In one of the more idiotic Internet applications, a student was in the shop today required to do a 4-hour “driving skills” test on-line. If not completed, the student gets 3 “points” on his driver’s license over a speeding ticket. These points accumulate and at 12, you lose your license for a year. It turns out as in far too often, these tests are from a non-government for-profit outfit that you have to locate by yourself. From the nature of the Internet, nobody could find an “authorized” test site. I found one within the minute.So I watched. My oath, what is to become of us? The test was one of those pettifogging, insipid travesties we all just love. One question asked about the relative levels of alcohol between a Long Island Ice Tea and a Gin & Tonic. What, are you supposed to be a bartender now? Tons of trick questions, as in worded funny. The candidate was required to take a break of ten minutes every hour. To ensure the break was at the machine, meaningless random questions popped up, such as, “Have you ever been to Mexico.” (Always answer “No.”)
You can skip the rest of today if you are not curious about karaoke, the business part. I was in the shop 13 hours over this one. I believe I asked several questions y’day. For one, housewives love karaoke because what other kind of part time job can you set up for less than $20,000? I am convinced the average setup costs the user around that amount.
My recollection of karaoke was a stack of those album-sized laser disks. They were heavy and labor-intensive, and fragile. What I’ve discovered is they are replaced by a format called MP3+G. The “G” stands for “graphics”, which means the lyrics. The audio is an ordinary MP3, but it is played back through a karaoke player, not the regular MP3 player I have been using. I see now that Arnel is using a karaoke playback for his MP3 backing tracks. He never uses the graphics part except to remind himself of the words.
I also learned that all karaoke is second-party, that is, no performer releases his material in that format. That is, all karaoke is faked. I’ve heard some pretty accurate fakes. The karaoke machine must have two video outputs. One, to display themaster controls, the other to show the lyrics for the singer. You know, the words that change color as things go along. Turns out this is a very complicated and expensive.
In passing, I kept encountering a new term, “hardsubbing”. This is where the subtitles appear on the screen like closed captioning. However, closed captioning can be turned off. When the wording is permanently burned onto the original, that is “hardsubbing”.
Arnel was interested in software that converts MP3s to MIDI. I will investigate this technology because it seems to me (at this point) that only the MIDI version can change the tempo and key. I’ve always had trouble changing keys with MP3s. You may ask why since I don’t sing. It is because a lot of the original recordings are off key,(Elvis, Cash, Beach Boys).
Additionally of interest is the vocal eliminator. It would be ideal to convert the original tune to MIDI, remove the vocals and disable the bass line. But ideal never happens. The eliminators don’t work 25% of the time. Reason: in most stereo recording, the vocals are equally split between the channels to give the impression the sound is coming from the center. You simply invert one channel and the vocals cancel.
Trivia. England hung pirates “until dead”. This implies there was another option. Beheading was reserved only for the upper class.
