How to handle CDGs live

[Sedge]

I ran in to a bit of a problem tonight, which I am about 90% was user error/inexperience, and not a bug or anything. Still, I want to not have it again. So, here goes an explanation of the situation.

A singer asked to sing a song off of his CDG. I now run a firewire external CDG (plextor drive in a bay), so no problem. I got rid of my regular CDG decks recently, as I figured I could handle the occasional request with the external drive. He had requested a regular library song first, so he sang that, and left the CDG with me. I put it in the drive, everything recognized fine, I gave the track he wanted enough meta to show up nicely (singer/song info), all is well. The night goes on (slow paced, dance songs in between singers, lucky to make it through 15 singers in 2 hours) and then we get to the nightly contest, before he has a chance to sing his CDG song. Fine. A late entry into the contest wants to sing off her CDG as well. Here's where things go wrong.

As the original CDG guy had picked a library song for the contest, I had already marked him "not here" (we generally don't go back to karaoke after the contest is over) and next to "Audio CD" playlist, the eject icon is showing. I click it. Nothing. I go back to the singer's tonight list, delete the song entry. Now, no eject icon in the left panel by Audio CD. But, if I click on the Audio CD playlist, I have the eject button in the lower right, so I click that. "Please Wait, ejecting disk" message comes up in the top status window. No ejecting is happening. I probably tried a few other things, like coming to a full stop between singers, and ejecting then, etc. No ejecting. Tried ejecting using the eject button on the drive. Nothing there. Finally, disconnected the firewire cable from the lappy, reset power on the drive caddy, and was able to eject the disk.

(this next paragraph is slightly irrelevant, added only to document irritation, I think)
So, I have the guy's disk in hand, one problem solved. Now, to get the contest singer girl's CDG to load up. No way could I get MacOS to recognize that there was a disk in the drive. Obviously, not kJams fault at this point. OS did give the warning that something wasn't put away right when I disconnected the drive. There was something in the Trash, tried to empty it, that didn't work, Finder more or less hung on the operation. I limped through the rest of the contest, told the CDG girl that her disk wasn't reading right (which is BS, but it worked - luckily she was a late entry, and not a regular), and after closing kJams, tried to force quit/reload Finder. It refused to load up all the way. Had to remove my external HD by shutting the lappy and putting it to sleep, then removing. Came home, tried to restart, had to hold down power button. Then, no start, just the throbber/gray screen. Ended up having to clear the PRAM, I think it is, (command-option-P-R on restart) to get things going again.

So, I understand that most of that mess I caused myself by disconnecting the firewire cable, I think. It's entirely possible that I couldn't initially eject because of a hardware failure (drive caddy chip overheat or something). The disk sat in there waiting to be played for 2 hours or so.

All of this boils down to the following questions:
1. What is the proper workflow for playing a song from a CDG during a live show? (Not ripping, I don't really want to add their track to my library)

2. What conditions must be met to eject a CDG during a live show? (If the CDG is currently in the player, and the singer needs it back or I need to put a different CDG in first) - This assumes that kJams was locking the CD drive from ejecting, at least initially.

There's plenty in the Wiki about ripping, and I could try and rip the tracks first, then add the ripped tracks to my singers, but I shouldn't have to, should I? I'm running on old equipment (Powerbook G4), and I don't want to take the chance of interrupting a song that's playing if the ripping process pegs the processor or memory usage. (my library searches are harsh enough)

Hope I can learn a little bit here. I really want to keep my CDG decks out of my show, if possible.

>>Sedge

[dave]

There is an issue on Mac OS X in ejecting double-partition CD discs.

See this link.

so my question is: was this a double partition disc? if so, the inability to eject is an OS issue, and is unrelated to kJams.

here's how it's supposed to work:

while singers are singing:
singer turns in a slip with their custom CD
rip the song they want to sing
eject disc
drag said song into singer's tonight
done

or: (much more error prone)
singer turns in a slip with their custom CD
wait for that singer to get on stage
stop the rotation
double click the song on disc that they want to sing
wait for that song to finish
stop playback
start the rotation again
done

[Sedge]

Ok, thanks for clearing that up. No idea if it was a double partition disk - I believe it was an All Star karaoke disk, and it looked like a custom one, if ASK even offers that. It may well have been a regular production disk. I tend to avoid ASK myself, as their quality is questionable IMHO.

I suppose I will try and rip from here on out - I've done it before, but I remember walking on eggshells through the process while doing it live. It seems a bit silly to rip audio tracks (I have a regular or two that will just bring backing tracks and do the whole "open mic" thing - no problems here) but I can always clean them up afterward, if needed.

Aside from the double partition issue, is there any technical reason why kJams wouldn't support playing live from a CD? I've done it a few times, and was impressed at the time that kJams appeared to pre-load the song instead of physically spinning the disk throughout the song, so I assume it's ripping a temp copy anyway.

[dave]

I believe it was an All Star karaoke disk

that is the culprit then, see this article.

is there any technical reason why kJams wouldn't support playing live from a CD?

not at all, that's why i posted the 2nd option as a perfectly reasonable thing to do (except that you have to manually manage the rotation, rather than letting kJams do it for you)

kJams appeared to pre-load the song

you are correct. playing a disc is the same as ripping it, except that you don't get to keep it in your library. but it goes thru the EXACT same code path.

[Sedge]

Ok. Note to self - if someone brings me an ASK disc, I will tell them it has copy protection that won't let it play. (and really hope I have a better version around to let them sing)

What's the need to stop/start rotation, I suppose, is a better summation of the latter question. I've done it without doing that, just added a track from the "Audio CD" list to a singer, and it seemed to play through fine.

[dave]

What's the need to stop/start rotation

that only applies if you want to play it directly off disc. if, as you say, you rip the song into the database first (by dragging it to the singer), then you've already ripped it