Karaoke Sing a Song

Tracklist revealed for We Sing

2009-11-12T17:54:00.000-08:00

News by Ellie Gibson,

The tracklists for two new karaoke games coming this Christmas have been revealed.

First up is We Sing, a Wii title from Nordic Games which allows up to four people to sing together. A new website has just launched revealing the 30 songs and artists featured in the game.

Highlights of the tracklist include Tears Dry On Their Own by Amy Winehouse, Would I Lie to You? by Charles and Eddie, The One and Only from Chesney Hawkes and John Denver's Take Me Home Country Roads. Lowlights include Trouble by Shampoo, Barbie Girl by Aqua and some Roxette song. Also: James Morrison.

Alternatively there's the new instalment in the Karaoke Revolution series which is coming to Wii, PS3 and Xbox 360. It will feature 50 songs but only a handful have been revealed so far, including ABC, Dancing Machine, I Want You Back and I'll Be There from the Jackson 5. Plus there's Michael Jackson's first solo No. 1, Ben. Us neither.

More contemporary tracks include So What by Pink, Viva La Vida by Coldplay and Rhianna's Disturbia. Or how about a bit of Rod Stewart (Do Ya Think I'm Sexy), Taylor Swift (Love Story) or Miranda (Enamorada)? Thought not.

We Sing and Karaoke Revolution will both be released on 20th November. It's just like John and Edward vs. Lucie all over again.

Recorder Audio

2009-05-01T19:14:00.000-07:00

Assuming that you are using a 3-head deck, the “analog processed” tracks will be delayed by the distance between the record and playback heads as determined by the tape speed. You can easily compensate for this delay by realigning the processed tracks in your DAW. (With a 2-head machine, you'll have to finish recording to tape, then rewind and play your tracks back into the workstation.)

Unfortunately, open-reel tape recorders are not being commercially produced these days, so you'll have to find one used. I recommend buying from a company that specializes in recorder restoration, rather than making a risky purchase on eBay: you'll pay more up front but be rewarded with a dependable machine.

Because buying a used recorder is a gamble, you'll have to invest some time to prove that the machine is worthy before playing an expensive test tape or a valuable master on it. What follows is a list of steps you can take to assess the operating condition of an open-reel machine and diagnose any problems along the way, as well as an overview of what's involved in setting up and maintaining a trustworthy analog tape recorder.

DVD Player

2009-02-10T20:58:00.000-08:00

This introduction to DVD playback applications for GNU/Linux looks at Xine, VideoLAN Client, MPlayer and Ogle. In addition to playing encrypted DVDs, unofficially in some cases, several of these players also will play back other file formats.

Xine has quite a large following, and for good reason, as it is a very capable DVD player. In addition, like most of the players reviewed here, Xine is capable of playing a large range of file types in addition to unencrypted-DVD playback. Xine easily can be extended with additional functionality as it supports plugins that enable you to incorporate new codecs (open- or closed-source) or any additional function easily. There are many plugins available for Xine on the Net ready to be downloaded.

Xine only supports the playback of unencrypted DVD directly, but support for encrypted DVDs is provided by a third-party plugin (xine_d4d_plugin). It is unlikely that Xine will support encrypted DVDs directly. The legal status of this plugin is, as always, debatable, but it is easy enough to find and install. There are some useful links on the Xine web site, and a search at Google should find the required links for this plugin. It is stated on the Xine web site that encrypted DVD playback is not going to be supported directly because of the legal issues that surround this area. However, once you have installed the plugin, Xine's playback of encrypted DVDs is smooth with no noticeable problems with audio synchronization or any video glitches.

Xine's interface is tidy and provides most of the function you might require. Depending upon your preferences, you may find that it takes up too much space on your desktop. As Xine is currently not skinnable, there is no way to change the size or layout of the GUI. If you are running XFree86 4.x, with a supported video card, you can switch Xine from windowed to full-screen mode and back again smoothly. If this is not supported by your video card or version of X, Xine still can be viewed in a window, which is the default startup mode.

Unfortunately, Xine does not support DVD menus directly; however, there is a plugin called dvdnav (available from prdownloads.sourceforge.net/dvd) that adds this functionality to Xine. This plugin is a must-have if you intend to use Xine for DVD playback. The plugin works very well, even with the complex animated menus that some DVDs have, and although this is not required for DVD playback, it obviously gives you complete access to all the features available. The code for the DVD navigation was written referencing the original Ogle DVD menu code base.