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.   

The first official karaokecrime.com show happened in Providence last Thursday at Matthewson Street. The Dance Troupe raised a ton of money for their tour, and the danceparty jam session was Awesome.

I’m posting the karaoke megamix exactly as I ran it last night. Ableton crapped out on me yesterday before the show, so I didn’t even have time to mix it. But whatever, I’m posting as is while I’m excited. My favorite part is the “Go DJ” verse over “Love is Gone”.

Makes me teary.

Still lookin for a good way to post 10 minute plus videos that are fair-use heavy. In the meantime: Karaoke Megamix 1

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.