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funkymike
06-09-2006, 12:33 AM
Well is it illegal or what??????

Zoom now do a download service

http://www.zoom-entertainments.co.uk/index.asp

The site also explains how to burn to a cd or put on your laptop...ehhh, and show adverts for pcdj and ots, but then theres no licence available, and karaoke are beaten to death with ppl and mcps? Even zoom say in other forums its illegal!


so what where and no wonder everyone is confused, or is it just me :teeth:

Whats happened to the digital licence anyway


confused

mike

Have a disco
06-09-2006, 12:49 AM
Thats put another spanner in the works if Ive ever seen one

DMX Will
06-09-2006, 01:21 AM
No idea if its legal or anything. Just thought I would try it. I've bought and now downloaded robbie - angels.

You get two files in a zip archive one being .CDG and one the karaoke .mp3. Not sure what to do with the .CDG, if anyone knows let me know. I've also emailed them, so we'll see what their customer service is like.

Paul James Promotions
06-09-2006, 01:24 AM
You get two files in a zip archive one being .CDG and one the karaoke .mp3. Not sure what to do with the .CDG, if anyone knows let me know.

Most PC karaoke players use both files at the same time, for seperate graphics and sound.

funkymike
06-09-2006, 01:27 AM
No idea if its legal or anything. Just thought I would try it. I've bought and now downloaded robbie - angels.

You get two files in a zip archive one being .CDG and one the karaoke .mp3. Not sure what to do with the .CDG, if anyone knows let me know. I've also emailed them, so we'll see what their customer service is like.

To stick it on a disc, you need to convert the cdg file to a bin file, which you can get from www.mp3toolz.com then have the correct cd burner and program, hope that helps

mike

Solitaire Events Ltd
06-09-2006, 01:57 AM
No idea if its legal or anything. Just thought I would try it. I've bought and now downloaded robbie - angels.

You get two files in a zip archive one being .CDG and one the karaoke .mp3. Not sure what to do with the .CDG, if anyone knows let me know. I've also emailed them, so we'll see what their customer service is like.

To try it on your PC, download Winamp and also the CD+G plug in and it should work.

DMX Will
06-09-2006, 09:05 PM
Cheers all, had an email from them, they said use this program, and i did.

the video quality is SHOCKING and very distorted (Looks like a bitmap image scaled up). Unlike some of the better karaoke CDGs, this one just has a black screen and nothing exciting happening :(

2/10

Candybeatdiscos
07-09-2006, 12:34 AM
best way is not to burn it to disc, use a program called sax & Dottys karaoke hoster keep the file as a zip.

Its an excellent program and saves your burning discs

funkymike
07-09-2006, 12:58 AM
I have downloaded 10 songs from zoom, put them onto disc, and they are fine, infact very good quality, better than pro burn. All I can say is, I hope other manu follow suit on this download service, excellent idea, also keeps me out of the disco shops buying other stuff.


mike

Solitaire Events Ltd
07-09-2006, 01:02 AM
I have downloaded 10 songs from zoom, put them onto disc, and they are fine, infact very good quality, better than pro burn. All I can say is, I hope other manu follow suit on this download service, excellent idea, also keeps me out of the disco shops buying other stuff.


mike

Mike

When you download, does it not give you the licence to actually use the download on your PC?

I'm interested 'cos of the current situation and my involvement with the LWP.

Corabar Entertainment
07-09-2006, 01:02 AM
Still doesn't answer you initial 'legalities' question though. I have a bried look on the site and if there is any info on there, they don't put it in an obvious place!

Candybeatdiscos
07-09-2006, 01:04 AM
well surley if they place it on for download they have the right to distribute it - how we then use it is up to us as long as not selling it on

Corabar Entertainment
07-09-2006, 01:04 AM
Sorry Daz - posting at same time.
Mike

When you download, does it not give you the licence to actually use the download on your PC?

I'm interested 'cos of the current situation and my involvement with the LWP.
Still doesn't answer you initial 'legalities' question though. I have a bried look on the site and if there is any info on there, they don't put it in an obvious place!

Solitaire Events Ltd
07-09-2006, 01:06 AM
how we then use it is up to us as long as not selling it on

Not true at the moment unfortunatley.

funkymike
07-09-2006, 01:13 AM
Nope only a print out stating its a download, much like i-tunes, no info on licence what so ever, aprt from the info on the home page, so iam none the wiser.


still confussed

mike

Candybeatdiscos
07-09-2006, 01:19 AM
well i reckon that they need to get this sorted out asap - its a great idea all the same

colinm345
07-09-2006, 08:42 AM
Well it is illegal at the moment but lots of people in london especialy are doing it ,is the short answer

In saying that we are trialing out laptop karaoke with a Sony Vaio 1.7 m proccesor and 1 gig of ram

We find for PCDJ to run smoothly this is the sort of computing power the software needs

We ripp into 192 high quility mp3+G by using Power CD+G ,which is the best ripper we have found to date and also buy one or two MP3+G songs in 192 from Joe @ Zoom

Candybeatdiscos
24-09-2006, 02:11 PM
Oh i take it Zoom have stopped the legal download service....?

or am i just blind?

colinm345
24-09-2006, 03:27 PM
Oh i take it Zoom have stopped the legal download service....?

or am i just blind?

I have had a word with my friend Joe the owner of Zoom Entertainments and no he is not stopping the MP3+g download service ,but he is going to make a new site 4 it

For the time being the download service can b found here

www.zoom-entertainments.co.uk/mp3gdownloads.asp (http://www.zoom-entertainments.co.uk/mp3gdownloads.asp) :teeth:

funkymike
24-09-2006, 04:14 PM
I had a email form zoom, giving the same link, something to do with the shops moaning, I think its a great idea, if you got a large collection so you can browes and get replacements as and when. Hopfully all the other companies will follow suit.

When I sorted out my karaoke books, I had 1500 dupes, now at around 2 quid a throw thats alot of waste!

Iam hoping to get a disc replced, found a blood crack in a ez disc last night, not happy

DK Karaoke
02-10-2006, 02:20 PM
Hi, Just to add to the above threads. We use Power CDG Burner, its the best in my opinon. We also use the Power CdG Player to place tracks on the pc. This is only to check that the tracks play ok.

We have over 600 cdg discs, and all of them are on our pc. We have the ability to play them electronically at a gig, but do not because it is not legal yet. So, we carry all our discs around, heavy work.

There are a lot of KJ's who do play electronically at gigs, but they are taking a chance I think.

By the way you can burn cdg's using Nero, but it needs a work-around to do it, as Nero does not officially allow cd copying if they are copyright.

The first programme we used and still use on occasions is audiograbber, its free. Also if you rip to a wav file, you can convert the wav file to mp3 by using the Elite Converstion Tool, this can convert to mp3, or mp3 plus (more compressed). You can also re-convert mp3 back to wav, or bin files. However, if you want to remix, or rework the music afterwords, then mp3 is not the best file type, after compressing its almost impossible to make any changes. This applies even if you re-convert mp3 to wav. Always keep a copy of the music in a wav format. Wav files unfortunately use nearly 4 times more computer space. With bin files, you have just one file, which is of equal size (or there abouts) to a wav plus cdg graphic file. You can also do more with a bin file, also there is less risk of loosing the assoicated cdg file to go with the wav or mp3 file. Another tip, if you name the mp3 files differently to the cdg file you will not be able to play the track, nor will you be able to burn it to disc, as both files are needed to generate the karaoke song.

I hope they get things sorted soon, as my load is getting bigger each time, what with new additions each.

DK Karaoke & Disco

colinm345
02-10-2006, 04:52 PM
Quite right however another trick 4 keeping the graphic and MP3 file together is by putting both in a Zip file and some computer systems recognise this

A good karaoke file editor can be seen by clicking this

http://www.latshawsystems.com/ProductDetails_KJFileManager.aspx

Have a disco
02-10-2006, 06:59 PM
Believe the Nero Oem edition will allow you to burn CDG

Murrough
02-10-2006, 07:16 PM
I would like to share some thoughts here

I have just invested considerable amounts in brand new Sunfly original disks and I am in the process of 'putting' these on Computer. I will still take the originals with me, but the computer playing is faster and prevents the disks masters getting scratched. I know this could still be technically 'in breach' but Its the nearest I can get.

For the ripper I spent all weekend researching and found there were mainly three that make it easy. PCDJ-KJ just was just too fiddly. I dont like the tricerasoft packages, they take over your machine, they said both my drives were incompatible (they arnt) and generally hung the machine. I settled on Power CD+G Burner. I ripped at 320Kbps MP3 and this system is quite fast.

For naming convention though it relies on freedb and this is a pain as there seems to be no consistancy in the naming approaches. I have therefore settled on my own file naming which is the Sunfly disk and then the track ie SF001-03.

However, this does not actually name the artist and track within the CDG / MP3 file which is handy for the player. However, There is a package called Karaoke Song List Creator and this has all the tracks for every disk (very good package). The full version allows me to copy to excel and also contains the Disk Reference.

So once I have ripped them all, I shall write some VB in Excel, to populate the name and artist fields and may even rename the MP3 and update the associations. This will then allow the directory functions of the players to work faster.

For my player, again, I looked at PCDJ (to cumbersome), Tricerasoft (WINCDGPro) but its too fiddly to set up and has limited functionality; Power CDG Player (from the people who make the ripper) but it was a bit of weak player, its key change was awful I Opted for Karafun and invested in the studio version. This is very cool piece of software as it can display your own pictures behind the karaoke lyrics (looks The b********ks I must say!). It also allows you to send the full screen display to a separate second monitor, which for professional shows, is well cool. I feed this into a video wireless transmitter, and then place the recievers where I want them. The punters see the lyric screens and backgrounds only ,where as I see the full control screen. It also sounded muchclearer than the others as well.

Cheers (sort out the poxy fair use license please!!!!)

M

DK Karaoke
03-10-2006, 06:08 PM
Hi Murrough,

Nice thread. Can I ask where did you get the Karafun software from? Have you tried the Power CDG Creator plus, with this piece of software you can create your own cdg's.

another tip, you can play cdg's in windows meadia player, or Real player, if you have the Power Filter. All these Power programmes are made by Doblon, and before anyone says, no I do not work for Doblon. I just think the software is good.

I would not use it however, for playing karaoke in a live gig, for as you say the player is not made for that.

Also, you can edit the name in Power cdg ripper by entering the following into the Output Filename Mask Box towards the bottom of the screen:

{T} - {S} - (the number of your disc eg., Sunfly - leg etc.)

When you press the refresh button, if the tracks are listed on freedb, it will enter the artist, and song title, and disc no automatically as it is ripping. Both files mp3 and cdg, will be named the same, except for the last 3 digits, which will be = .mp3 and .cdg.

If freedb does not have the titles, you can input them yourself, but you still need to enter the data mentioned above in the Output Filename Mask box.

Doing the above the drive you save your tracks on will all show the Artist, Song title and disc no.

Oh, and by the way, its illegal anyway to use copied discs and you can not get a licence. Nor will the majors, like Sunfly give you permission to do it, which is what you need in order to be legal.

Hope the above is helpful, and do let me know where you got Karafun.

Cheers

DK Karaoke & Disco

DK Karaoke
03-10-2006, 06:10 PM
Hi, again, just to correct my last post.

I said "you can get a licence", this should have read = you cannot get a licence.

Cheers

DK

colinm345
03-10-2006, 06:14 PM
Well Zoom Karaoke give thier permission to convert their discs to MP3+G ,so perhaps the others may catch up?:teeth:

DK Karaoke
03-10-2006, 06:18 PM
HI Colinm345,

The last time I checked, you cannot get a licence to perform karaoke using electronic media (cdg files on computer) in public, even if you have the original discs. Karaoke discs are classed as vidio medio, covered by a differenct organisation.

Unfortunately Zoom only produce a small proportion of the total karaoke disc market, although their quality is good.

Cheers

DK

colinm345
03-10-2006, 06:24 PM
HI Colinm345,

The last time I checked, you cannot get a licence to perform karaoke using electronic media (cdg files on computer) in public, even if you have the original discs. Karaoke discs are classed as vidio medio, covered by a differenct organisation.

Unfortunately Zoom only produce a small proportion of the total karaoke disc market, although their quality is good.

Cheers

DK

Hi you are quite right,but I did not say that

What I said was that Zoom karaoke had given thier permission to change thier disc format to MP+G should you want

I hope this clears things up a little:teeth:

Shaka
07-10-2006, 02:56 PM
so does anyone know if you are going to be able to buy a licence that will allow you to play the tracks in public ?

Corabar Entertainment
07-10-2006, 05:05 PM
Licensing issues are a bit up in the air at the moment: the LWP are awaiting feedback from the authorities.