Copyright: Copyright (c) vanBasco Software
Citation: Source: vanBasco's Karaoke Player 2.52 Help File, (c) vanBasco Software


vanBasco's Karaoke Player 2.52 -- Help Topics

About vanBasco’s Karaoke Player 2.52

vanBasco’s Karaoke Player Windows

Tips & Tricks

Troubleshooting

Keyboard Shortcuts


About vanBasco's Karaoke Player 2.51
About vanBasco's Karaoke Player 2.52

vanBasco's Karaoke Player is a standard MIDI file player with full screen Karaoke display for IBM PCs or compatibles running Microsoft Windows 95/98/ME or Windows 2000/NT 4. Its interface is designed to be both efficient and easy to use.

Features include:

Playback of standard MIDI (.mid, .midi), Microsoft RMID (.rmi) and Karaoke (.kar) files

Karaoke display (if the file supports it): up to four lines of lyrics, full screen display

Piano display

Real-time display of notes, velocities, and patches

Playback of damaged files, whatever portions are readable

Drag & Drop support

Files can be managed in an unlimited number of playlists

Internet integration with Netscape (version 3.0 or higher) and Internet Explorer (version 3.0 or higher) through the web-browser plug-in

"Shuffle" and "Scan" functions

On-the-fly change of tempo, volume, and key

User-configurable MIDI reset

"Start from first note" option

Muting and Soloing of individual MIDI channels

Licence Agreement and Legal Notices


Licence Agreement and Legal Notices

Licence Agreement

The following sets out for your reference the terms of the licence which have been accepted:

=======================================================

VANBASCO SOFTWARE LIMITED IS WILLING TO LICENSE THIS SOFTWARE TO YOU ONLY IF YOU ACCEPT ALL OF THE TERMS IN THIS LICENCE AGREEMENT ("AGREEMENT").  PLEASE READ THE TERMS CAREFULLY BEFORE YOU COMPLETE THE INSTALLATION OR USE THIS SOFTWARE, BECAUSE BY DOING SO YOU ARE AGREEING TO BE BOUND BY THE TERMS OF THIS AGREEMENT.  IF YOU DO NOT AGREE TO THESE TERMS, VANBASCO SOFTWARE LIMITED WILL NOT LICENSE THIS SOFTWARE TO YOU AND YOU MUST ABORT THE INSTALLATION IMMEDIATELY.  TO USE THIS SOFTWARE WITHOUT ACCEPTING THE TERMS OF THIS AGREEMENT CONSTITUTES A BREACH OF COPYRIGHT.

1.	Definitions

(a)	"Software", the object code of the computer program known as vanBasco's Karaoke Player 2.52 which includes any modifications carried out by us or on our behalf.

(b)	"Intellectual Property Rights" or "IPR", all intellectual property rights including, without limitation, patents, trade marks, design rights, copyright, database rights, moral rights (whether or not any of these is registered and including any applications for registration of any such rights), know-how, confidential information and trade secrets and all rights or forms of protection of a similar nature or having similar effect to any of these which may exist or come into existence in the future anywhere in the world.

(c)	"Licence", the licence to use the Software under this Agreement.

(d)	"Licensor", vanBasco Software Limited.

2.	Licence Terms

"We", "us" and "our" refers to vanBasco Software Limited.  "You" and "your" refers to the individual that proposes to install and/or use the Software.

3.	What This Licence Agreement Covers

(a)	You are granted a non-exclusive licence to use the Software on a single computer free of charge for your personal, non-commercial and private use subject to the terms and conditions of this Agreement.

(b)	If your equipment or computer systems are inoperative, you may use the Software temporarily on any backup equipment or systems owned, leased or operated by you.  If you sell any of this equipment, you will ensure that the Software has previously been deleted from it.

(c)	You may make as many backup copies as are reasonably necessary for your lawful use of the Software.

(d)	You shall not modify or remove any copyright or proprietary notices on the Software and you shall reproduce such notices on any copies or part-copies of the Software in the form in which they appear on the original.

(e)	You shall not decompile, reverse engineer, disassemble or otherwise reduce any part of the Software to human readable form nor permit any third party to do so.

(f)	You may redistribute the Software to third parties only on condition that any third party receiving the Software also agrees to be bound by the terms of this Agreement.

(g)	You shall not, and shall not permit any third party, except as expressly provided in this Agreement, to copy, make corrections to or otherwise modify or adapt the Software or create derivative works based upon the Software.

4.	Ownership and Restrictions

(a)	We retain all ownership and Intellectual Properly Rights relating to the Software.

(b)	You may not:-

(i)	re-license, sub-license, rent, lease, timeshare, or act as a service bureau or provide subscription services for the Software;

(ii)	assign this Agreement or give the Software or an interest in the Software to another individual or entity.

(c)	You agree that you shall comply with all relevant import and export laws, rules and regulations affecting the Software or any portion of it.

5.	Disclaimer

THE SOFTWARE IS LICENSED TO YOU "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, WARRANTIES THAT THE SOFTWARE IS FREE OF DEFECTS, MERCHANTABLE, FIT FOR ANY PARTICULAR PURPOSE OR THAT IT DOES NOT INFRINGE THE PROPERTY RIGHTS OF ANY THIRD PARTY.  FURTHERMORE, THE LICENSOR ACCEPTS NO LIABILITY FOR INJURY OF ANY KIND RESULTING FROM THE PERFORMANCE OR NON-PERFORMANCE OF THE SOFTWARE.

6.	Intellectual Property

(a)	If someone makes a claim against you that our Software infringes their intellectual property rights, you must:

(i)	notify us promptly in writing, not later than thirty (30) days after you receive notice of the claim, or sooner if required by applicable law;

(ii)	give us sole control of the defence and any settlement negotiations; and

(iii)	give us the information, authority, and assistance we need to defend against or settle the claim.

(b)	If you are notified or otherwise consider that any part of our Software may have violated someone else's IPR, it is recommended that you immediately cease using the Software.

7.	No Liability

THE LICENSOR SHALL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, PUNITIVE, OR CONSEQUENTIAL LOSS OR DAMAGE, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION ANY LOSS OF PROFITS, REVENUE, DATA OR DATA USE.

8.	Miscellaneous

(a)	No delay, neglect or forebearance by either party in enforcing any term or condition of this Agreement shall be, or be deemed to be, a waiver nor shall it in any way prejudice any right of that party under this Agreement.

(b)	This Agreement shall constitute the entire extent of the Agreement between the parties regarding its subject matter and supersedes any prior agreement, understanding, arrangement, statement or representation made between them whether oral or in writing.  If any term of this licence agreement is found to be invalid or unenforceable, the remaining provisions will remain effective.

(c)	No variation of, or amendment to, this Agreement shall be of any force or effect unless made in writing and signed by duly authorised representatives on behalf of both parties.

(d)	The Licensor may assign all or any of its rights and/or obligations in relation to this Agreement without limitation and without notice in its sole and absolute discretion.

(e)	Any notices and other communications required or permitted to be given under this Agreement shall be in writing and shall be delivered or transmitted to:

(i)	us at the address as then set out at http://www.vanBasco.com/;

(ii)	you at such contact address (including e-mail) as provided by you

or such other address as either party may notify to the other from time to time.  Any notice shall be treated as having been served on delivery if delivered by hand or sent by e-mail with an electronic or other acknowledgement of such being available and four days after posting if sent by pre-paid post.

(f)	The construction, validity, performance and all matters relating to this Agreement shall be governed by Irish law and the parties irrevocably submit to the exclusive jurisdiction of the Irish courts.

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Trademarks

Windows is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation. All other trademarks and copyrights referred to within this software or documentation or any accompanying part(s) are the property of their respective owners.

Misc

This software is based in part on the work of the Independent JPEG Group.


Window Overview

vanBasco's Karaoke Player 2.52 consists of the following windows and dialogs:

Main Window

Playlist Window

Control Window

MIDI Output Window (also known as Real-time Display Window)

Piano Window

Karaoke Window

Setup Dialog

Tip of the Session Dialog

Web browser Plug-in


Main Window

The main window is the heart of the player. Here, you specify which song to play, select which outputs to display, and also access some special functions like "shuffle" or "scan". The main window mimics to a large extent, video or music tape players and works pretty much the same. You can be intuitive about getting around this window.

To load a song -- create a playlist or double-click the sound file in Windows Explorer (or drag & drop onto a window of the player). A new playlist identified as "(default)" will be created. If there is already a playlist entitled "(default)", its contents will be replaced (if you want to keep that playlist, simply rename it via the Playlist Window so it won't be overwritten later).

Player Control Buttons

To play -- click the blue PLAY button. While playing, this button will become a PAUSE button, for temporary stops.

To 'rewind' to an earlier part of the song while playing, select the REW and don’t release the click until you have ‘rewound’ enough. You can judge that by observing the visual display of the song counter and the time/total values.

To skip forward to a later part of the song, select and hold down (click delayed release) the FW button.

Alternatively, you can move around in the song by dragging the little blue timing bar along the time scale underneath the main play buttons.

PREV and NEXT buttons refer to earlier and later songs in a playlist of songs.

STOP stops the playing of the song or playlist. If you push PLAY then, playing will start in the beginning. (Use PAUSE if you want to stop play temporarily and then pick up where you left off.)

Playlist, additional Display Windows

To create or edit a playlist, select the PLAYLIST button in the lower left of the main window. This will bring up the Playlist Window. You can also select which windows you wish to see while playing. Choices are KARAOKE (for singing, if the current file comes with lyrics), OUTPUT (to see the detailed channel information), PIANO (real-time keyboard), and CONTROL (tempo, key, volume control setting).

These are toggle buttons to select on or off. Red means ON, black means OFF:

Autoplay ON causes dragged-and-dropped files to play instantly

Shuffle ON causes random re-order of the songs in the current playlist

Scan ON allows you to listen to just a single frame of each song (usually in the beginning of the song, by default ranging from 00:10 to 00:20; can be configured via the Setup Dialog). This is very useful for trying a series of files.

Repeat is actually a three-state option allowing to either repeat the current song, loop the whole playlist, or don’t repeat.

Misc Buttons

Search (the magnifying glass, located in the upper right) -- clicking this icon will take you to the web page of vanBasco's MIDI Search, an Internet search engine for MIDI and Karaoke files.

Save As... (the diskette to the left of the magnifying glass) -- allows you to save the current file to a local drive.

Options (the note in the upper left corner) -- opens a menu which will allow you to access the setup dialog, toggle the playlist and the additional display windows, open the help file, etc.  Note: Using this button will save the original MIDI file -- any changes made in the output window, such as muting a channel, or changing the tempo in the control window, will not be saved.  However, you can save these changes to the playlist from within the control window.

Quick Select Window

Click the file name (or press 'Q' on your computer's keyboard) to bring up the quick select window. Here, you can easily navigate to any song in the current playlist, which is very convenient for on-stage usage, for example. There are three ways to do this:

you can use the cursor keys

you may enter the song number (provided that the song position display is activated)

you can type in the first few characters of the song name.

Once the desired song is highlighted, simply press the Return key to load that song. If you don't want to make any selection, you can dismiss the Quick Select Window by pressing Escape (Esc).

By the way, vanBasco's Karaoke Player can also be controlled via several other keyboard shortcuts.


Playlist Window

In the Playlist Window, you create and edit playlists comprised of individual songs.  A playlist is simply a list of pointers to song files.  The actual songs are stored in folders on your hard drive.  You get to the Playlist Window from the Main Window or by pressing Alt+L on your computer's keyboard.

On the left of the playlist window are the songs in the current playlist. On the right is the folder structure like Windows Explorer would display.  The status bar at the bottom of the window will display the song info (as available) of the currently selected song.

Here is how you operate this window:

To change to another drive or to a higher directory level, use the drop down menu located above the right list.  (To go to a higher level, you can also use the "up" botton to the right of the selector menu.)  To move into a sub-directory, double-click the corresponding entry in the right list.

To create a new playlist, click the 'new' button in the upper left.

To change a playlist, user the selector menu above the left list.

To load a song, double click it in the left playlist detail window.

To add a song to the current playlist, find it on the right hand ‘Explorer’ view and either select it and click the 'add' button ('add all' for all the songs in a folder) or double click on the located song to bring it left into the playlist.  You can bring a song multiple times into the same playlist -- it will simply be available to play multiple times.

To re-order a playlist, click the 'sort' button to sort into alphanumeric order; otherwise select a song and either move up using the 'up' button or down using the 'down' button.

To remove a song from the playlist, click on 'remove'.  (You won’t delete the song file, just the playlist pointer to it.)  To remove all songs from the current playlist, click 'empty'.

To rename the current playlist, click the 'rename' button.

To delete a playlist use the 'erase' button to move the playlist file to the recycle bin.  (This will not erase any song files, just the playlist file.)

If the window is wide enough, an additional button labeled 'play!' will be displayed.  Clicking this button plays the song currently selected in the left list (assuming that AUTOPLAY is activated).


Control Window

In the Control Window, you can change the tempo, key, and loudness of the song you are playing. You can save these settings to the playlist, or re-set to normal.

Tempo -- Default = 100%.  You can make the song play from 25% slower to 200% faster by dragging the blue control up and down with your mouse.

Key -- Default = +0.  You can play the song as much as -12 semi tones lower or up to +12 semi tones higher by dragging the blue Key control up or down.

Vol -- Default = 128 (loudest). You can lower the sound level to 0 by dragging down the blue Volume control.

SAVE TO LIST -- This will save your new values to the playlist. Not only will the settings from this window be remembered, but also any modifications in the MIDI Output Window, that is, muted or solo channels.

USE FROM LIST -- Instructs vanBasco's Karaoke Player to use the settings previously saved (if any) to the playlist.

RESET -- resets all three controls to default values.  This will also reset any changes made in the MIDI Output Window (that is, un-mute all muted channels and un-solo all solo channels).


MIDI Output Window

The MIDI Output Window (also known as Real-time Display Window) shows what's happening on each channel -- what instrument is selected at that moment for each channel specified in the MIDI file playing.

If everything is OK, the name of the selected instrument is displayed in CYAN (MAGENTA) letters.

When an instrument's name appears in RED it means that no name was found for the selected patch and/or bank number. The mismatched instrument has been automatically replaced by something similar by your sound board or omitted, depending on your sound board's capabilities. You need to check it out.

When a channel's instrument name is displayed in a darker version of its color (cyan or red), it is a message that the instrument was set using SYSEX commands.

If the name appears in CAPITAL LETTERS, the channel is a drum-channel.

Watch for a suffix after the instrument's name:

"(GS)" means that this instrument works only on GS compatible sound boards.

"(MT)" stands for MT-32 emulation on bank 127. This is only available on certain GS-cards. Check with your sound card vendor.

"(XG)" means that an XG compatible synthesizer is required to reproduce the specified instrument.

Turning instruments off / making an instrument solo

You can mark a channel (that is, instrument) as a solo instrument by clicking the blue button (BLUE=SOLO). You will still hear the other instruments faintly. You can mute one or several channels by clicking the red button (RED=STOP).  If you want to save these changes to the playlist so that they will be remembered in the future, select the control window and click on the Save-to-list button.


Piano Window

The Piano Window displays notes in real-time in a piano-keyboard style.

If no MIDI channels are muted or selected as "solo" in the MIDI Output Window, notes on all channels (except for the drum channels) are displayed. If there are solo channels, only notes on these channels are shown. Notes on muted channels will not be shown.


Karaoke Window

This window gives you the ‘sing-along’ words for the song being played (if the file supports it, that is, if the file includes the lyrics). There are up to four lines displayed. You can make the word display window larger or smaller by dragging the border with your mouse. To switch to full screen display, double-click inside the Karaoke Window (or choose "Full Screen" from the pop-up menu -- see below).

When there are no words to sing, the Karaoke display shows the word ‘INSTRUMENTAL’ (if "Show Hints" is enabled in the Karaoke Settings). The words are then displayed in lines, with the specific words to sing at that moment highlighted in red.

Settings

You can change settings for the Karaoke Window's pop-up menu by pointing your mouse inside the window and clicking once with the right mouse button. Then you can select:

ALWAYS ON TOP: This option will cause the Karaoke Window to stay on top of all other windows. This can be used to sing a song or to get the current information while working in another program.

FULL SCREEN: Select this option for full screen Karaoke display

HIDE KARAOKE: Select if you want to see file-specific information even if there are Karaoke lyrics present.

OPTIONS: This brings up the Karaoke Tab of the Setup sub menu.

COPY: Copies the words of the current song to the clipboard. Useful if you want to print the lyrics, for instance.


Setup Dialog

The Setup Dialog is used to specify various options. Click the note button in upper left of the Main Window and choose "Setup..." to get here.

Settings are grouped into three areas:

MIDI

Karaoke

Misc


Karaoke Tab

To bring up this window, open the Setup Dialog and choose the tab labeled "Karaoke".

Here, you can select font styles, outlining, centering, and size (stretching). You can select how many lines to see using KARAOKE TYPE, and you can place these lines how you wish in the Karaoke Window using VERTICAL POSITION. You can even use colors with the COLOR and BACKGROUND IMAGE options. Finally, there are advanced options you can select -- fit window to lyrics, show info when no Karaoke, show hints, and show song title. Play with these options!

TIP: Swap Lines in Karaoke Type

Without the swap option selected, the line containing the currently active lyric will always be the top line. Thus the bottom line will be scrolled up every time lines are changed. To avoid this, select "Swap Lines" making the active lyric being alternately in the top and the bottom line. For most people, this makes it easier to follow.


MIDI Tab

Here, settings affecting playback can be modified. To bring up this window, open the Setup Dialog.

Player Configuration:

OUTPUT: Select here which device is used for MIDI output. (Note: if the only available option is "MIDI MAPPER", then this means that no MIDI device is configured.  See the section troubleshooting for more information.)

START FROM FIRST NOTE:  If this option is enabled, vanBasco's Karaoke Player will skip any silence at the beginning of a MIDI file and begin playback immediately with the first note.

FADE SCAN: enabled causes the sound to be faded in/out if the player is in "Scan" mode. It makes it easier to determine when each song sample starts and ends. This option may cause problems with some synthesizers or MIDI files.

SCAN FROM ... TO ...: The values entered here decide which part of the song will be played when the "Scan" mode is active. The default is 00:10 to 00:20.

Reset Modes:

Determines how the MIDI device is reset between songs to prevent settings from the previous file from affecting the currently playing song. Choose one of the following options:

	General MIDI	Select this choice if you are using an external synthesizer or add-on board which is GM but neither GS nor XG compatible.
	GS	Use this for Roland GS compatible synthesizers and XG devices in GS mode.
	XG	This is the right setting for Yamaha XG devices in XG mode.
	Windows	This is best for internal synthesizers like Creative Labs Soundblaster PCI 128 or when you're unsure which reset mode to choose. Please note that this setting may cause delays between songs on external synthesizers or add-on boards.
	SYSEX file	If you want your own custom reset sequence to be sent to your synthesizer, select this setting and choose a SYSEX file (.syx) in the "File..." dialog. Selecting "SYSEX file" as reset-type without specifying a file name causes vanBasco's Karaoke Player not to output any reset at all.

Advanced Settings:

If your MIDI files really sound wrong, try changing one of theses settings. These settings affect playback on MIDI transmission level and should not be changed unless you are an expert or have serious problems with MIDI playback.

Enable Running Status

Select this option if you want running status compression to be used. Running status compression is used to speed up MIDI transmission. However, there are some MIDI devices that don't support this. If you experience difficulties like hanging notes and notes that are not played, you should disable this option.

Skip Redundant Data

Skipping 'redundant' data is another technique used by vanBasco's Karaoke Player to speed up MIDI transmission whenever you jump through a MIDI file using Fast Forward or Rewind. This may cause problems with some MIDI files. If a MIDI file sounds different than expected, try disabling this option.

Reset On Pause

Should only be checked if you encounter hanging notes during or after Fast Forward or Rewind mode (or when you press Pause).

SYSEX Delay

Some (usually older) synthesizers need some time to process SYSEX messages and cannot receive other MIDI commands meanwhile. A symptom of this phenomenon is e.g. wrong instruments (usually piano) on all channels. If this is the case with your sound board, try setting the SYSEX delay to a value between 50 and 1000. Please use the lowest working value since vanBasco's Karaoke Player will have to wait after a SYSEX message for this amount of milliseconds until the next MIDI message can be posted.


Misc Tab

To bring up this window, open the Setup Dialog and choose the tab labeled "Misc".

Here you can set the following options:

Skin

You can download and install additional themes here.  Check our homepage for the latest additions at http://www.vanBasco.com/.

Associated Filetypes

Select here which filetypes you want to be registered with vanBasco's Karaoke Player. Additionally, if the box "Register filetypes on program startup" is ticked, all selected filetypes will be re-registered (if necessary) every time you start vanBasco's Karaoke Player - this is helpful in case some other application "steals" one or more filetypes that you wish to be associated with vanBasco's Karaoke Player.

Show Song Position

Activate this option to have the numerical positions displayed in the Playlist Window and the Quick Select Window.

Don't read song info from floppy drives

In the Playlist Window, if you highlight an entry, the song info will be displayed in the status bar.  However, reading from a floppy drive can be slow, which is why, by default, the song info is not read for files located on floppy disks.  Uncheck this option if you wish to get the song info even when a file is located on a diskette.

Advanced Karaoke Options

Character Set: though most Karaoke files use the Windows ANSI character set, there are some files which use ASCII. For English Karaoke lyrics, this usually makes no difference, but if the file contains foreign characters (e.g. á, ê, ö, ù, ç etc.), then the choice is important. vanBasco's Karaoke Player has a built-in mechanism that tries to detect whether ANSI or ASCII was used during file creation. However, sometimes this detection fails, in which case you may encounter wrong characters in the Karaoke Window. If you experience this behavior, you can use this option to force either ANSI or ASCII. If everything is fine, it is best to leave "autodetect" (the default choice).

Lyric Delay: if you are using a software synthesizer as MIDI output device, you may experience a delay in the sound output for up to half a second (sometimes longer, depending on the speed of your computer). This can be particularly annoying with Karaoke files as the lyrics will not be synchronized with the sound. You can compensate for this by entering a positive value in this field (unit: milliseconds). Also, if you want the lyrics not to be highlighted later, but earlier, then you can specify a negative value. The default value is -200 ms, which means that the lyrics are highlighted slightly before they should be sung. The reason for this is that the idea of the highlighting mechanism is to provide an additional cue - to tell the singer when to sing. However, if the lyrics are highlighted precisely the moment that they are supposed to be sung, then the cue is effectively too late, and not of much help. That's why most users prefer the default value of -200 ms rather than 0 ms. If you do not find this convenient, simply set this field to 0.

Allow Multiple Lyric Tracks: generally, MIDI Karaoke file contain only one lyric track.  However, there are files that contain multiple lyric tracks.  When vanBasco's Karaoke Player encounters such a file, it chooses the track containing the largest number of lyrics, and discards lyrics from all other tracks.  Though this has proven to work very well, sometimes it may be desirable to see the lyrics from all tracks.  In order to achieve that, select this option.

Don't Jump Back to previous page

Activating this option avoids automatic "back jumps" in your browser (see web-browser plug-in for a more detailed explanation).


Tip of the Session

To help you get the most out of vanBasco's Karaoke Player, the Tip of the Session was introduced. This is a tiny dialog presenting a piece of advice every time you start the program. Your software will be delivered with the tip option ON.

You can turn off the Tip of the Session by unchecking "Show tips at startup". To reactivate this feature, choose "Tip of the session ..." from the menu that appears when you click the note button in the upper left of the Main Window.


Web browser plug-in

The plug-in, if installed, provides for tight web browser integration (with Netscape 3.0 or higher or Internet Explorer 3.0 or higher). It works much the same way as the Main Window. One additional option is provided: Activate Player will bring up vanBasco's Karaoke Player on the screen.

Note (this mainly applies to Netscape users): if you're clicking on a MIDI file while you're online, the web-browser plug-in, if enabled, will usually capture the browser window until the song is loaded, begin playback, and then jump back to the previous webpage. Sometimes, going back may not be desirable, though, in particular, if the previous page contains some background MIDI file which would then "replace" the MIDI files you just clicked (you can only play one MIDI file at a time). To avoid this behavior, you can deactivate the jump back mechanism in the Misc Tab of the Setup Dialog.


Tips & Tricks

Following some Tips & Tricks that should answer the most commonly asked questions. We've also added the Tip of the Session Dialog which will give you an extra hint every time you launch vanBasco's Karaoke Player. In addition, there is the troubleshooting section.  Finally, vanBasco's Karaoke Player can be controlled via several keyboard shortcuts as well.

Here are some tips that will help you get the most out of this program:

For fullscreen Karaoke, either double-click inside the Karaoke window or choose "Full Screen" from the Karaoke window's context menu (right-click inside the Karaoke window to open the context menu).

You can drag and drop files onto vanBasco's Karaoke Player from file managers like Windows Explorer.

You can easily customize the Karaoke window -- select fonts, colors, background image etc.-- using the setup dialog (click the note button in the top-left corner of the main program window and choose "Setup...").

If you encounter hanging notes or other sound abnormalities, change options in the setup dialog (click the note button in the top-left corner of the main window and choose "Setup...").  You might want to try changing the output device or reset mode. If you have severe problems, change some of the advanced settings.

You can randomly arrange all songs in the current playlist using the shuffle function (click to turn red the button SHUFFLE in upper right in main window).

If your files sound wrong, try setting the SYSEX delay in the setup dialog to a value greater than 30. If you encounter hanging notes during fast-forward or when pressing the Pause button, please enable "Reset On Pause".

To do Karaoke while running other apps, check "Always On Top" in the Karaoke window's context menu (click inside Karaoke window with right mouse button).

To mute or play solo one ore more channels, in the MIDI Output Window press the red and blue buttons, respectively.

Choosing the Scan mode (click on SCAN in the main window) is handy for trying multiple files. You can specify the scan interval in the setup dialog.

vanBasco's Karaoke Player supports a number of keyboard shortcuts.  Click here for a complete list.

You can quickly navigate to a particular song in the current playlist using the quick select window (in the main program window, click the file name or press 'Q' on your computer's keyboard)


Keyboard Shortcuts

vanBasco's Karaoke Player can be controlled via the following keyboard shortcuts:

keyboard shortcut	alternative shortcut	action
Space Bar		Play / Pause
Escape (Esc)		Stop playback
Ctrl + N	F4	Next song in playlist
Ctrl + P	F3	Previous song in playlist
Right Arrow		Fast Forward
Left Arrow		Rewind
+		Transpose up by one semitone
-		Transpose down by one semitone
Num *	>	Increase tempo (speed)
Num /	<	Decrease tempo
[		lower volume (softer)
]		increase volume (louder)
Ctrl+0	F2	Reset
Alt + Q	F12	open Quick Select Window
Alt + F	F11	toggle full screen karaoke
F1		Open help file table of contents
Alt + L		Toggle Playlist Window
Alt + C		Toggle Control Window
Alt + O		Toggle MIDI Output Window
Alt + P		Toggle Piano Window
Alt + K		Toggle Karaoke Window
Ctrl + A		Toggle Autoplay
Ctrl + S		Toggle Shuffle
Ctrl + C		Toggle Scan
Ctrl + R		Toggle Repeat
ALT + S		Open Setup Dialog
ALT + X		Exit program


Troubleshooting

Problem: no MIDI device configured

Solution: MIDI devices can be configured via the Windows control panel (from the Start menu, choose Settings > Control Panel): double click the icon labeled "multimedia" (or click here to jump there directly), and go to the "device" tab.  From there, you can add and configure MIDI devices (for detailed instructions, see the manual of your sound card or computer system or contact the support division of your sound card / computer manufacturer).

If you cannot get any MIDI devices to work, there is an alternative solution that works so long as the digital audio subsystem of your sound card is set up properly (if you can play files such as .wav or .mp3, then you know that the digital audio subsystem works).  You can install what is called a "MIDI software synthesizer".  This is a software component which emulates a MIDI device (i.e. a piece of hardware) in software and uses the digital audio subsystem of your sound card to produce the actual sound.  (In fact, there are MIDI software synthesizers available that surpass their hardware counterparts in sound quality!)  The only drawback is that you machine should not be very slow - most MIDI software synthesizers require a PC running at 200 MHz or higher.  For a list of software synthesizers available on the web, see the following URL: http://www.vanBasco.com/swsynth.html