Here’s a quick guide on how to do that: How to covert karaoke files to video (Mac, Windows, Linux)

Pick one of the methods above (the one I can vouch for is kJams, see:Best Karaoke software for Mac) and try a test video. Once you’ve converted the video, import to Ableton Live by dragging it into the main window, where it says “Drop Files and Devices Here”.

If the file appears in the list of clips, you’re good. Now hit the “TAB” key to switch to Live’s “arrangement” video (more on this later) and drag the video into the main middle space (in this view, it isn’t marked “Drag Files… etc”).

The video should appear as another colored rectangle, and if you hit “Spacebar” in Live (or press play in the top row of buttons) a video window should appear and the track should start playing.

If you can’t drag the file into Live. Or if the video is garbled, that means the file is in a format that Live can’t work with. Go back and try one of the other tools in the guide above, or try tweaking that tool’s options. (The goal is a an h.264 video file in an .m4v wrapper. If the video plays in iTunes, it should work in Live.)

Note: Live 6 lets you work with video, but only Live 7 and later let you export your work. So you can perform with Live 6 but you will need Live 7 for making Youtube videos, etc. Since Live 6 was the last version with a stable crack for Mac (at the time of this writing) this is important to remember.   

But there’s no practical way to convert videos on the fly during a set, because Ableton’s video window disappears when you change focus (by far the most annoying limitation for people using video in Ableton). So if you want to run your karaoke night out of Ableton Live, or have your whole library available for use in a live performance, you’ll need to convert the whole thing.

Some tips:

• The best tool for this is kJams for Mac, but you’ll have to register it to convert more than 3 files at a time.
• Annoyingly (due to the disappearing video window constraint) you’ll have to browse your karaoke collection within Live, and Live will only see the video file names. So make sure all your filenames are consistently “Artist – Title – Album”. kJams is a good tool for this.
• Test songs as you’re going, since it’s possible your converter tool will have better success on some songs than others.
• Time how long each track takes to make sure conversion is practical. If it takes about 1 minute per track, 60,000 tracks is 1000 hours! If too slow, try a different tool or find a faster computer.
• Check the average size of each video to make sure you have enough space. Videos are about the same size as the unzipped CDG and mp3 file.  

Once you’ve got your whole karaoke collection converted to video, it’s time to tweak Live so that your collection is easy to access. First, for a basic primer, read the section “Managing Files and Sets” in the Ableton Live Manual (no seriously, read the manual, it’s one of the best ones I’ve ever seen and not the least bit intimidating).

To see your karaoke library:

1. Click on one of the 3 numbered folder icons in the upper half of the left sidebar.
2. Browse to the directory where your karaoke tracks are
3. Click the down arrow next to the directory name, and select “Bookmark Current Folder” from the dropdown menu.
4. Click the “search” icon to the right of the folder name
5. Start typing a search term, and hit enter. On your first search, it will take a while as it indexes the folder. After that it will be faster.
6. Drag a track into your “set” (Ableton’s name for your working document) and you’re good to go.

Important: One of the drawbacks in working with video in Ableton Live is that, while Ableton is super-optimized to never interrupt audio playback, video is not a priority. So sometimes when displaying or searching through very large lists of files (like a karaoke collection) or when adding a new file to the set, the video playback window will temporarily lock up. This sucks for karaoke situations, because 99% of singers will just pause and look dumb–even when they know all the words to a song by heart. In my experience, this problem is worse in Windows XP than on a Mac, and Ableton 8 seems better than in 6 and 7.

Here are some tips to avoid video playback lockup in Ableton:

• When adding tracks to your set, use your copy/paste keys rather than dragging. When dragging, the video playback problems happen as soon as you start hovering over your set with the file you’re going to add.
• When Ableton displays a huge list of files (50,000 karaoke tracks, say) video will lock up. Avoid this by bookmarking one directory and putting karaoke files in a subdirectory. That way, if you accidentally close the search window, it won’t display the full list and lock up video playback.
• In the preferences, under “File Folder”, make sure “Automatic rescan on each search” is turned off. Only rescan when you add new songs, since scanning/indexing is one of the things that locks up video playback.
• Try using a later version of Live, or a different OS. Mac is better than Windows on this stuff, and I would guess that Vista is better than XP.

8-bit dove, 8-bit olive branch?!

First post in the new Karaoke Art department. It’s from a version of Prince’s “When Doves Cry”. This blog will be beautiful as well as useful.

Here’s how–for Mac, Windows, and Linux;

With kJams (Mac): Right click on videos, click “Export QuickTime” and choose a destination folder. You need to register ($40) to convert more than 10 videos at a time. Video quality is great.

With Power CD+G to Video Converter (Windows): Also costs $40 to register; not useful in trial mode.

With cdg2video (linux): you’ve got to build it yourself, no Ubuntu packages, only Gentoo ebuild. Free as in freedom, baby.

With PyKaraoke (Windows and Linux): There’s a “convert to mpg” option. Haven’t tested it, but if it’s broken they’ll fix it.

Now, there should be a way to do this for free on all platforms with VLC. VLC is supposed to be able to transcode any format it can play into a range of formats (including Quicktime, h264, etc). Plus it’s scriptable, so if you can convert one file, you can convert a whole library.

But I tried all the options I could think of and couldn’t get it to work. The resulting videos would play in VLC, but with errors in iTunes. Ableton Live must’ve picked up on those errors in its pre-analysis and wouldn’t even try to import them.

Right now I’m happy with kJams, so if anyone finds the magic parameters, let me know.

You’ll just want everything on a laptop anyway, and many CD-ROM drives (like the ones found in most Mac laptops) won’t even read CD+G’s.

You still see lots of karaoke DJ’s using CDs out of habit. But requiring singers to write down disk and track numbers on pieces of paper is such a drag.

I’ll go out on a limb here and say that even if you inherit a large collection of discs, you’re better off selling them to some schmuck (or microwaving them one by one) and hitting the torrent sites and/or setting up mIRC. It might seem like a waste, but you’ll burn more time in the long run dealing with CD+G’s.

The easiest way would be using a Mac with kJams and its built in store (powered by Tricerasoft). Songs are $1-$2. Just hit up each singer per song (in some places, like Brazil, most karaoke is pay-for-play).

On Windows, the options aren’t as rosy. You could use the Tricarasoft player and its built-in store. Or you could use the Tricerasoft or Buykaraokedownloads web stores with Winamp or PyKaraoke.

There’s a free option too: download using mIRC. Set up is tricky, but I made a step by step guide: Free karaoke music (using mIRC). Downloads won’t be as fast, but they’ll be fast enough. The selection will be just as good if not better–there are a few people with huge libraries sharing consistently.

The only hitch is that the wifi router at the venue will need to have UPnP turned on, or you’ll need to use your own 3g card. Make sure to test first.

You’ll need to register for $40 to create playlists of more than 3 songs. In a pinch, you could always keep the playlist on slips of paper, I suppose. But the developer is a great guy so it’s money well spent.

kJams Features include:

• Plays CDG’s, zips, videos, kar files and more.
• Skips silence before songs
• Search-as-you-type
• Converts songs to Quicktime videos (for iPods or VJ software)
• Tools for managing Album/Artist info (and making books).
• Integrated music store with DRM-free tracks.

My only real complaint with kJams is the fact that the interface is modeled on iTunes, and now that I’m moving towards an Ableton-based setup that’s actually better for me. More on that here: My only big problem with kJams (and observations on the evolution of music player UIs)

If somebody were to package PyKaraoke for Mac then this might turn into a fun miller light situation with people shouting “Simplicity!” and “Features!” back and forth at each other.

One last thing. If you’re using a version of kJams for a while, and everything works, you might want to consider skipping updates. kJams is under active development and occasionally annoying bugs will sneak into new versions.

But as it is, kJams is great. Try it out! Download kJams today!

kJams screenshot