Making Karaoke Tracks

[Jimmykicker]

I am looking to partially and/or completely cut out the voice part of a few tracks. I've tried the Wave Editor on Nero 6.3.1.10, but I can't cut out the voice completely. Is this even possible? Thought someone here might have some ideas...

[fmctm1sw]

This was talked about a month or so ago. I know there were some ideas. Try searching, I can't remember what the name of what the thread was....

[Sifaga]

I have never seen a satisfactory way of doing this

do a search for "Remove Vocal"

[Jimmykicker]

I did some searches before I posted because I was sure this had been talked about, but couldn't find exactly what I wanted...I'll look again...

[vcdlover]

Jimmykicker,

Are you making VCD or DVD karaoke?


vcdlover

[Jimmykicker]

Are you making VCD or DVD karaoke?

Actually neither -- I'm just trying to put a few songs and parts of songs in Karaoke and throw them on a normal CD and knew people in this forum (even though it is for video help) would know a thing or two about it.

The programs in other threads don't look like they would do much better than the Nero tool. Thinking, it makes me wonder how they make those radio edit songs...seems like the same procedure could be applied to normal songs...or are they just completely separate recordings?...I don't know...

[vcdlover]

Jimmykicker,

I know some basic of how to make a karaoke song. If you're creating an MPEG1, you need a music with a track that saperates a vocal and a non-vocal chanel. You can make a vocal either left or right chanel. Then you just put the VDO and the music togerther and burn it with Nero VCD template. (I know you mention that you didn't make either VCD or DVD). If it's an MPEG2, it's going to be a different process...

vcdlover

[fmctm1sw]

I am looking to partially and/or completely cut out the voice part of a few tracks. I've tried the Wave Editor on Nero 6.3.1.10, but I can't cut out the voice completely. Is this even possible? Thought someone here might have some ideas...

This is what I remember hearing. This is a straight rip off from the audacity website.

2. Can I remove the vocals from a recording?

With some stereo recordings, it is possible to remove the vocals because of the way in which the recording was mixed at the studio. Often, the vocals are placed in the exact center of the recording, while all other instruments are slightly off-center. If you subtract the right channel from the left channel, the vocals get completely canceled out, leaving only the other instruments.

[guns1inger]

If you have an audio editor that accepts directX plugins, try Vocal Remover from analog-X ( http://www.analogx.com/contents/download/audio/vremover.htm )

I have had a pretty good success rate with it, but it does depend on the source recording. Read what they say on their site before using.

Another word of warning - use audio sourced from the original CD, not from mp3 tracks. Poor MP3 encoding, especially at lower sampling rates (128 or less), can cause phasing issues between the channels which can result in a very muddy gurgle replacing the vocals after processing.

[muskgrave]

You can use the analogx vocal remover or any other vocal remover tool but your results will vary. Keep in mind the way these programs work is to basically subtract whatever is in the center of the stereo image. This means anything else that was in that center will go bye bye as well.

People make the professional karaoke cd's by either
1) getting ahold of the original master before the tracks were all mixed down and just dropping the vocal track out. or
2)they go back and re-record the song with no vocals if they have the rights to do so.

So it's kinda like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich..when you've got the seperate ingredients you can decide you can put the jelly back in the pantry but once you've made the sandwich you'll never totally be rid of it..or if you do get rid of it you're taken some bread and peanut butter with it

[Jean]

Hi,

I try to copy my karaoke VCD to a DVD. The DVD plays well, but I can't surpress vocal channel? Any one has any idea how to make it work?

Thanks,
Jean

[guns1inger]

You need to extract the audio and load it into your audio editor. Make two copies of the audio. In one, copy the left track over the right. In the other copy the right over the left. You now have two audio tracks - one with vocal, one without. Author these with your video and use the audio track selector in your DVD player to choose which audio track to play.

[Manokat]

I am looking to partially and/or completely cut out the voice part of a few tracks. I've tried the Wave Editor on Nero 6.3.1.10, but I can't cut out the voice completely. Is this even possible? Thought someone here might have some ideas...

Adobe Audition and SoundForge can remove most of the voice data.

[Manokat]

Hi,

I try to copy my karaoke VCD to a DVD. The DVD plays well, but I can't surpress vocal channel? Any one has any idea how to make it work?

Thanks,
Jean

DVD mode does not allow you to select L (left) or R (Right) audio individually, unlike VCD mode. In VCD mode normally the audio is on the right channel and the melody and (harmony) are on the left channel. When you press audio button or L/R on remote it will toggle playing left, right only channel or both channels simultaneously.

To convert Karaoke VCD to DVD correctly, you might want to create two audio streams for each mpeg. One stream with audio another without.
The one with audio, you can take the original stereo from VCD. But the one without audio you just take left channel off the original stereo audio and mirror that to right channel. When playing the converted DVD you can toggle the audio streams by pressing "language" or "audio" botton on the remote control.

[Manokat]

Little bit off the topic, but some people prefer CD+G than VCD for karaoke. It can play on a regular cd player (just the audio) and it can also play the "sing along" lyric when played on CD+G DVD player.

[Cornucopia]

Hi,

I try to copy my karaoke VCD to a DVD. The DVD plays well, but I can't surpress vocal channel? Any one has any idea how to make it work?

Thanks,
Jean

DVD mode does not allow you to select L (left) or R (Right) audio individually, unlike VCD mode. In VCD mode normally the audio is on the right channel and the melody and (harmony) are on the left channel. When you press audio button or L/R on remote it will toggle playing left, right only channel or both channels simultaneously.

To convert Karaoke VCD to DVD correctly, you might want to create two audio streams for each mpeg. One stream with audio another without.
The one with audio, you can take the original stereo from VCD. But the one without audio you just take left channel off the original stereo audio and mirror that to right channel. When playing the converted DVD you can toggle the audio streams by pressing "language" or "audio" botton on the remote control.

DVD Karaoke support depends on the authoring and on the player. Many players (like my Cyberhome 300) allow audio switching like in "VCDmode". Also, you can author a disc with flags that tell the (supporting) player that you have Guide, Vocal, Harmony, Melody, Background, etc. Tracks--which can be mixable! Again, support depends on the player, and these advanced Karaoke features aren't available in most players.

No Need to "copy the left to the right", etc. Just split and use the left channel as 1 MONO stream, and the right channel as another MONO stream. Saves bitrate and maintains higher quality.

Scott

[Jean]

Manokat and Scott,

Thank you for your help.

More questions on the way DVD treat audio streams.

I noticed the following difference when playing karaoke VCD and DVD (the orginal DVD, but the one I copied) on my DVD player:

When playing a karaoke VCD (on DVD player), I press "audio" button on remote control to toggle left/right channels. While playing a DVD disc, I press "language" button and "audio" button doesn't work. Do you know why? Does "audio" button have any use for playing a DVD disc?

The following is what I thought it should work, but it didn't. Something wrong here, but What?
The "audio" button on DVD remote control works for a VCD disc. When I copy a VCD to DVD by using TMPenc DVD author tool, I thought it did NOT re-encode VCD format to DVD format. Therefore, when playing the copied DVD disc, the DVD player should see it as a VCD format. If that is true, "audio" button should be able to toggle the left/right channels. However it doesn't. I know that left/right audio streams are separated copied to the DVD, just somehow can't be controled by the "audio" button.


Thank you for your advice on editing audio channels. That is a choice. Is there any easy way? I'm trying to copy my 12 karaoke VCDs to 2 DVDs. There are a total of 150 songs (tracks) on them. It would be tedious to edit one by one. O

Thank you,
Jean

[Cornucopia]

As VCD sample rate is 44.1kHz and DVD is 48kHz, there has to be SOME re-encoding going on, it just might not tell you.

re: Players' [AUDIO] button...
The firmware controls how a button is recognized and what it's function is.
For VCD's, most players map the [AUDIO] button to a SingleStream/StereoChannel Switcher/Mixer, which gives you the choice of:

• Stereo-->StereoOut
  Stereo-->Mixed to BothChannelsOut
  LeftChannelOnly-->BothChannelsOut
  RightChannelOnly-->BothChannelsOut

Some players may give you a little bit more choices than that.
For DVD's, almost ALL players map the [AUDIO] button to either an authored AUDIO MENU, or to a switcher which chooses between Streams 1-8 (however many is available/authored in the currently playing disc).

As I said before, my Cyberhome300 also has a separate button which does the same thing in DVDmode as it does with the [AUDIO] button in VCD mode. YMMV (my Cyberhome doesn't have any button labeled [LANGUAGE]).

Unless you decoded your MP2 audio from the VCD and separated the tracks in an audio editing app (like CoolEdit, Audacity), you won't actually have to separate tracks/files--you'll still have a single stereo/dual channel stream. This is not what you want for DVD Karaoke functionality.

Unfortunately, there is no easier way I know of than to:
1. Rip VCD
2. Demux Audio+Video
3. Decode Audio to Stereo WAV file
4. Sample Rate convert Stereo WAV (44.1kHz) to (48kHz)
5. Split Stereo WAV to 2 MONO WAV's
6. Re-encode each Mono WAV to MP2, AC3 or leave as is
7. Add to DVD authoring app with 1 Mono file as Stream 1 and the other Mono file as Stream 2 (must, of course, have multiple-audiostream-capable authoring app) and finish remainer of project.

Scott

[Manokat]

Thanks for your reply.

DVD Karaoke support depends on the authoring and on the player. Many players (like my Cyberhome 300) allow audio switching like in "VCDmode". Also, you can author a disc with flags that tell the (supporting) player that you have Guide, Vocal, Harmony, Melody, Background, etc. Tracks--which can be mixable! Again, support depends on the player, and these advanced Karaoke features aren't available in most players.

No Need to "copy the left to the right", etc. Just split and use the left channel as 1 MONO stream, and the right channel as another MONO stream. Saves bitrate and maintains higher quality.

Scott

I agree with you. It all depends on the players and the authoring softwares. I was trying to be realistic though! We just read that the DVD player is not able to toggle the audio to select Left or Right channel individually - and the majority of DVD players do not allow you to do it.

It is interesting you mentioned about advanced features of karaoke DVD players. I have one of those players. I got a Malata MDVD 6828 found here:
http://www.malata.com/en/products/MDVD-6828.asp

It's got 20,000 songs, pitch control, melody, harmony, tempo, voice (auto/on/off) controls, and the most important/fun of all is a "scoring system".

Even with those features still it does not allow me to select one channel only in DVD mode; left or right because DVD format is not intended to play one channel only. And neither my other three players. It does allow me to turn on and off the audio (coming from centre channel) - I am sure this is what you meant by "flags".

As well, MALATA authored this DVD using a "proprietery" software which is not available anywhere. The unit comes with one DVD disc only and has VIDEO_TS and AUDIO_TS like the normal DVD disc does. As well it's got many DAT files which hold the songs and other not "common" features. As yet, there is no single software available on the market that is able to author these advanced features or open these DAT files. That is why I thought it was not realistic to mention these on my initial post.

The only thing that is doable for a "consumer level" is to make seperate audio streams and select them with Audio menu or with "language" or "audio" button.

[Manokat]

Manokat and Scott,

Thank you for your help.

More questions on the way DVD treat audio streams.

I noticed the following difference when playing karaoke VCD and DVD (the orginal DVD, but the one I copied) on my DVD player:

When playing a karaoke VCD (on DVD player), I press "audio" button on remote control to toggle left/right channels. While playing a DVD disc, I press "language" button and "audio" button doesn't work. Do you know why? Does "audio" button have any use for playing a DVD disc?

The following is what I thought it should work, but it didn't. Something wrong here, but What?
The "audio" button on DVD remote control works for a VCD disc. When I copy a VCD to DVD by using TMPenc DVD author tool, I thought it did NOT re-encode VCD format to DVD format. Therefore, when playing the copied DVD disc, the DVD player should see it as a VCD format. If that is true, "audio" button should be able to toggle the left/right channels. However it doesn't. I know that left/right audio streams are separated copied to the DVD, just somehow can't be controled by the "audio" button.


Thank you for your advice on editing audio channels. That is a choice. Is there any easy way? I'm trying to copy my 12 karaoke VCDs to 2 DVDs. There are a total of 150 songs (tracks) on them. It would be tedious to edit one by one. O

Thank you,
Jean

Since you have a lot to convert, here are quicker steps:

1. Purchase DBPowerAmp with PowerPack ($24.95) or you can try it for 30 days. DBPowerAMP can be found here http://www.dbpoweramp.com.

2. If you do not want to demux the .DAT files into M1V and .MP1 first then download a VCD codec http://www.dbpoweramp.com/codec-central-vcd.htm

With this codec you just right click on the dat files in MPEGAV and select target file: MP2 (DVD compliant), 48khz, bitrate, stereo/mono/dual channel. The Powerpack allows you to "swap channels", "DC offset", "normalize", "music removal", "vocal removal" and other stuff. All you need is the "vocal removal". Or if you do not want to use "vocal removal" since the vocal is already encoded seperately on the right channel, you can select "wave" 48khz stereo as a target file then split the left channel (instrumental) and the right (vocal). Then encode them as .MP2s.

You need two audio streams: 1. A mix of Left and Right channels. 2. Just left channel.

Also you need a DVD authoring that supports multiple audio streams. DVD-Lab Pro is one of the best. When you author with DVD-lab pro, you can import the dat files from MPEGAV folders and select demux but just use the video stream. And for audio import the two streams you've encoded with DBpowerAMP.

[Cornucopia]

Just a point of clarification:

Check on the computer what is on each channel of your tracks. Most (non-DVD) discs seem to have Ch1=BackingMusicOnly,Ch2=LeadVoxWithMusicMix. Other discs might have Ch1=BackingMusicOnly, Ch2=LeadVoxOnly.
Depending on the phase of the respective signals, it doesn't make sense, in the 1st type of disc, to mix Ch1+Ch2 if you already have music under from Ch2 (especially considering MP2 compression and relative mix levels).

So, for type1 discs, you want:
Stream1=Ch1Only
Stream2=Ch2Only

For type2 discs, you want:
Stream1=Ch1Only
Stream2=Ch1+Ch2 mix
and possibly a 3rd stream=Ch2Only

You could get fancy and try a Mono-->Stereo effect, but don't expect great results.

Scott

[LogicProIsGood]

ok. I am very very very late to this party but I thought its worth posting this here if there is someone else still looking for a simpler way to remove vocals from a song. Tech has changed a lot since this post was last updated. Audacity has a feature to split stereo track which basically separates the vocals and instrumental sections. there are many tutorials available on web for this. simplest one is this yoututbe video. however, if you have a video file then there is an extra step of extraction audio from video and then importing it into Audacity to remove vocals. myra.io can do both for you. it can remove vocals from a song or audio file and also extract sound from videos and then isolate vocals from it. with these new tools you dont have to worry about converting stereo to mono or handling the audio codecs , file size etc.
I hope this information helps someone