3 Lesser Known But Kick A** Karaoki Features
Over the last 7 years Karaoki has grown into the markets most robust, feature-rich karaoke software for professional KJs.
Free updates are released often, with public betas posted to our Karaoki user forum almost every week. It’s our customers, and the feedback received via our forum and support system that have driven many of the innovative and unique features found in our karaoke software today. Karaoki features are well documented in the Karaoki user guide and YouTube tutorial videos, but a handful of functions, although also listed, go unnoticed by karaoke hosts new to Karaoki or those considering purchasing it.
Today we’ll explain 3 of the lesser known, but kick a** Karaoki features.
3 Karaoki Features You Should Know About
1) The ability to print or export song books: Karaoki allows you to export your cases (song lists) as TSV files – so you can simply drag-and-drop into a spreadsheet application like excel. Each field from your Karaoki case/s will be placed into independent spreadsheet fields automatic, so you can easily organize and print from there. You can also right click and select “Print Case” to print from Karaoki directly in a pinch.
2) Use your own background images behind the singers (lyrics) screen: From Options -> CDG Options in Karaoki you can upload jpeg or BPM images to use as the background behind the lyrics (second singers display only). You can set it up to randomly select images, much like a slide show. For larger images you have a “scroll” option, so the image moves around the screen behind the lyrics.
3) Use independent Sound Cards (Audio devices) for karaoke and background (filler) music: I think this was explained perfectly on our forum by one of our newest Karaoki KJs:
“This was actually one of the BIG reasons I first purchased a Karaoki license.
Karaoki gracefully handles multiple sound cards, or multiple channels of a multi-channel interface. In the configuration window, I can tell Karaoki which channels go to which device. Setting karaoke and BGM to go to different sound cards (or different stereo pairs on a multichannel interface) allows me to control those levels, easily, using an external mixer, as if they were separate CD players.
I also discovered that if I need to change those settings, on the fly, (right in the middle of a song, even!) the playback never falters or misses a beat. If a cable goes bad, you can re-map around it, install a new cable, and return to my preferred settings, and the audience will never notice. Don’t ask me how I know that. I don’t suggest doing that live, but I did it, and it worked smoothly.”
Have any karaoke software features you’d like to add to this list? Feel free to share in the comments section below!
First, thanks for a great product! I’ve used Karaoki for several years now. I cohost a show for a seniors community monthly and have a good sized group of regulars that attend. I may be overlooking something since I myself am a senior, but I would like to have the ability to search a singers database for a particular song. The regular’s lists are getting extensive and finding a particular entry takes quite a bit of my time. Additionally, I would like to be able to natively play mp4’s within Karaoki. I do play them using the CODEC package you recommended but sometimes it doesn’t do the original recording justice. I do admit I’m still learning all the nuances of the software, particularly singer lists and not being able to play them in new shows. I constantly have to ‘play’ with them to make them work, but I manage. Again, thanks for a great product with great support. Our community wouldn’t be the same without it!
Thanks for the fantastic feedback, and suggestions, Joseph!
We are indeed already working on “search singer history” (per singer db), so you should see this in a new beta release soon. Native support for videos is indeed a bit tricky, as an upgrade to the playback engine/decoder is necessary – but something we do indeed plan to do.
Have you tried the new beta? Are you experiencing the same issue with singers lists? I know in older versions any songs in singer history that had a “-” in front of the song title wouldn’t allow you to add them back to rotation. They also caused other database issues. This issue should however be resolved in 5911 (and newer), so it’s possible the update will fix it. Keep in mind as well you don’t want to start a “new show” in more recent versions unless you want another entirely different set of singers and singer history (although you can manually import singers from one show into another).
Instead of using “new show”, right click in the rotation list and use “clear rotation” instead. This will simply clear out the rotation list, but keep all the singers and their history in the existing show.
Let me know if this helps and/or if you have any further questions!
I would love to buy this software BUT I am just waiting for one feature (I have asked for many times) to be added.
I only want to ‘announce’ the next singer on the screen when I am ready! I need a button that will display the only the next one singer, that I can press when I feel the time is right.
I work in one venue that is poorly attended so I spread out the karaoke singers throughout the night and DJ in between.
Thanks Jack!
You can already choose how many singers to display on the “next singers display” – or you can choose to show none at all. These options are located under “rotation options” (right click in the rotation list and select rotation options). However, it’s not tied to any buttons (where you choose when to display it) – it simply displays when nothing is playing in the karaoke player.
For the scrolling footer ticker The ability to put in multiple messages and then to be able to select them from the main screen. For example I have my welcome to the show tonight ticker but it just Scrolls and scrolls. There’s a limited number of spaces that you can add to separate multiple shortbmessages but again it’s one after the other. What I would like to have is a multiple input ticker
For example message number one might be a welcome to the show message; number two would Applaud for the singers;
ticker number three might be tonight’s specials;
ticket number four might be One hour left shows almost over and maybe number five would be a thanks for coming out. The ability to add multiple messages and then be able to select them from the main screen without having to go into the options menu. Sort of like hot buttons.
On the background music case the option to have the music automatically que to the next song after a karaoki singer song is started. Right background music case just keeps playing and then after the karaoki music is over it rejoins that song wherever it might be in the song whether that be the last few seconds or the middle of the next track. I would like for the option to select a new song every time the karaoke singer song ends.
Thanks Doc! Good news on this suggestion, you can do this now in Karaoki.
While in the bgm area in Karaoki, right click on the text “background music” and you’ll find all your bgm options. You can set it up there to ‘pause deck’ and ‘start new track’. So every time the bgm kicks in the bgm will automatically play a new track
I forgot to mention, you can post all Karaoki feature suggestions in the Karaoki wish list forum (link at the bottom of the blog post above). Thanks!