Anyone have luck bringing iPod to shows as a patron?

[SWLinPHX]

There have always been those who like to bring their own CDG's (original or custom) to shows to sing. Now, with the use of computers instead of discs, homemade karaoke production apps, and the continued popularity of all things iPod and iPhone, has anyone loaded their creations to their device (such as in .m4v) and been able to take it to a KJ who could (or would) patch the audio and video into their feed to sing? This is basically just for songs you create yourself that you want to test and for which no karaoke version has been produced on the market. Really curious...

[jfbiii]

I'd consider doing it, at least, if they could show me that what they had was actually a karaoke version of something with words and not just a commercial version of a song they were just going to sing along with. I've rejected the latter after a long time with a lenient policy. It just never works out right. Same with people that want to freestyle or sing acapella. I refer those people to open mic night and just say no. Every single time in the past that I've been convinced to try plugging in someone's iPod, playing a cd that wasn't a karaoke disk, or letting people do anything other than karaoke, I've been less than pleased with the results.

The one exception: private parties. If the people paying me are ok with it, then I'm ok with it.

[dave]

no luck with me, try as i might. no KJ allows it. last time i tried was 2 years ago, however.

[Sedge]

from a production standpoint, what you say could be very tricky depending on the setup. Patching in audio would be simple for me, but I use a big mixing board and have an iPod that;s already patched into it just for bumper music. I could just pull the plug out of my iPod and into theirs.

Video, however, is a bit trickier - most aren't running mixers for video signals! So, getting the created lyrics up on screen might be a chore. I actually do have a video input "mixer" so I can run my old karaoke decks as well if someone brings up a CDG or DVD that I don't have. However, the plugins are in the back, kind of buried in my rack mount trays, and getting a hand in there or moving things so I can get in from the rear of the rack? not likely during a live show!

I don't actually know what kind of video output the iPod would have, either - I assume it would be a dongle coming off the bottom, in which case you'd be limited to whatever type of video connection is coming off the dongle - for my case, they'd be in luck if it was composite (Yellow RCA), but out of luck for anything else. Also, if using the dongle clipped to the bottom meant that you could no longer use the headphone jack for audio output, there could be more problems too, unless I had the adapters sitting around to convert RCA audio cables to my board (actually, I keep a few in the bag, just in case I kill one of my fancy cables)

So, with my setup, it's likely possible to do, but they better be the best tipper in the house on a slow night!!! I wouldn't try that on another KJ though - I feel bad enough coming in with my book of a few dozen burned CDs (from kJams of course) and handing them up - I can just feel the groans directed at me. I'm polite enough to check their books first to see if they already have the song in their catalog. I can't imagine handing the KJ my phone/ipod/whatever and trying to get her/him to follow what I'm on about. (Most KJs aren't also sound techs or computer and gadget gurus!)

>>Sedge

[SWLinPHX]

Thanks for all the input. To clarify, nowadays I don't see a real reason to bring your own discs to well-publicized or full-featured, professional comprehensive karaoke shows because to be honest, with everything in digital media a good host will most likely already have the song, if it has been produced for karaoke (with exceptions of course).

The appeal of bringing in your own creation is that A) you can sing a song you may be good at and others may know but is not available on karaoke B) can test out or show off your artistic creation, graphics and masking as it sounds in a public setting C) can gauge public feedback and D) know you are singing a song no one else will ever sing! Those are nice pluses for me as I hate singing things others sing frequently. My question was from the standpoint of a patron/singer really. I too do not like a capella or sing-a-long to original music requests either (it seems KJ's have many of the same pet peeves in general).

Technically, all video iPods (now iPod Classic) will transmit all audio & video from the headphone jack via the three ring 1/8" pin to L+R audio + composite video RCA cable (I own two of these, one which I bought back in 2002 for my iBook G3 which had all audio & video from same headphone jack) and then another I had to buy again for my iPod Photo/Video which was almost identical, but the wiring was switched as such that the older one wouldn't work as easily (Apple's marketing strategy to get you to buy the same thing again). Now the iPhones and iPod Touches do require a separate Dock Connector to composite, S-video or component video cable, but you still use the headphone jack for L+R audio. Either way you just have to have a standard analog audio inputs channel available on your mixer and at least composite video jack available. Many KJs/DJs already accept iPod hookups from guests at private parties. My pro mixer has a 3-way video switcher too, and I also run to a projector for big screen or outdoor events. I play music videos or graphic visualizer on up to a 12ft screen during regular music or dancing for outdoor events and the karaoke graphics look great that big too, especially convenient with wireless mics!

Don't forget too, that if you're a KJ using a Mac (initially not the majority) you can just hook their iPod to your Mac via USB (or FireWire if older) and play within iTunes or even QuickTime Player if using iPod in hard drive mode. I guess the bottom line is it depends on how well you know the host, how well he likes you, how busy they are and their equipment set-up. The four points I mentioned in the paragraph above are incentives for me, and I have so far created 10 full-length karaoke songs with well masked central vocals, perfect graphical lyric syncing and artwork. You wouldn't know they were homemade, or else I wouldn't play them publicly -- that's part of the fun.

[dave]

yeah, that was the problem i ran into, the KJ just didn't have the setup to plug in an iPod to the video mixer.

Luckily, however, you can burn your CDG with kJams yay! I've had 100% success with that, even for music I created or video i re-created with kJams Producer, they're always ready to use my own disc. Yeah, it only holds about 15 songs, rather than thousands, but hey, small price to pay to get to sing WHATEVER you want at karaoke. I'm considering creating a CDG with the "Uṣṇiṣa Vijaya Dhārānī Sutra" and singing that at some bar, i bet i'll get some raised eyebrows!

[SWLinPHX]

Hey, I have't tried Producer yet (I just recently got back to discovering the latest versions of kJams after a long sabbatical). I used Griffin iKaraoke TunePrompter back when I did mine. I saved the final product in .mp4 or .m4v. Can those be burned to a disc to play? I didn't think they could, at least not in CD+G format. However, as standard video they do have separate audio & video tracks so maybe it can convert the .mp4 video into a .cdg format. Do you know???

I need to check out kJams Producer and compare. There's so much new stuff to kJams now since when I first talked to you Dave when you were just beginning to implement "kTunes" a few years ago. I'm really interested in the Web server feature for requests at shows. I had mentioned that concept to you on the phone back then too, and what I was planning on doing with my Palm PDA's as song books and electronics requests via Bluetooth w/my iBook.

[dave]

It is physically impossible to go from any movie to a CDG format, unless you can get the bitrate for the movie down to like 2K/s, which, practicially, is impossible. However, if you still have your TunePrompter files, you can just load'em up in kJams, and Producer will make them burnable! When you play them in kJams they're all nice and slick and creamy smooth, but when you burn'em to CD, they get squished and compressed and low-rezified automatically to fit in that 2kps bytestream.

[SWLinPHX]

So then you're saying that even though I do still have the original project files, the only way to view these files smoothly at a show is on an iPod or computer playing them as movies right?

While you're at it, can you give me a quick synopsis as to what differences I may notice with Producer (which I didn't know about until just a few days ago) and TunePrompter, until I get around to really studying and playing around with it?

Thanks for all your attention to detail, diligence and prompt replies Dave, both now and back then! Sorry to ask so many questions; I know I sort of just popped back up again from nowhere..

[dave]

or, playing the TunePrompter files live from inside kJams.

kJams and TunePrompter will play .ktp files and render them just about the same (high quality), except you get an intro screen with kJams. you only need Producer if you want to manually massage the timings, add graphics, add / change / remove intro/break/outro screens, change the timings, colors etc or in general do any editing, OR if you want to burn it to disc. (kjams can play ktp files without Producer, but only Producer can convert them to cdg)

[SWLinPHX]

Oh okay...

You answered my question from the other thread. I can convert my original TunePrompter creations to CD+G and burn to disc as long as I have the original .ktp file... cool!

[dave]