Sage advice needed, please!

[dnuttall]

I'm a long-time MS and UNIX professional/hobbyist, but have an urgent need to convert my retirement hobby of singing karaoke in nursing homes from Win7 to a pristine Macbook Pro (early 2011) with Snow Leopard.

I've installed VLC player 2.1.4. I've been thwarted by the default assumption that *.m3u files are for iTunes, although when I start VLC and then open the playlist, the playlist works fine. I assume there may be a way to reverse the default from iTunes to VLC, but not sure how that works.

I'm in the process of making videos with sync'ed lyrics that I would like to be able to present in dual screen mode. What's not clear is whether a VLC player will show the full screen video on an external monitor and a playlist and video/lyrics on the Macbook's screen.

I think I will probably use either a Mac-to-VGA-out to the nursing home monitor because I think pushing the audio through my own PA system (with my mic) will be better than trying to control the sound level that would probably be sent via HDMI to the big-screen and then have an audio-levels mismatch with my mic.

If I can get this to work, then I won't need to get Parallels and another copy of Win7 to have the library of stuff that the residents clamor to hear. We do just about any pop song that's ever been made into karaoke, so long as it was popular before 1985 or 1990 at the latest. Average age is 75+.

Would love to get suggestions regarding the optimization of VLC...but ONLY if they'll work on Snow Leopard, since I also use that Macbook to record in ProTools 9 and PTools9 won't run under Mavericks!

TIA.
Dave Nuttall
San Antonio, Texas