[stcogoli]

greetings,
i have just written a visualisation for displaying karaoke .cdg
files on the xbox. i recently posted a patch for this on sourceforge but gamester17 suggested that i also post here to attract more developper's attention. the bulk work is done but i am looking for xbmc coders to polish this up. :help:

for those that are interested, you have to
1.) download the patch at sourceforge
2.) recompile xbmc with the source changes
3.) copy xaraoke.vis, xaraokelogo.bmp and xaraoke.xml
to the visualisations folder
4.) select the xaraoke visualisation from the music settings
5.) put "song.cdg" in the same folder as "song.mp3"
6.) play the music file "song.mp3"

the visualisation will then kick in as soon as the file is played
and it will look for "song.cdg" in the same folder as "song.mp3". if the cdg file is not found, it displays a splash screen stating this. if the cdg file is found, it is parsed on the screen at a frequency specified in the settings file xaraoke.xml. you have to tweak this parsing period if the graphics are out of sync with the audio. the theoretical value is 3.3333 ms but this has to be lowered to correct for overhead (i wasn't able to take this overhead automatically into account). note that the overhead is more important when debugging so the parsing period has to be
lowered when running in debug mode. anyways, just play with this value until the sync is good ; once the right value
is found, you shouldn't have to adjust it anymore.

note also that this visualisation is not a standalone plugin so you have to recompile xbmc to use it. i tried to write it as a plugin at first but gave that up because:
1.) it has a lot of functionality (thread functions etc...) that had to be added to the dllloader so a recompile was necessary anyways.
2.)i also think that voice support should be added and it will surely be a hassle to do this in a windows dll.
3.) it doesn't behave exactly as a visualisation because
a.) the visualisation has to start automatically when the file
is played to assure synchronicity.
b.) xbmc must pass the whole music file path to this visualisation (not just the file name) in order for the vis
to be able to find the .cdg file in the same folder.

at last, here is what remains to be done

todo:
-------
1.) fix a mem leak which is visible in debug mode when many cdg files are successively played.
2.) integrate the visualisation more elegantly in the base code if possible.
3.) add voice support for singing through the communicator headset (for now, a separate mixer is needed for singing along). maybe it could be possible to use voice masks and sound like mr roboto!
4.)maybe add a popup osd like the one for movie playback, with buttons for adjusting the volume, parsing period and other settings.

if we get this karaoke machine on track, maybe it can help
with xbox sales in japan :d