2012-12-24, 03:54
The bad news first:
It's almost Xmas and you wonder whether or not it is possible to have a nice video of a fireplace on your tv while XBMC plays your for favorite Xmas songs. Well, so did I. And I discovered that we're not alone in this. Actually, this question pops up quite often. It's actually amazing that it's not a standard feature
Currently, XBMC does not seem to have the ability to play a video using one of the different Visualization options that come with XBMC. So we're going to use something else; Karaoke.
To enable Karaoke, go to System->Settings->Music->Karaoke and enable karaoke support.
Next, open your advancedsettings.xml in your userdata directory. This file may or may not exist. If it does not exist, then create it.
Copy the <karaoke></karaoke> stuff from below into your advancedsettings.xml file. Replace the path attribute of the <defaultbackground> tag to point to the video you would like to play.
(In case you're starting with a new advancedsettings.xml file, then you will need to copy the <advancedsettings></advancedsettings> tags as well.)
Restart XBMC so that it will load the new advancedsettings.xml file.
For XBMC to recognize a song as a karaoke song (and play the video), the song needs a lyrics file with the exact same filename, but with .lrc extension. The lyrics file also needs to be bigger than 0 bytes but it does not need to contain any lyrics. An empty space suffices.
For example (on Linux) when you would like to create a lyrics file for all you mp3's in the current directory, you could execute the following on the command line:
Next you need to scan your 'karaoke' songs into the library. Once the songs are in the library, they are automatically recognized as karaoke songs which then means that when you play such a song, the video will automatically start to play as well.
Have fun!
Quote:With the start of every song, your video will restart as well. You will momentarily see the XBMC interface when the video restarts.
You will need a nightly build of Frodo. This will not work on Frodo RC2 or earlier since the required patches were merged yesterday.
It's almost Xmas and you wonder whether or not it is possible to have a nice video of a fireplace on your tv while XBMC plays your for favorite Xmas songs. Well, so did I. And I discovered that we're not alone in this. Actually, this question pops up quite often. It's actually amazing that it's not a standard feature
Currently, XBMC does not seem to have the ability to play a video using one of the different Visualization options that come with XBMC. So we're going to use something else; Karaoke.
To enable Karaoke, go to System->Settings->Music->Karaoke and enable karaoke support.
Next, open your advancedsettings.xml in your userdata directory. This file may or may not exist. If it does not exist, then create it.
Copy the <karaoke></karaoke> stuff from below into your advancedsettings.xml file. Replace the path attribute of the <defaultbackground> tag to point to the video you would like to play.
(In case you're starting with a new advancedsettings.xml file, then you will need to copy the <advancedsettings></advancedsettings> tags as well.)
Code:
<advancedsettings>
<karaoke>
<!-- Music-lyrics delay for CDG format lyrics in SECONDS. Floating number, may be negative. -->
<syncdelaycdg>0.0</syncdelaycdg>
<!-- Music-lyrics delay for LRC format lyrics in 1/10 seconds. Floating number, may be negative. -->
<syncdelaylrc>0.0</syncdelaylrc>
<!-- If set to true, when the songs are added to the library, XBMC will automatically replace the song genre by "Karaoke"
if the song has associated lyrics. Default is false. -->
<alwaysreplacegenre>true</alwaysreplacegenre>
<!-- If set to true, when the music-lyrics delay was modified while playing using subtitle delay buttons, the delay value
for this song will be stored, and restored when the song is played next time. Default is true. -->
<storedelay>true</storedelay>
<!-- When karaoke songs are added to the library during scans, an autoincrement number is automatically assigned
to each song, starting from the value specified below. Default starts from 1. -->
<autoassignstartfrom>1</autoassignstartfrom>
<!-- If set to true (default), the background for CDG songs is always empty (plain color) no matter what setting is set in
defaultbackground below. When setting this to false, then one can see through the background and see the video or
visualization.-->
<nocdgbackground>true</nocdgbackground>
<!-- Sets default background mode. Type could be "none", "vis" for visualisation, "image" or "video".
For image/video types the "path" parameter should specify the image or video file to play. -->
<defaultbackground type="video" path="special://masterprofile/karaokevideobg.avi"/>
<!-- If non-zero, specifies the time in seconds left before the end of the current song when a window will pop up informing you
about the next played song. The window does not pop up if there is no next song, or it is not a karaoke song -->
<nextsongpopuptime>0.0</nextsongpopuptime>
</karaoke>
</advancedsettings>
Restart XBMC so that it will load the new advancedsettings.xml file.
For XBMC to recognize a song as a karaoke song (and play the video), the song needs a lyrics file with the exact same filename, but with .lrc extension. The lyrics file also needs to be bigger than 0 bytes but it does not need to contain any lyrics. An empty space suffices.
For example (on Linux) when you would like to create a lyrics file for all you mp3's in the current directory, you could execute the following on the command line:
Code:
for f in *.mp3; do echo "$f.lrc" | echo " " >> "`sed -e 's/.mp3//g'`"; done
Next you need to scan your 'karaoke' songs into the library. Once the songs are in the library, they are automatically recognized as karaoke songs which then means that when you play such a song, the video will automatically start to play as well.
Have fun!