VirtualDJ

[DanG2006]

I have settled on VirtualDJ as my player for a couple of reasons. I can easily add and play my buy on the fly songs without putting them in their final folders and they have a remote request system that allows my singers to browse my songlist and send a request to the player. Yes it's missing an automatic rotation management system but I have a work around to it by keeping track of the rotation via wordpad. I add the new singer's name into the singer's list before moving their request into the playlist.

[mr.dj]

Settled !! Wow.
What happened with open kj ?
So I suppose your back with Windows then ? You posted on 28th Feb.

I have finally picked my player and set it up so I can't use any other player unless I reload Windows on my show computer and that ain't happening.
Or have you got a Mac now ?

I'd be surprised if you ever fully learn how to use any software as you swap and change too quick. Every software has a learning curve and needs more than 1 show to fully come to terms with it's use.
What will it be next week!!

[DanG2006]

Linux was missing software that I needed for DJ only shows, I needed something that played more than audio. Coming back Windows, I discovered that the creator of OpenKJ can't seem to keep his certificate up to date so I decided to kill 2 birds with one stone and go with a software that can handle bith my DJ needs and Karaoke needs. The only thing that is missing is a rotation management system but I have a work around to deal with it.

[mr.dj]

Virtual DJ is certainly a good DJ software but I think most of the karaoke programs are more suited to that particular task.
Why not run virtual DJ for DJ nights and your preferred karaoke software for karaoke ?
I have Dex 3 which is a combined DJ kj program and also has rotation management but I still prefer my karaoke software for karaoke.
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[DanG2006]

Because the only good filler player is in OpenKJ. The next best in crappy Compuhost which even with its own codec pack doesn't consistently play any video format whatsoever. And I can't play any other player beside it. Even though I do like dex 3 Pro. The closest thing to it is VirtualDJ. It actually has what I consider one of the best phone app request system out there.

[Paradigm Karaoke]

Siglos can do all of that easily, including videos (which i have added to my filler player to mix things up a bit) you already have Siglos so....

[DanG2006]

Siglos doesn't play any of my karaoke MP4s. Their filler player sucks too. No real control in it. No way to shut it down while inside the rotation cleanly. I don't play music between karaoke songs, I ay them between rotations.

[DanG2006]

Well, got Siglos working fully only to screw it up by trying to test out Compuhost using the theory that if Siglos is finally accepting my MP4s that maybe I can get Compuhost to do the same. Should've just left things alone, just wanted a better looking kiosk interface than Siglos. I found it with JustKaraoke and Super Remote Requests Tool. I know zero tech support but while I have had issues with other programs, I have yet, with the exception of issues with variable rate MP3 files in the filler player which I don't use, to experience any issues with JustKaraoke. I even have a solution for buy on the fly to allow me to leave my show computer offline from the internet yet still use the kiosk. I will just do it by connecting my phone to my show computer and buying, downloading from my phone and sending the songfile to my laptop from there.
The only issue is that I can't use the phone app because the only download that I found is an older version of the Super Remote Requests Tool. If anyone has an installer for the last version put out, I would be grateful if you could get it to me.

[DanG2006]

Got Siglos working again but have decided against it and will stick with JustKaraoke because for some reason even with the onscreen keyboard setting in use, you can only search with it. You get to the submit page to enter your name and key change and the onscreen keyboard is nowhere to be seen, not even if you try to open the field that you want to type in.

[DanG2006]

Went with DEX 3 Pro. No brainer. Everything in one software, basic rotation, can enter more than one song per singer without having to move every singer in the playlist everytime you add a song to an existing singer. Only singer that you have to move in the playlist is a new singer. Plays all my videos. I like the fact that I can color code my files in the database to indicate audio, karaoke and video so I can leave it set on all when I search because it puts my karaoke video files in the video area and not in the karaoke area of the database. Light blue for audio, orange for video and purple for karaoke. Easy to learn the basics. Keeps track of singers who have sung before at previous shows for song entry. Plus for less the cost of one computer running VirtualDJ, I can install it on three. So basically I have two backup laptops at my disposal should something happen. I only had 2 with Compuhost and Siglos and 1 with Hoster. OpenKJ was limitless. But again not totally what fit my needs.

[DanG2006]

Well, got a gig, found a side software that I tried out that puts away the issue of what if a singer doesn't have a smartphone but because someone has hacked my old debit card, I can't make the initial payment before next month and I don't want to give my singers one method of putting in their requests and then pull it the next week, so I decided to do the smart thing and revert to separate softwares for different events. For Bar shows I am using Hoster and SongbookDB. For private parties, I plan on using DEX, because private parties basically end up as primarily DJ events with a small karaoke time period for the event.