Thank you for paying attention to this software! Karaoke for DirectShow is a an excellent solution for MIDI karaoke file playback by standard means such as Windows Media Player.
Capabilities and features of Karaoke for DirectShow:
Limitations:
Installation is extremely simple: download distribution archive, open it to a temporary folder (for example, c:\temp). Run install.bat. That's it!
The simplest way to open a karaoke file is to double-click it. Once installation succeeded, Windows Media Player starts to play file.
Another way you can start Windows Media Player (or any other DirectShow application) and to open the file desired or to drag-and-drop it over the player.
User can control colors, font and geometry of the drawn text. To do it you should open filter property page. There are two ways for it.
Open Control Panel and find Karaoke Filter icon, click it and set up the appearance in accordance to your preferences.
When playing a file in Windows Media Player 6.4, you can access the same property page directly from File/Properties menu on the page dedicated to the filters. Note that some of the settings will not take effect until next file opened.
Lines is the number of text lines to display on the page.
Read line is the ordinal number of the last line to highlight. When highlighting reaches this line the text scrolls up
Columns is the number of columns in line on the page. When a line longer than Columns characters is received, it is wrapped.
Ribbon is designated to show the time remaining to the next syllable to sing. This is useful when you sing a new song and don't know when singing resume.
Note: pulsation ribbon, though is a decorative widget, consumes lots of computer resources. When filter does not produces good quality video, try to turn ribbon off.
Just like any other video-related software, Karaoke for DirectShow requires significant system resouces, no wonder they may prove to be insufficient. To tune Karaoke for your system use the Karaoke Property page, the same as in case of Appearance setting. Below you can find explanation of the adjustable parameters and setting recommendations:
Show pulse ribbon - The ribbon eats up much of CPU time since it requires to redraw it frequently to imitate its contraction. When you run a week machine, try checking it off.
Frames per second - This parameter makes sense only with ribbon on, otherwise, the filter chooses the optimal rate itself. And even when ribbon is on this value serves just as a starting point, during the playback actual rate will be increased or decreased automatically.
Fixed size frames - When unchecked the size of karaoke window (and hence font size) is calculated automatically in accordance to player requests - the wider the better. However, it may be unsuitable for high resolutions, for the larger window is the more time and resources are consumed for its redrawing. Moreover, switching to full screen mode high-resolution may be too hard a work even for computers fast enough. To avoid such problems you can demand fixed size frames. For instance, you enjoy playing video at 320x200 resolution, be sure to specify these dimensions on the karaoke property page.
Other parameters that may affect perfomance. Do not set too big lines number per frame. 5-7 is quite enough. The bigger the number is the more time is taken for their redrawing.
As any other Windows program, Karaoke filter may be removed thru' Control Panel. When uninstalling executable may be still in use by a program and it won't be deleted from file system. You should delete it manually later from the corresponding location: ?:\winnt\system32\karaoke.ax (on Windows 2000/XP) or ?:\windows\system\karaoke.ax (on Windows 98/Me).
If you faced an unexpected situation - error message, hang-up or wrong file playback, please, report the problem to the developer galchenko@yahoo.com. Please send as much info about your problem as possible so that the developer might help you. Attach the karaoke file that the caused problem.
| Q: | What is MIDI (Musical Instruments Digital Interface) file? |
| A: | MIDI file, to be short, is a sequence of notes to be played on a musical device, for example, internal or external synthezier. Every modern sound card has its internal synthezier, this allows playing MIDI files. MIDI files naturally have .mid extension and sometimes .rmi |
| Q: | What is MIDI-based karaoke? |
| A: | MIDI file format permits to store lyrics along with notes, moreover, the lyrics is time-stamped so that text and music could be synchronized. Karaoke files usually have .kar extension. |
| Q: | What is DirectShow filter? |
| A: | Microsoft Corporation supports and develops multimedia technology called DirectX. DirectX includes high-perfomance and high-quality graphics (for example, for computer games), video and sound. DirectShow (formerly ActiveMovie) is a technology for managing audio and video content. DirectShow divides data processing into several stages. Each stage is worked out in a separate program: the first module retrieves data from network connection or reads it from hard disk; the second parses data and separates audio from video into independent streams; the third plays audio; the fourth draws video... In DirectShow terminology each such module - program - is called "filter". Such approach gives versatility and reusability to the filter. For example, a filter written for parsing AVI files may be used for playback and for video editing. |
| Q: | What are Wavetable and its software emulation? |
| A: |
Unfortunately FM synthesis offers you rather mean quality for MIDI
music. You can improve it by installing a daughterboard of wave-table
synthesis, but new sound cards have wavetables builtin.
If you don't have money or desire to buy wavetable daughter board you can acquire program emulation for it. There are certain programs which do the same as wavetable boards, however, as every program, they consume CPU time and weak machines (like 486s) may prove to be unable to run both wavetable emulation and MIDI player. But Pentium 133 is already quite enough. |
| Q: | Where can I get karaoke files? |
| A: | On the net. Try these links:
|
All your comments, wishes, bug-reports send to galchenko@yahoo.com.
Fresh updates of this software and may be of something else you may find at the web site karaoke.km.ru
Although this software is absolutely free, support is welcome :)
DirectShow, DirectX, Microsoft, Windows, Windows Media Player are registered trade marks of Microsoft Corporation.