoke, to song, to karaoke, ALL from PC, or are we all playing CD's for filler music??
I would be interested if there is an EASY way to achieve it, because, as I mentioned before, running winamp and media player was impossible for me.

If you set up Winamp as your media player, and click all of the media options, it will play everything from CD to DVD.

That's the way I run it, and I have a folder window open for Karaoke, Music, and Videos on my destop side by side. When a karaoke song is selected I go to the karaoke window, find the cd folder, song, and click on it. Winamp plays it from the zoomed window on my pc screen on the tv screen full size.

If I want to play a cd or video, I pick the folder, song, and click on it, and it plays in Winamp. Note: All of my music has a graphic file of some sort attached, so it plays in CDG. If I put a cd in my cdrom drive, it automatically comes up in Winamp (shows all selections). If you just had a folder of MP3's for music, you could run it with a window open for selecting songs.

At the beginning of a night, if I'm there early, I will pull directories into Winamp and select random. This is like loading a bunch of CD's into a changer, and it will play continuous with random order.

Anyway, I hear a lot of the folks on here select the karaoke directory into Winamp and then type the song number to get it up. I like the window option, then you can have all of your stuff available. It takes a second longer to cue up a song. You have to locate the CD folder, then the song. Mine are numbered 1-600, with the songs as they are on the disk. So someone selects Disk 423 - Song 10, go to Folder 423 Song 10. I have all my songs named and numbered, so I can verify that I have the right one.

Hope this helps.

I was thinking, one of the cool things about having file windows open, is you can be ready with the next song before the last one completes. A lot of times, people will have walked off the stage, and the karaoke song is still going. I will overlap music on top of this by starting the song from my file window. It's a cheap mixer/fader. Kind of DJing. It works the other way too, you can start a Karaoke song over the end of a music song or, in the middle if you were just trying to get the crowd going. It really fills the dead spots in your show.

eep.
my reply has gone astray
see "hey dee jay" on the main page !