Karaoke CD+G support?

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

Your trac account is deactivated. And CDG should appear as a registered format in the GUI.

[luke]

Wow, thanks for the Wow, thanks for the rapid reply. AFAIK selecting the mp3 didn't get the CDG to play. I'll try again tonight with the vlc-0.9.0-svn-20071024-0000-win32 nightly build and report back any problems and enter them into trac.

Thanks

- Luke

[luke]

I just tried with vlc-0.9.0-svn-20071025-0000 and all the problems I described still seem to be present. I'll be entering them into trac shortly. Is anybody else having any luck playing CDG with the nightly builds?

Thanks
- Luke

[jeffsw6]

Dear VideoLAN Team,

I was pleased to see some work on CD+G support in VLC. I would love to use VLC to play and transcode CD+G files. I tried the latest nightly build available to me on the web site, vlc-0.9.0-git-20080320-0003-win32. I opened an MP3 file and it automatically found the CDG subtitles file. Selecting the subtitle file manually also produces both the audio and video (CDG) playback. Using the transcode wizard does not work, and produces the below error text for me. I assume the GUI is building the command string incorrectly?

Code: Select all

File reading failed: VLC could not open the file ""M:\karaoke\T\Tim McGraw\If You're Reading This.mp3" :sub-file="M:/karaoke/T/Tim McGraw/If You're Reading This.cdg" :subsdec-align=0 :freetype-rel-fontsize=16". Your input can't be opened: VLC is unable to open the MRL '"M:\karaoke\T\Tim McGraw\If You're Reading This.mp3" :sub-file="M:/karaoke/T/Tim McGraw/If You're Reading This.cdg" :subsdec-align=0 :freetype-rel-fontsize=16'. Check the log for details.

In the two cases where playback works, the audio works perfectly. The video appears on the screen but only the left-most 1/4th of the video is displayed, and that 1/4th is repeated four times adjacently from left to right. The remaining right-most 3/4th of the content is not shown on the display. I wish I could get the transcode "working" so I could supply an example of the output.

In addition to the video output error, CPU use seems very high while playing MP3+CDG. These figures are relative to my hardware, of course, but I see about 4% CPU usage when playing mpeg4+AAC (iTunes-compatible) videos in VLC. Playing MP3+CDG uses about 25% CPU.

I would be happy to supply a CDG file (as some others have offered) for the developer who has worked on CD+G support, or would also PayPal them so they can purchase a karaoke song from a web site so their test content is properly licensed. I can test this again anytime as well.

Kind regards

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

So basically it works when this is automatic but not if you do it by hand ?

Probably a GUI issue, yes.

About CPU power, well, I think this is difficult to do, sorry, we have to build images from text in CDG...

Can you produce the conmplete log ?

[jeffsw6]

So basically it works when this is automatic but not if you do it by hand ?

It does not work correctly in any instance; see details:

The transcode wizard does not work at all for CD+G. It produces the error messages in my above post. I don't know how to get more log information for you, as I have not used VLC from the command prompt, but I would be happy to try if someone posts instructions.

The ordinary player "works" in that audio and video is produced, but the video is broken. That's what I meant about the left-most 1/4th of the CD+G text content being displayed four times side-by-side on the screen, and the other 3/4th of the content is not being drawn at all. I assume this is a codec issue, and if someone can assist me with the proper command-line arguments to get VLC to transcode the MP3/CD+G into a format I can reference here, I believe we would find that out, and you would be able to see what I am talking about regarding the broken video output.

About CPU power, well, I think this is difficult to do, sorry, we have to build images from text in CDG...

I don't mean to complain about the CPU use; I just thought it might be a symptom. I assumed decoding mpeg4 video would be more CPU-intensive than CD+G.

Can you produce the conmplete log ?

I would be happy to supply any additional output you believe would be helpful if someone on the thread can assist me with the VLC command-line arguments.

Kind regards,

[jeffsw6]

I think my problem with CD+G output may not be specific to the CD+G decoder. I am experiencing what I think is an identical problem when using the "Goom" visualizer under the audio menu in VLC. I have this problem in the 20080320-0003 nightly build as well as the 2008-04-03-0909 nightly I just installed.

I hope this is helpful; I am really looking forward to being able to use VLC for MP3+G playback.

[juanbro]

FYI - I just tried vlc-git-powerpc-20080502-0306.zip on Mac OS X 10.4.10. VLC automatically opens a video window and begins playing the mp3 but crashes before any lyrics can be displayed.

[DGMurdockIII]

im getting same error it crashes

[kg4dhz]

I have written my own DOS based CD+G software, and can help make this a possible format.

3 formats that would help, WAV+CDG, MP3+CDG and BIN formats..

I can provide info on the BIN format if needed..

[jeffsw6]

I have written my own DOS based CD+G software, and can help make this a possible format.

Please do! I am really not happy with the available karaoke players. If they aren't buggy they are hard to use or lack obvious features. I actually convert songs into iTunes movies and play from it. It doesn't have a singer history (obviously, since it is not meant for karaoke) and the songs take up more disk space this way, but at least the thing works correctly and is easy to use.

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

Then, help us hacking it

[holmesworcester]

Running today's nightly (8/14/08) playback works great. Two things:

1) The playback slider actually works better than most karaoke apps I've tried, which always seem to throw the lyrics out of sync with the music. If you're going to start drawing the screen fresh (without trying to figure out what was "already" on the screen) maybe it would be best to clear the visual each time someone touches the slider, so that old words don't interfere with the new stuff being drawn.

2) My main interest is in transcoding. In the latest nightly, I can't get the transcode wizard to create a file. If I don't select local playback, I see some disk activity but no progress indication in the playback bar and no file in the folder I specify. If I set local playback, playback works great, but there's still no file.

Seems like this is a bug with transcode. I can't get it to work for a .wav to .mp3 conversion either. Any idea when this will be fixed?

Thanks!

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

1) Fill a bug with details, please.

2) Does transcoding from a file to a file work ?

3) If you could document the playback on our wiki, that would be awesome.... Really...

[john]

It works fine for me, any chance we can get zip support?
This way when someone clicks on the zip file, the file could be unpacked into memory and loaded from there.
That would be Kick ass

[Nerd42]

I am very excited that this is being worked on. But this is really buggy. If you skip to different parts of the song, VLC Media player skids the sound and sometimes crashes. Very bad. WinAmp's CDG plugin doesn't have any similar problem - you can skip to different parts of a song with no problems. Any idea why VLC is doing this and/or how to fix it?

[VLC_help]

If VLC crashes on skipping, it is prolly a bug in VLC.

[fishbox]

Does the cdg playback work well when seeking is not done?

I would be willing to donate some bucks on paypal to get this fine-tuned. Zip support would be nice, but not necessary, but the ability to do key change (chromatic scale increase and decrease in pitch) would be beautiful!

Thanks,

Ryan

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

Give more samples and fill bugs if you want to help...

[DGMurdockIII]

is this fixed

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

Did you read my post?

[Nerd42]

You want us to upload a karaoke track? *shrug* OK

I made these two weird al karaoke tracks

All mirrors point to the same file. Use 7-zip to open. http://7-zip.org/
http://sharebee.com/3224518b
http://www.uploadjockey.com/download/95 ... araoke.zip
http://www.rapidspread.com/file.jsp?id=wmw6b6vt8q
http://qooy.com/files/0CA07D7E/Weird%20Al%20Karaoke.7z

[DGMurdockIII]

did you look at those files

[davea0511]

Sweet, Nerd42. Worked great. Any suggestion where there's a good place for me to learn how to make my own cdg files?

[kg4dhz]

The problem, under normal circumstances, VLC 1.1.1 will play a .mp3+.cdg combo when it is not zipped. When it is zipped, it plays them in order found, one then the other, but not together.

the .zip standard is that the internal filenames should match the zip name.

Can this be added in?

I'd do it, but I have way too many projects rolling right now.. and I absolutely love the VLC program!!