Quicktime Export Quality

Just talk about kJams stuff with each other, describe things you did that worked, talk about your setup, anything that doesn't fit into the other forums!
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blucaso
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Joined: Mon Nov 13, 2006 10:04 pm

Quicktime Export Quality

Post by blucaso »

Hello again!

Ok, so I quickly capitulated and purchased KJams Lite after trying it out with my new Plextor External drive.

Now the question is how to integrate a show. Right now I am extremely reliant on MegaSeg - I use it for virtually everything in my DJ shows, and I would like to see about integrating Karaoke without having to run 2 programs.

At the moment, it seems that the best way to do that is to export the Karaoke files to Quicktime, and then index these into MegaSeg with a "Karaoke" category tag. This way I can simply hook up a video monitor and use MegaSeg as my Karaoke player, right?

I'm guessing there must be some who are already doing this. What options are you using to run an actual Karaoke Show in MegaSeg? In other words, is the KJams lite export sufficient quality to put up on a big screen? Is the audio quality good enough?

I'm particularly concerned that KJams is ripping to MP3, and then compressing the MP3 audio to Quicktime, giving a double-lossy effect, but I haven't played around with it enough to know.

Would the trick mentioned in the "Burning" section of the Wiki also work for Quicktime export? In other words, if I import a disc, and then Convert to Quicktime, will it do so from the Cache in full quality? Then all I would need is to balance the Quicktime settings for quality vs. size.

Sorry for the extra-long post, but I want to get some feedback from others before I start a process and realize it's all wrong and I have to do it over again!! :D

Thanks for any feedback...

dave
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You are correct

Post by dave »

Does MegaSeg manage rotations? (a rotation is not just a playlist) Does it manage multiple venues with different / overlapping sets of singers per venue? Does it allow singers to keep a list of favorites, history, and their own Que to sing tonight? Does it let singers individually set pitch / tempo for their songs, and keep that list and settings forever? I assume that MegaSeg can pitch bend (pitch shift?) QuickTime movies on the fly without affecting tempo and vice versa? If it can't do all that and you're trying to run a pro Karaoke show you're better off just using kJams. Please request all the features you use in MegaSeg so i can get them all into kJams :)

MP3+CDG files take about 5 megs per song. High quality QuickTime may take double that, depending on your settings.

Yes, the "trick" of rip then immediately export will produce uncompressed audio in the quicktime files. Currently, the QT exporter ONLY uses uncompressed, so you're getting original quality. The idea was to get that out there quickly, and let users re-compress using another program. Currently i'm working on letting the user decide the compression settings and quality using the QT export dialog.

blucaso
Posts: 10
Joined: Mon Nov 13, 2006 10:04 pm

well..

Post by blucaso »

I guess what I'm saying is that - at least for now (and this is no disrespect intended to your development efforts, Dave!) there are two reasons I prefer Megaseg, all your features notwithstanding:

1) Often I am running "mixed" shows, where there is some Karaoke, and some straight DJ work. Often the idea of "rotation" just isn't there. These are typically corporate events, where a lot of people choose not to participate. So I don't want to have to switch back and forth programs on a regular basis.

2) I am still concerned about stability. Megaseg is nothing if not stable. To date, I've been using it exclusively to run shows for over a year now - with not a single show-stopping error or crash. That's pretty impressive. Obviously, I haven't tried KJams for any length of time, but your warnings about its stability do not inspire me to "try it out" in front of a paying crowd at an event, if you know what I mean.

I will, of course, spend some time trying it out at home, and let you know how it goes!

And I am very impressed with all the features you mention! It seems like, once polished up a bit, that it will do everything I need in a Karaoke-dominant show, including the potential "filler" music you've talked about. That feature, along with the stability, will probably get me onto KJams for my Karaoke shows.

And of course, if I was playing bars with regular customers where the favorites, etc. came into play, I would definitely be using KJams Pro, warts and all - for the fact that it provided such a boost to my show.

Thanks for the time! Hope that explains my thought process. Oh, and thanks for confirming the Quicktime trick, that means as long as I'm happy with the video quality than I can use this to build a library for keeps.

Plus, I figure that keeping the KJams library intact as I go means I'll have everything ready for KJams when I decide to switch over to it!

dave
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coolio

Post by dave »

Stability: You're wise to take that route. kJams is still being developed, and I make no claims that it will never crash. Having said that, however, let it be known that hundreds of KJ's around the world use kJams nightly with little to no trouble at all. Really, try it!

The "filler" will be a killer feature, the plan is to have a sortof "build your own media show" playlist where you can drop movies, CDG, stills, and audio into the "timeline" and fade between that playlist and the "rotation" with automation or the flick of a button. The stills and audio can be loaded independently, so you can make eg: a slideshow to a single audio track, or have a movie play but use audio from some other file, mix and match, or just have stills (slideshow) with silence, or even billboards (user entered text crawl, eg: "Tip your waitress" or whatever)

I haven't seen any warts on kJams Pro, have you? :D

re: video quality: currently the video is output uncompressed, so you're getting the original bits, pixel perfect.

blucaso
Posts: 10
Joined: Mon Nov 13, 2006 10:04 pm

video filler

Post by blucaso »

Another simple use of the "filler" video between songs would be to list the upcoming 2 or 3 singers.

It may be simple enough to do this manually with a text crawl, but it could be a total "killer" feature if you had a simple "Marquee" screen where the user entered in the Preferences a special screen - here's my ideas:

MARQUEE PREFERENCES:
Headline: (your Karaoke company name, or bar name)
Featuring: (your host's name)
Show upcoming singers: (enter a number from 0 to 3)
Additional text: (drink specials, etc.)
Show Marquee between singers automatically: (Y/N)

This would definitely sell me on Pro right there!

By the way, I find it ironic that you can create an entire program of the quality and complexity of KJams in a smaller space than the Stuffit expander which unzips it! Stuffit Expander 11 is over 11MB now! Jeebus, that's a lot of garbage for something so simple. Nice work!

dave
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marquee

Post by dave »

yes, that's pretty much what i've got in mind.
not for a while yet, tho. many fish to fry, only two hands.

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