way to associate specific video backdrop w/ a given song?

[nycdj252]

Hi Dave - I'm a recent purchaser of your pro software, and what can I say, I'm blown away! Great software! I'm not a professional K-DJ, but an avid home user and I throw regular karaoke parties at my home. Up until now I've been using a CAVs integrated system, but recently moved to a macbook / mixer (hooked up to a home theater system w/ 60" TV) setup. KDJ has been invaluable for helping me manage my library of thousands of songfiles! My question / request is:

I find that having a moving video background adds *a lot* of atmosphere to the party, and in particular, I love to have the artist's actual music video running the background. Thus far what I've been doing is when a song is queued, I'll manually look up the music video on youtube (or on my harddrive if I have it locally), and then move that window/media player window on the main TV and then move the KJams video window as a transparent window on top. The process, unfortunately, is a bit cumbersome (especially since there's no way to "stick" the KJams video as the top window), and I'd love to be able to automate this process somewhat.

So what I was wondering is if there was an easier way to associate a particular video file with a particular song -- i.e., assuming that I have a music video (w/ audio stripped) saved locally, if that video can be automatically used as the video backdrop whenever the associated song track is played? Would this be terribly difficult to implement into the native application? If not, is this something that I could script (i.e., assuming such a video file follows a standard naming convention)? (BTW, I do know about the video backdrop generator script, but I haven't been able to get that to work, and moreover, that seems to only loop through a pre-determined directory of video files rather than associate a given video file with a given track).

Obviously I'm not looking to have video tracks for every song in my library, but it would certainly be nice to have them for some of the more popularly requested songs!

Also as an aside, I spent a number of hours trying to use iMovie to create KJams-compatible video files that incorporated the official music video with the MP3+G tracks I own. Unfortunately, this effort turned out to be unsuccessful, in part b/c there's no clean way of turning a MP3+G track into a transparent m4v file (at least, not that I know of!).

Any insights would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!

[Karanight]

Also as an aside, I spent a number of hours trying to use iMovie to create KJams-compatible video files that incorporated the official music video with the MP3+G tracks I own. Unfortunately, this effort turned out to be unsuccessful, in part b/c there's no clean way of turning a MP3+G track into a transparent m4v file

If you overlay your music video with the karaoke track (After converting it to a Quicktime Movie) using the green screen option in iMovie you'll get the words on top of the movie. After you've done that I don't understand why you'd want to play it as a transparency.

[nycdj252]

Thanks for the tip -- let me clarify, and maybe you could tell if me I am doing something wrong? My song files are zipped cdg+mp3 files. They have all been imported and indexed in the KJ Pro library. I then used KJ Pro to export to Quicktime using the AppleTV present. I then tried to overlay that resulting m4v file on top of the music video background using green screen in iMovie. Unfortunately, the result wasn't great -- the green screen did not completely eliminate the background of the lyrics layer, resulting in a file where the background video was only faintly visible (and tinged green). Perhaps there is a setting or method in iMovie that I am missing? Or maybe did I not export the song file correctly in KJ Pro -- i.e., is there a way to fiddle with the background settings during the Quicktime conversion?

Thanks, any help would be appreciated!

[dave]

you can associate a file that will auto-launch when a particular song launches, they're called "launch files"

if you associate the file you set to launch with the app you want it to open with, it will open that app (eg: quicktime player)

in the next build of kJams (not current build) you can set the Video window to Transparent, then do your QT Export, using Animation/Lossless (not HD), and your export will be transparent.

i could not figure out how to compose a transparent video over another video in iMovie, if you know how to do that, let me know.

[nycdj252]

Thanks for the info re: "launch files"! It actually works great for me!

[dave]

[DeusExMachina]

And of course, here I come!

Re: Launch files

WTH did you do that?!?! So much I could have done with that!!

As for the video background script, that is not quite what it does.
You write:
"(BTW, I do know about the video backdrop generator script, but I haven't been able to get that to work, and moreover, that seems to only loop through a pre-determined directory of video files rather than associate a given video file with a given track)."

First, the directory is not predetermined. You can use the file selector to pick any folder you want. If that folder has picture files, it runs them as a slide show behind the lyrics. If it is a video, it plays that set to looping, behind the lyrics. What I might consider adding is the ability to play a certain URL. I have researched this for YouTube, and it is theoretically possible, but the problem is, YouTube is constantly changing their URL structure, so trying to recreate the correct URL to send to Quicktime (using grep or some other tool) only works until YouTube breaks it again, which happens on a regular basis.
Alternately, I might be able to write it so that it used UI scripting to full screen the video in Safari. I will have to look into it in more depth.
Even if I can do it, however, there is still the issue that most YouTube videos now have annoying overlay ads, making them essentially useless as automated backdrops.
So overall, it is better to grab the video first, or just set the video up manually, as opposed to having my script do it automatically. You can do this all behind the scenes if kJams is set to full screen/non-transparent on your second display. Drag the Safari window PARTIALLY to the secondary monitor, so that the full screen button is just barely still on the primary monitor. Because of how kJams does the full screen window, it will cover the Safari window so that it will remain unseen. Then hit the fullscreen button on the page. Because most of the window is on the secondary display, the video will jump to that display. Then start the song playing in kJams, and make the video window transparent.
Voila.

[dave]

launch files were added a long time ago, i don't remember when.

[DeusExMachina]

Make it scriptable!!!!

[dave]

what, launch files?

[DeusExMachina]

Yes!
Like finding the associations, and setting them. (So they can be changed on the fly and reset to their original value.)

[dave]

for that to work you'd need a method of fetching a song's ID, say by looking it up by meta data. currently the only way to get that is to add the song to the library by file path
or a method to loop thru every song
or a method to loop thru all songs in a particular playlist
or something.
how do you imagine it will work

[DeusExMachina]

It all depends on how exactly the song is associated with the external action. I would have thought it was by SongID in some global plist, as opposed to the individual song XML, but perhaps this is not correct.

[dave]

what i'm asking is can you create some applescript pseudocode that you would want to use, like how do you imagine getting the song ID for a song? or are you thinking you only want the info on the currently playing song? or what? write a sample script for your use case, and just make up the syntax.

[DeusExMachina]

My first thought would be to incorporate it into something like my video background script, so that you could specify the interaction on the fly, so that instead of having to manually set it up in advance, using my script, to run QT, select the video, etc, that you could have the script store the current association, set it to a user defined one, then let the song play, which would autolaunch that app, and then pass control again to the script, which would then set transparency, set QT (or whatever app) to full screen, etc.. Once the song is finished, the script could then restore whatever original association was previously there.
It could be something kinda complimicated like:

-- Some stuff where the user can pick a new launch app
Tell application kJams
if currentTrack is in launchAppList then --A list local to this script, NOT the one from kJams
Set oldLaunchapp to kJamsCurrentTrackLaunchApp
Set kJamsCurrentTrackLaunchApp to newLaunchApp
if newLaunchApp as string contains "Quicktime" then
DO some stuff in the background
end if
play track
Set kJamsPreviousTrackLaunchApp to oldLaunchApp

Or alternately, something simpler, like
:
If kJamsCurrentTrackLaunchApp as string contains "Quicktime"
then
--Do some set up stuff to QT, to make sure it is full screen, and on the right monitor
end if
set kJamstransparent to true -- Yeah, I forget your syntax!
play track