The Karaoke Forum

Using your camera phone, take photos of your singers. Display the pictures of your singers (after adding a funny caption) with a program like MessageOke.
Have text scrolling across the top of the screen with humorous messages.
Show funny Flash files (downloaded from the internet).

I already do all of this with video camera, digital camera, video projection on the wall, etc, music videos of their songs as they sing on one wall and simultaneously a slideshow of their previous weeks performances of them and their friends as well....but...


what is a flash file??

Camera phone doesn't really do well in dimly lit areas, but posting pics of previous shows is a good idea.

I was also thinking of adding a cd burner to the set and record some singers for pre show warm up type thing as I get the show ready, or even giving them a copy of themseves &/or friends. I don't know how well it will work (oh yeah, I guess a cd burner is needed to )

what is a flash file??

Macromedia Flash is a vector drawing software used to create interactive animations, mainly for use on the web. Due to the relatively small file size, the Flash format makes it ideal for situations where hard drive space is a factor. Photos, drawings and movies can be embedded in Flash files (.swf).

There are a number of 3rd party programs that can create Flash files.

Toon Boom Studio can be used to create cartoon style Flash files. Anybody with some experience in video editting could quickly become proficient in using Toon Boom Studio.

Sorrenson Squeeze can be used to convert video footage to Flash files. Simply load your video file and click the button, wait for the encoding to be done and you have your swf (Flash) file.

(I now have all my VCD's converted to swf (Flash) (much smaller than the mpeg/dat on the CD) and can play them in MessageOke.)

There are too many other programs to mention here, but you get the idea.

To see some examples of Flash in action, google for "Flash Cartoons". There are tons of sites that host Flash content.

Flash is so much more than I've described here. There are armies of Flash "programmers" that create advanced interactive "programs" using their skills with Macromedia Flash. But for my needs, the 3rd party products have enough functionality and are easy to use.