Guest Karaoke DJ

[swainner]

I'm setting up a brand new computer with kjams specifically for our karaoke library. I'm interested in creating an 'administrator' account (parents) that can manage the library (add/delete/modify). However, we have guest "KJ's" (the kids and their friends as Karaoke Jockey's) that we want to be able to play the songs (add to playlists, manage rotation, etc.). What we don't want is the ability for the 'guest KJ' to mess up the library (metadata, files, etc.). Any suggestions on how I might set up the Mac user accounts and the kjams application to handle this environment?

Scott Wainner

[dave]

hmm, kjams wasn't designed for this market segment, there's really no way to prevent them from going into the finder and deleting your hard drive's contents. you can turn off "edit tags in browser window" in the "tags" pref, but you can't stop them from deleting songs or getting info on songs and changing them.

best would be to have someone responsible actually running the show.

you can set up a second computer for the kids to search for and submit songs (as a singer), that way they don't have to touch the computer.

[DeusExMachina]

Couldn't they set up the kJams folder such that the non admin account only had read rights to the actual music files?

[dave]

kjams itself doesn't have "parental controls", so that's only a partial solution at best.

[DeusExMachina]

Right. I mean in OSX, such that even if kJams WANTED to mod the files, the OS won't let it. (You might get an error message, but that should be enough to let you know that, for whatever reason, you can't do that.)

[dave]

but your kJams will still be f**ked up. so that doesn't solve the problem.

[DeusExMachina]

So if kJams tries to push a file name, and the OS does not let it, it gets added to the files not renamed folder, is that the issue you are talking about? Would this matter in this instance, since the real admin can then find the evidence of their fiddling in the songs not renamed folder? Guess I could just find out on my own… .

[dave]

no, the issue is that the random kiddie is allowed to mess with the song names inside of kJams at all.

[swainner]

So my current approach is to create an account that operates as karaoke DJ. I'm then exporting the songs I've ripped from the library into quicktime. The guest users can only see the quicktime versions of the songs (which they can load into ipods, share in itunes, etc.). It looks like my guest account can't do anything to the kjams created folders and files while the kjams account has complete control over those files. If the guests mess up the exported files, no big deal. I just export them from kjams again and we're back in business.

[DeusExMachina]

Hey Dave:
Just a thought. This might actually be part of your market segment, in the following scenario:
Person runs a karaoke company, has DJs that work for him that use his equipment, including laptops with kJams. But said owner does NOT want his employees modding metadata, or accidentally deleting songs.

If there were a secret preference to either remove these items from the menus, or password protect those commands, that would be beneficial to that group, as well as the OP.

Again, just a thought. I'm a one man band, so I have no personal need.

[dave]

yeah. that.