Be sure to make these Performance changes for your version of: Windows
How To Install the Latest Version
Click the button to start the download for that version of Video Hoster.
Save the file on your computer hard drive.
Find the file and double click it to run it.
Release Date shows when each Version was physically available.
The Install Date for the version you are trying to install is compared to your Upgrade Expire Date from your Account:
If the Install Date is EARLIER it will install normally.
If the Install Date is LATER, your browser will display this page with your Registration Code already filled in to order the upgrade. When your credit card is approved (usually a few seconds), the latest and prior versions will install. Your Upgrade Expire Date extends by 12 months to allow installing future releases in the next year.
Windows Versions shows what Windows version that version will run under.
User Move - Follow these instructions to remove the installed version so you can install it on another computer (or before upgrading your computer) without needing MTU to free up your RegCode.
If you need to order an upgrade to install the latest version(see above), click here to order an Upgrade. This extends your Install Date to install new releases over the 12 months.
Video Hoster® Upgrade from any prior version (Video Hoster® One, Video Hoster®, Video Hoster® Quad)
NEW - Genres for 2020's - We added six new Genres for the 2020 decade.
CHANGED - Print Playlist… - Printed Playlists will now contain a line for each A-STOP or Rotation entry.
FIXED - PartyTyme Streaming - We fixed an issue where newly purchased subscriptions would not be recognized immediately.
V6.01.05 - August 8, 2019
You can purchase the upgrade from here
NEW - Display SND After Song - A new checkbox has been added to the
Tools > Show Display… window in the Singers Names Display section.
If you tick this checkbox, the Singer Name Display will reappear at the end of a song if you closed it
at any point during the playing of that song.
The default is un-ticked, which will cause Hoster to work just as it always has.
NEW - Swap Artist’s First & Last Names - The Edit Songs
window has a new button next to the Artist's name field. When enabled, click this button to swap the First and Last Names
of the Artist. Click it again to undo the action. This works in both Single and Multiple modes.
The first time you open Edit Songs a "Balloon Message" will appear, pointing out this new feature.
This message will appear only once. Afterward, the button has a "Tool Tip",
which will serve to remind the users of this button's purpose. Hover your mouse over the button to display this.
CHANGED - Sung By… Counts - The number of Singers and count of Sung Times have been relocated from the Title Bar of the window to the column header area of the list.
CHANGED - SND for Non-Rotations - If you are not running a true Rotation,
song entries in the Playlist with blank, "Audio", or "Video" in the Singer Name
column will now be displayed in the Singer Name Display in the order that they will play.
FIXED - Singer List Position - After a song finishes playing, the Search,
Singer List and Edit Singer windows are updated to display Played songs.
If you have these windows open, this fix will keep you viewing the same position in the list as you were before the refresh.
FIXED - Auto Add Singers to Singer DB - A bug was causing songs to be added
to a Singer's Song List at the end of the song. Now, this will only happen if you have the "When adding songs,
automatically add the Singer Name to the Singer Database" checkbox ticked.
FIXED - Audio and Video as Singer Names - These two "names" were
accidentally being added to the Singer Database. This will no longer happen. You can manually delete them from your Singer DB if you wish.
FIXED - Date/Time in Singer Database - With this fix, the Date/Time value will be filled in
when a new Song is added to the Singer Database. After that, it will only be updated after that Song has been sung.
FIXED - Disappearing Auto-Stop/Rotation - If you remove a Singer with no name (blank) from the Singer List/Rotation, the Auto-Stop or Rotation entries would also disappear from the Playlist. This has been fixed and will no longer occur.
FIXED - List Singers with Song count - This checkbox appears in the Tools >
Show Display… window inside the Singers Names Display group box. This checkbox was not accepting
your new selection. This has been fixed.
V6.01.04 - May 20, 2019
You can purchase the upgrade from here
NEW - Enter Key to Add Songs Option - If you right-click on the Add button in the main Hoster
window, you will see a new option menu allowing you to override the use of the Enter key to add new Songs to the Playlist. The default is to
use the Enter key to add new Songs.
NEW - Song Book > Select Viewer - We modified
the Song Book Viewer selection dialog window to better reflect what is actually on your PC. It should display the exact location
of each of the three viewer programs. It will also allow you to select those programs by clicking on them directly.
NEW - Time Column in Singer Songs - We added the Time column when you click on the Singer List and display the Songs for that Singer that are currently in the Playlist. If you leave PLAYED songs in the Playlist, then you will see the Time that the singer finished singing any particular song.
NEW - Marquee Start and End Times - You can now set Start and End times when you wish for particular Marquee messages to be displayed. Simply double-click on the Start or End rectangle next to the message and enter the time in a variety of formats, for example: 9:30, 11:15 am, 22:00, 10:45p, etc. If you enter an invalid time, Hoster will play a sound and the cell will be cleared. If you try to save the setting with only a Start or only an End time, Hoster will alert you to fix the problem.
NEW - Search As You Type Option - Right click on the Search button or the Search field, and you will be given a new option: Search as you type. With this enabled (checked), as you type characters into the Search field, you will be presented with the Search results. Continue typing, and the Search narrows. You can turn this on or off as it suits your needs.
NEW - Clear Results in Search - A new button has been placed to the right of the Search entry field.
When this button is enabled (red), you can click it to clear the current contents of the Search Results window.
Note: This will clear the Search entry field at the same time.
IMPROVED - Song Book Open Time - We were able to speed up the opening of the Song Book window substantially.
CHANGED - PLAYED vs SKIP - Prior to this change, PLAYED songs marked as SKIP would change to SKIP. Now, the PLAYED status will take priority. The only time this is different is if you right click on a song and choose Mark As > Skip. This will override the PLAYED status. With this change, marking a Singer as Inactive will leave their PLAYED songs alone,
and only mark their remaining songs as SKIP.
CHANGED - Sung By… Title - When you want to see which of your Singers has sung a particular
Song, you open the Sung By… window. With this change, the title bar of this window will display the total number
of Singers of the Song followed by the total number of times it has been sung, e.g. "(24/35)". This will allow you to quickly
answer the question if one of your Singers happens to ask.
FIXED - Selected Song - If you click the Stop button or let the song play to completion, the selected song should be what you expect it to be.
FIXED - Auto Stop - A customer contacted us about a problem with Auto Stop (non-Rotation mode). Hoster would continue playing instead of stopping. We found and fixed this issue.
FIXED - Auto-Complete Lists - When you click away from an Auto-Complete box, like the Singer box in Hoster,
under certain conditions the unwanted portion of the string may still have appeared.
For example, if you have Bill and Ted in your Singer List, and you want to enter Bill A,
you would delete the nd Ted portion and expect to be left with just Bill A.
This fix corrects the error.
V6.01.03 - March 18, 2019
You can purchase the upgrade from here
IMPROVED - New Song Placement - We here at MTU have spent a lot of time working to get this right.
You will notice much better results when you check the box that says: Let Hoster determine the initial placement for new Songs
added to the Playlist.
NEW - Auto-Insert Rotation Markers - If you are running your shows using
a True Rotation, and you are Letting Hoster determine the initial placement for new Songs,
you now have another option available to you: Automatically insert Rotation markers in the Playlist.
As noted on the Settings panel, this works best with new or clean Playlists.
Also, if you have Hoster set to remove PLAYED songs, the Rotation markers will eventually end up at the top of your Playlist.
When this happens, they will be automatically removed by Hoster.
NEW - Song Book BookID Options - A new button has been added near the top of the Song Book window.
Click or right-click on this button and a drop-down a menu with three items will appear:
Include Hypens (on/off)
Use Bold Font (on/off)
Pad Left with Zeros (side menu with five options):
None
to 3 Digits
to 4 Digits
to 5 Digits
to 6 Digits
Note: The "Bold" and "Pad Left" options only apply to .RTF output files.
NEW - Edit Singers & Singer List - In these dialog windows, you can now Mark any Singer’s songs
as Not Preferred. These songs will be listed with a triangle “Warning” icon whenever you open this Singer’s Song List.
The same songs will appear similarly flagged in both windows.
CHANGED - Play & Pause Buttons - You can now choose
whether you want these two buttons to be joined into one button or split into two as they were before Hoster version 6.01.
If you want to change it, simply right-click on either button and select the option given.
To change it back, repeat this process.
CHANGED - Auto-Stop and Rotation Markers - Prior to this change, when you added
either of these Playlist entries, they would appear at the bottom of the Playlist. You would have to drag them to the desired
position in the Playlist. Now, Hoster will insert them at the location in the Playlist that you pointed to with your mouse
pointer when you right-clicked.
CHANGED - Seconds Remaining - The number of seconds remaining in a song
to count it as "played through" has been extended to a maximum value of 99.
CHANGED - Define Field Order - The new defaults for this panel
will be Look in audio file for Artist & Title and Replace underscore with blank
FIXED - Possible Hang playing Videos - If you have your Fade Out
set to a larger value than the setting for Auto Play Delay, and you play two Videos back-to-back,
Hoster would hang at the start of the second video, and you would have to force close and restart it. This issue is fixed.
FIXED - Selected Song - When you stop a song before it finishes
(i.e. it stays "READY"), the same song will remain selected. Hoster will no longer jump to the next song in the Playlist.
FIXED - Marquee Updates - Under certain conditions, the Marquee may show the incorrect
Singers. This usually happens in Manual mode, after a song has finished playing. The usual result is that the Singer
who just finished singing might show as the Next Singer. This has been fixed.
FIXED - Auto-Stop Messages - Since Auto-Stop entries in the Playlist are never marked as PLAYED,
they always appear available to the Singer Name Display. This fix will ignore any Auto-Stop Messages that appear before the first actual SND
entry. Therefore, only Auto-Stop Messages that are below the first READY or PLAYING Song will be displayed in the SND.
V6.01.02 - December 19, 2018
You can purchase the upgrade from here
NEW - Show Singers after A-STOP - There is a new checkbox option in the
Singer Name Display section of the Tools > Show Display settings. The default is unselected. If selected, the Singers after an Auto Stop entry in the Playlist will be displayed in the SND.
Notes:
The Time field will not be displayed for these Singers/Songs, as Auto Stop durations are indeterminate.
This option is only valid/available when Run Show as Rotation is not enabled.
NEW - Singer Separators - We added ’(’, ’{’, ’|’ and ’\’
to the list of character separators that you can use to split Singer 1 from the rest of the Singers. We hope this help you run your shows better.M
Note: You can turn off the Split Singers option. (See item #2 in the next section below.)
CHANGED - Singer List Counter - We added a new feature to the
Singer List / Rotation title bar. The first column will now display Active and
Total Singer counts. You can set this to display either of these first and the other second by
right-clicking on the Singer List / Rotation title bar and clicking on the bottom menu item.
CHANGED - Abort Button - Pressing the ABORT button
will now set the song's status to "PLAYED" regardless of where in the song you abort.
FIXED - New Song Insertion - If you select the option Let Hoster determine the initial
placement for new Songs added to the Playlist in the Playlist Tab of Tools > Settings…,
we have improved the selection of the initial location for all new Songs.
This is based on the current order of Singers in your Singer List / Rotation
FIXED - Clear Screen - New 8th generation Intel built-in Graphics chips (UHD620, UHD600, and HD620)
have exhibited strange behavior for some CDG songs. It is usually seen after the Title page when there is a Clear Screen
command. Hoster was not clearing the screen, so the Title would be overwritten by the ensuing Lyric data. This has been fixed.
FIXED - Keep Song Selected - If you select the option Keep selected song selected
in Manual mode or when you click Stop in the Playlist Tab of
Tools > Settings…, now the correct song will still be selected.
FIXED - Tempo Slider Tic Marks - Hoster has always been plagued with the Tempo Bar Tic Marks disappearing. The problem has been found and fixed.
V6.01.01 - October 8, 2018
You can purchase the upgrade from here
NEW - Practice Mode -
At the bottom of the Tools drop-down menu, you will find a new option. Selecting this will do several things:
Cause a new slider bar to appear over the Playlist
Disable Tempo, if you have it enabled
Place Hoster into Practice Mode
This new feature is designed to allow you to select any location within a Karaoke or Audio song and begin play from that point forward. The new slider bar becomes active once you start playing a song. You can either drag the slider while the song is playing, or you can Pause the song, drag the slider, and then Resume. File types included with this new feature include Karaoke, Audio, and Video.
NOTE: This feature will be inactive for all songs played directly from a Singer's Disc.
One more added bonus is that you can select a Practice Range using the new slider. Simply pause the song, drag the slider to either the Start or End point, press and hold either Shift key, drag the slider to the other end of the range, and finally resume playing the song. The song will continue to play from the Start to the End until you either Pause, Stop, or drag the slider to a new location.
NEW - Split Singer Setting - In Tools > Settings… on the General tab, we added a new check box to allow you to override the splitting of Singer 1 from other Singers. If you prefer that “Joe & Jane” be added to your Singer List or Rotation instead of just “Joe”, you can clear this checkbox. The list of recognized separators is listed here, also.
CHANGED - Play/Pause Button - We combined these two buttons into one. When you start playing a song, the button will change to a Pause button. When you press it to pause the playing song, it will blink (just like the previous Pause button did). If you Stop or select a different song, this button will change to a Play button.
CHANGED - Hot Keys List -
Added Shift-Stop Button to the list, which will stop the currently playing song and set its status to “PLAYED”,
regardless of what point the song has played to.
IMPROVED - Singer/Song Highlight -
When a song ends, it is helpful if you can immediately know what the next song to play will be.
If you are using either the Singer List or the Rotation feature
in Hoster, you will now see which Singer and Song are selected to play next. This is especially
important when running in Manual mode, but it is also helpful when you click the
button for any reason.
FIXED - Party Tyme Videos -
Sometimes, even though you are logged into the Party Tyme system,
the videos in your Playlist remain UNAVAILABLE. This has been fixed.
FIXED - Remove Silence at End of Videos -
Silence removed at the end of Videos was not being handled properly. This has been resolved.
V6.00.04 - July 19, 2018
You can purchase the upgrade from here
NEW - Singer's Current Songs - If you find yourself opening the Singer's Current Songs
window often, Hoster now offers a shortcut method: Press and hold either Ctrl key, and then right-click on the
Singer name in the Singer List window.
NEW - Genres - Hoster now offers Southern Gospel and
Broadman Hymnal as selectable Genres.
CHANGED - Find Same -
This window contains a new column to display the DiscID of each song.
CHANGED - Singer/Song Not Matching - If the case (upper/lower) does not match for the
Singer's name between the Singer List (Rotation) and the Playlist, this change will recognize the difference and find the
correct Singer name.
FIXED - Search Window - Two changes:
Add Track Button - This button will now be enabled
when you select a song in the Party Tyme song list.
Search Field - You can begin typing into the Search Entry field immediately upon opening this window.
FIXED - User ID - Hoster will now remove any leading or trailing blank characters from your User ID
before sending it to the Party Tyme service or the Karaoke.net service.
FIXED - Shift + Stop - To automatically mark a song as
Played in your Playlists,
press and hold either Shift key and then click the Stop button.
FIXED - Error Opening Some Playlists - If you receive an "Incorrect Parameter" error
when opening a Playlist, this fix should take care of it.
V6.00.03 - May 21, 2018
You can purchase the upgrade from here
NEW - Song Book Option - When BookIDs are included in your Song Books, a new check box gives you the option to include or exclude the hyphen within the BookID, e.g. “123-04” or “12304”. Your selection will be remembered and restored each time you open the Song Book window.
CHANGED - Song Database Date - The Date Stamp in the Song Database will be set to the File Creation Date only if the KMA or KMH file exists prior to Indexing. Otherwise, it will be set to the current Local Date. Note: This does not use the File Creation Date of the source file (audio, video or zip).
FIXED - Tempo in Edit Songs - When adding a song from the Edit Songs window,
the Tempo value that you may have set was not showing up in the Playlist. This has been fixed.
FIXED - External Songs after a Crash - With this fix, if you add a song from CD or an external device like a thumb drive and Hoster crashes during your show,
these songs will still be available ("READY") when you reopen Hoster.
V6.00.02 - April 24, 2018
You can purchase the upgrade from here
CHANGED - Party Tyme - Several items have changed here. The Account panel has been cleaned up with regard to the Register / Login button. Now, this button should always reflect the action you will take if you press it. The actions are: Register, Update, Login, Logout.
We also cleaned up and added some more error messages.
Lastly, two unsolicited error messages were reported in the 6.00.01 release. These were caused by not being logged into the Party Tyme server.
Note: You are not required to log into the Party Tyme server if you are not streaming their songs.
CHANGED - Search Option Remembered - Hoster will remember your selection in the Search window: Database or Party Tyme. The next time you launch Hoster and open the Search window, your selection will be restored. Along with this change, the Search Options window will also be opened – if it was previously – when you switch between Database and Party Tyme.
CHANGED - Search for Special Characters - As reported, searching for only ‘&’ comes up empty. Now, Hoster will allow the following single characters for searches:
#, &, !, $, @, %, and ^
V6.00.01 - April 12, 2018
You can purchase the upgrade from here
NEW - Party Tyme Video SubscriptionLearn More...- You can now download and play unlimited
Party Tyme video files with a 2- or 30-day subscription. This is all handled in the Search window.
Before you click the Search button, you will notice that it switches between Search and Party Tyme.
There is a new selector in the upper left corner of the Search window that allows you to swap between the local Database
and the Party Tyme subscription service.
When you choose PartyTyme, two new buttons will appear above the Song List.
The button will allow you to Register an Account,
input a Payment method and Subscribe to their service.
Once you are logged into your Account, you can search for songs by Artist and/or Title.
PartyTyme songs are added to Hoster's Playlist the same way that Database Songs are: by clicking the button
or by dragging the songs to the Playlist. If you enter a Singer Name in the Search window, that Singer will be assigned to the Song(s).
You will notice that the song takes a short while to download. The progress bar will appear in the Playlist while this is happening.
Note: Once you have a Song downloaded, it becomes a Favorite,
and you can quickly add it to your Playlists without the wait for download. You can also use the
button to quickly find all of your Favorite songs.
If your Subscription runs out, or if you cancel it, then the Songs you have in your Playlists will become “Unavailable” and no longer play.
Canceling your Subscription will only stop the recurring payment. It will actually expire on its last date, as shown in the “Current” list of the Subscription tab.
NEW - Playlist Report Option - There is a new option (radio button) in the Playlist Report generator.
This new option is List Songs that have never been sung. Selecting this will display all Songs in your Song Database that do not appear anywhere in the Playlist Report Database.
Caution: This new option may take a long time to run and/or generate a very large report.
NEW - “Added Date” added to Playlist Report - There is a new output field, “Added Date”, in the Playlist Report
for the Complete Listing and the List Songs that have never been sung reports.
NEW - Message when Populating BookIDs - Instead of a (very) time-consuming Progress Bar when populating the BookIDs in the main window,
Hoster will now pop up a Balloon Message to let you know what is going on. This will save a lot of time each time you launch Hoster.
CHANGED - Replacing a Song Using Find Same… - Replacing a Song in your Playlist using the Find Same… option
will leave the Key Change and Tempo as you currently have them set in the Playlist. In addition, this will also get the Sync Adjust
value from the Song Database for the new Song.
CHANGED - Remove Song from Singer’s List - This right-click Playlist option will now prompt you to be certain that this is indeed what you want to do.
FIXED - Songs That Won't Play - Some songs have been found that play in Windows Media Player but not in Hoster. This has been fixed.
FIXED - Brand/DiscID in Index Songs - The Brand and DiscID were not always automatically chosen
for Songs that need them assigned.
FIXED - Adding Songs from Edit Singers - When adding Songs from the Edit Singers window, the Key Change and Tempo
will now be taken from the Singer Database for each Song.
FIXED - SND and Marquee - With Hoster set to use the Singer List as a Rotation, the Singer Name Display and Marquee would display
strange contents when Inactive Singers, Singers with no Songs, or blank Singers Names were in the Rotation. Blank Singer Names in the Playlist would cause similar problems.
V5.51.01 - November 28, 2017
You can purchase the upgrade from here
NEW - Background Audio Player Save “Skip” - Songs set to “Skip” will still be that way when you save and reopen your Playlists.
NEW - BA Player Playlist Options - Now, you can A) right-click on the Playlist, B) click on the “Playlist” item in the Menu Bar, or C) use the “Ctrl-” keypresses to do the following:
Select All - Ctrl-A
Mark As Ready - Ctrl-R
Mark As Played - Ctrl-P
Mark As Skip - Ctrl-S
NEW - Added Venue Button to Marquee Setup - If you are in the Marquee Setup
and want to Add, Edit or Select a Venue, you can press the new button in the bottom left of the window.
CHANGED - Allow Venue while Song is playing - Now, you will be able to Add, Edit or Select the Venue while a Song is playing. You will not be able to Print Venues.
CHANGED - Repair Database - We added the Singers Database to the Repair Database feature found in the
Songs Database dialog window. Unless you are experiencing problems with your Singers Database, you will not notice much when you press this button.
The Songs and Singers databases will probably shrink some in size, due to the cleaning process during the repair.
FIXED - Auto-Add Singers - We found several places where we were not checking the checkbox setting before adding new Singers to the Singers Database.
Singers should now be automatically added — or not — depending on your wishes.
FIXED - Sync Bug - A customer reported an issue playing some songs that were created using KHPro & KProStudio.
This happened when the Audio Sample Rate was not 44,100, which caused synchronization issues. This has been fixed.
FIXED - Problem opening Playlists - If the first Song in your Playlist is “Unavailable”, Hoster would hang trying while loading the Playlist file. This has been resolved.
FIXED - SongbookDB Cancelling Edits - We discovered that SongbookDB is sending us frequent messages when both “Receive Requests” and “auto-add” are on. We restructured our code to avoid this issue.
FIXED - Restore BA Player Window - If you click the red “X” in the upper right corner of the BA Player window, you could restore it without closing and reopening Hoster. This has been fixed.
FIXED - Edit Song in Playlist - If you left the necessary Type (Karaoke, Audio, Video) set off in Edit Songs and selected “Edit Song” from the Playlist right-click menu, the selected Song may not show up in the Edit Songs window. This has now been fixed.
FIXED - Error Indexing Batch > 99 Songs - We discovered a problem with the DiscID during Batch import of songs without the DiscID in the filename. Since Hoster is supplying the DiscID (e.g. “XYZ01234”), it is up to Hoster to ensure that the DiscID is not already in use. This has been fixed.
V5.50.06- October 9, 2017
You can purchase the upgrade from here
FIXED - Button & Font Sizes - With the introduction of 4K-, Ultra- and Quad-HD displays, computer users are now able
to set their screen resolutions to very high values. When doing this, in order to use most programs, you also have to set your DPI setting to something much higher
than 100% — for example, 250%. Video Hoster required this change to make all of its buttons and text appear normal and readable at these settings.
FIXED - Index Songs Files< using Subfolders in the Field Order -
A problem was discovered using subfolder names (i.e. backslash delimiters)
in the Field Order. This has been fixed.
FIXED - Singer List & Edit Singers -
When selecting a different Singer in either of these windows, the currently selected Song was not always where you would expect it to be.
Now, you will always be presented with the top of the Singer's List.
FIXED - New Singers - When you add a new Singer Name to your Singer List/Rotation, that Singer Name will now be automatically
added to your Singer Database, allowing you to view his/her Song History right away.
FIXED - Index Song Files DiscID -
Sometimes the DiscID would appear incorrect after selecting a Song in the Song List. This has been fixed, and now the DiscID should always reflect your selection.
FIXED - Auto-Complete Dropdown Lists - With this change, these lists will display the auto-complete text as you type.
CHANGED - Import CD Tracks - It was decided to remove the test for the checkbox in Tools > Settings that says
“Use on-line CD Title & Artist database” when you click the “Search Online Database” button. This saves you from having to close the Import CD Tracks and
the Song Database windows, open the Tools > Settings, tick the checkbox, close that window, and go back into Import CD Tracks.
V5.50.05- August 28, 2017
You can purchase the upgrade from here
NEW - Insert New Singers - In order to provide you with more flexiblility and control over your Rotations, Hoster
now provides you with the ability to set exactly where in the Rotation new Singers are added. To access this new setting,
go into Tools > Settings and click on the Playlist tab. At the bottom of the panel, you will see a new setting: Insert New Singers.
There are five (5) options for this new setting:
at the bottom of the Singer List. (This is the default and what Hoster did prior to this release)
at the top of the Singer List.
at the end of the current Rotation.
at the start of the current Rotation.
__ Singers after the current Singer.
If you choose the fifth option, a numeric box will appear in front of these options. You choose how many Singers after the current Singer you want to insert new Singers.
The "current Singer" is either singing at this moment, or the Singer marked "NEXT" in the Playlist.
NEW - Reopen Search - If you leave the Search window open at the time that you close Hoster,
the next time you open Hoster, the Search window will automatically reopen. The same is true for the Singer's List window.
NEW - Find & Replace in Edit Songs -
You can now quickly find and replace strings in the Title, Artist and/or Brand fields by clicking the new Find and Replace button in Edit Songs.
You must be in Single mode, one or more of the three buttons (Title, Artist, Brand) must be selected (green), and at least one song must be in the list.
The Find and Replace dialog is self-explanatory. It looks and acts much like those found in other products.
NEW - Open Search For - When you right-click on the Singer List/Rotation, you will see this new option.
It will open the Search window and place the selected Singer’s name in the Singer field.
NEW - Highlight in Find Same - The currently selected song in the main Playlist
will now be highlighted in the Find Same… dialog, if it is listed.
NEW - Languages - Norwegian and Swedish.
CHANGED - Editing Singer Names - To edit the Singers' names in your Singer List/Rotation, double-click on any name.
This saves you from having to click on the Singer to select the line, and then click again to edit the name.
CHANGED - Edit Songs - Edit Songs - Remember the previous settings for Karaoke, Audio, and Video.
CHANGED - Auto Search - We removed the Auto Search when you close the Search Options box.
FIXED - Some buttons not being clickable - A Windows Update caused certain Buttons (Play, Stop, Marquee, etc...) to no longer be clickable. This only occured if you had your Font/Text size setting set obove 100%. You can now change this setting to make your fonts & text larger without affecting Video Hoster®.
FIXED - Selected Song - At the end of any playing Song, the selected Song in both Edit Singers and Singer’s List will remain the same.
Before, it would snap to the top of the list. This only happened when the selected Singer matched the Singer of the Song that just finished playing.
FIXED - Show Current Songs Window - If the Show Current Songs window was open and behind another window (e.g. Search, Edit Singers, etc.),
selecting Show Current Songs by using the right-click menu in the Singer List did not bring that window to the foreground. Now it will.
FIXED - Repair Sync Adjust - We received a report of Sync Adjust values for a number of songs were set to 82.24. The Repair Database button will now fix this in all files.
V5.50.04- April 24, 2017
You can purchase the upgrade from here
NEW - Last Singer - If you are using the Rotation or Singer List
feature, now you can check who your Last Singer was at any time. Simply right-click on the List Header and select Show Last Singer. A small window
will appear briefly, displaying the name of the last person to sing in your show.
NEW - Brand in Playlist Report - We added a new check box to the Playlist Report. If you combine the Artist & Title in your Report, now you can also list the Brand to see which Brands are most popular.
CHANGED - Radio Buttons - When you right-click on the K-oke, Audio, or
Video button, or when you select Settings > When Show Starts in the Background Audio Player
the options shown will display a "Radio Button" instead of a Check Mark. This is used to signify an "either-or" selection.
CHANGED - Edit Songs - If multiple songs are selected,
and there is a mix of settings for Duet, MUX, Video with Lyrics and Hide in Song Book,
then those check boxes are handled differently now. They will be "checked but greyed out." If you click on any one of them,
it will toggle between checked and unchecked. This should be clearer when making changes to these settings for multiple songs.
FIXED - Crash - Key Change and Tempo were causing Hoster to crash in version 5.50.02. This has been fixed.
FIXED - Buy Songs Format - If you purchase more than one song at a time from Karoke.net,
and one of the songs is not offered in the format that you requested, then purchasing that song may have stored it into Hoster's Song Database incorrectly.
This issue has been resolved.
FIXED - Graphic Errors - A core bug in Hoster's CDG presentation code was found and fixed.
FIXED - Extra " in Singer Name - If you have Singers with double-quote characters (") in their names
you may have noticed that extra double-quote characters were being inserted into your Singers' names. This will no longer happen.
V5.50.02- April 5, 2017
You can purchase the upgrade from here
CHANGED - Singer Date/Time - If you have Hoster set to save your Singers' histories in the Singer Database,
each Song has a "Last Date Sung" associated with it. This has been changed to include the local time along with the date.
This will allow you to sort your Singers' Songs by the Last Date and know exactly when a Song was sung.
FIXED - CD/DVD Drive Discovery - Hoster was only recognizing CD/DVD Drives between D:\ and Z:\.
Now, Hoster will begin looking at Drive A:\ for all CD/DVD Drives, ending at Z:\.
FIXED - BookIDs in Buy Songs - The BookID Root in Buy Songs is not being managed properly in 5.50.01.
Now, instead of overriding the value that you put in, it will be left alone until needed.
In other words, if some Songs have been indexed using the current DiscID/BookID Root values, then those will continue to be used until all 99 Tracks are filled.
Then the next BookID Root will be the one that the user selected on the dialog window.
FIXED - Infinite Loop in Buy Songs Login - In 5.50.01, if you type an incorrect Password, Hoster would get stuck in a loop,
and you would be forced to kill the Hoster.exe process using the Task Manager. Hoster now handles this situation properly.
FIXED - Crash Starting Song - Some songs may have caused Hoster to crash when staring to play.
V5.50.01- March 20, 2017
You can purchase the upgrade from here
NEW - Buy Songs from Karaoke.Net - When you select Buy Songs in the main menu bar, you will see a new dialog window.
From here, you can select Karaoke-Version which MTU has previously offered. Or you can select Karaoke.Net. This new seller allows you to search, preview and purchase new songs
without leaving Hoster. In addition, any purchased songs will be automatically added to the Songs Database.
NEW - Find in the Playlist - Press Ctrl+F to open a small window where you can enter a string to find in the Playlist. All visible columns are searched.
NEW - Play BA using Secondary Audio - During your shows, you may want to preview a song in your Background Audio Player.
Now, you can use your Secondary Audio device to accomplish this. While a song is playing in the main Hoster Playlist, simply select the song in your BA Player and either
press and hold the Ctrl key and then click the Play button or use your mouse to right-click on the Play button.
If you want to make the Secondary Audio device the permanent output for the Background Audio Player, click on Settings and select Always Play using Second Audio.
With this item checked, every time you start playing a song in the BA Player, it will be directed through your Secondary Audio device.
NEW - Move Data Folder - This feature is only recommended for those who store their songs on removable external hard drives, and who use these drives with Hoster on multiple PCs.
By moving the Hoster Data Folder to the external hard drive, the Songs Database, Singers Database, Playlists, Playlist Reports, etc. will all be available on each PC that the hard drive is attached to.
Important: You must ensure that the external drive is assigned the same Drive Letter on each PC, as the Song file paths are stored in the Songs Database.
NEW - Repair Database - If you are experiencing problems with Hoster that might point to the Songs Database, there is a new feature within the
Import & Index Songs Database window that might help. One of the errors to look out for is a continuous message
stating "Invalid Bookmark". Clicking this button will clean and repair your Songs Database file. If this does not clear up your problem, please contact MTU Support.
CHANGED - Temporary Files - If Hoster closes abruptly, all temporary Songs (i.e., from Singer's Disc or thumb drives) will still be Available in the Playlist.
FIXED - Playlist Report - We fixed a bug when two types are chosen from the "Include" Karaoke, Audio, Video box. Single selections or selecting all three worked before. Now all combinations will work.
FIXED - Sound Card Settings - If your system has three or more Sound Cards, and you occasionally remove one or another of them, Hoster may have reconfigured your
Audio Device settings without your knowledge. This has been resolved.
FIXED - Marquee & InstaButton Settings - Hoster will no longer allow these buttons to be clicked before the program is completely initialized and running.
V5.41.05- November 7, 2016
You can purchase the upgrade from here
NEW - Message at the End of Merge Singers - So you know when the Merge is complete, we added a message "bubble" at the end of the process. This is in the Singers Database Dialog window.
NEW - Left & Right Buttons - Because the Multiplex feature can be confusing – especially to newer users – the MUX feature has a new button:
When you hear the Singer's voice coming from the Left channel, click the Left button.
When you hear the Singer's voice coming from the Right channel, click the Right button.
NEW - Enable/Disable F-Key Hot Keys - Hoster has a new check box at the bottom of the Help > View Hot Keys… dialog (only when the F-Keys are showing) to able/disable the F-Key Hot Keys. The default for this checkbox is "selected" (enabled).
NEW - Include Songs Database Artists & Titles - At the bottom of the Songs Database dialog window, you will see a new checkbox. Use this to include/exclude the Song Database when populating the Artist and Title drop-down lists. The default for this checkbox is "deselected".
NEW - Refresh Folder List - In the Build Database dialog, you can now right-click on the Folder List and Refresh the list. You will see a confirmation window, and then the list of Folders will be taken directly from your Songs Database. This is a way to correct this list if it ever gets corrupted.
NEW - Duration in Background Audio Player Title Bar - Hoster will now display the Duration of any currently playing song in the BA Player into its Title Bar. This will also appear in the Launch Bar if you want to quickly check the time left on the playing song.
NEW - Reverse Scan - Your Field Order has a new check box in the Field Order settings. This check box will allow you to set up your Field Order to scan the file names in reverse. This will allow you to set a Field order of:
DiscID '-' Track ' - ' Artist ' - ' Title
and successfully scan a file name like:
ASK-02-D1-08 - Nelson, Willie - Always On My Mind.mp3
By scanning in reverse, once the Track ("08") is found, then everything else in front of that will be included in the DiscID (in this case "ASK-02-D1").
CHANGED - Prompt when Cancelling Song Indexing - If you click the Cancel button while Indexing Songs, you will be asked if you are sure you want to cancel. This will avoid accidental button presses causing an unintended interruption in the Indexing process.
CHANGED - Replace "Clock" with Progress Bar - Because the little "clock" indicator was easily overlooked, we changed it to an Indeterminate Progress Bar when scanning folders and subfolders for Song files in Index Songs.
CHANGED - Marquee Color/Image - When you select an Image for the Marquee, the full path is displayed in the box next to the button. If you happen to choose a Color after that, that box will now be grayed out to let you know that the last thing you did was select a color, and the color will be active.
CHANGED - Brand During Batch Indexing - When Indexing Song Files, Hoster will now allow you to select the Brand for Batch indexing. This field will be visible for your selection.
CHANGED - Default Song Folder - The new default song folder (for new users) is now C:\MTU\Karaoke Songs\. This is much easier to find than C:\Users\yourname\AppData\Local\etc.\etc.
CHANGED - Increase Marquee to 32 Entries - Self-explanitory.
CHANGED - Singer Not Found - In both Search and Singers Database, when you type a Singer name in that is not in the list, the title bar will now read Singer Not Found, and the Song List will be empty.
CHANGED - When Removing Folder - The buttons changed from Yes and No to DELETE .kmh and LEAVE .kmh, and also added a Cancel button. This should help to avoid any misinterpretation of this message.
FIXED - "Parameter is incorrect" Error - Usually occurring at the end of a Song, this error has been found and fixed.
FIXED - Allow Play even if .kmh is Missing - If the source file (.mp3, .wma, .avi, etc) is available, but the .kmh associated with it is not, then Hoster would display an error message and skip that song. But in this case, Hoster actually can continue. Now, your song will play.
FIXED - Restore Column Widths in Index Songs - The columns in Index Song Files was not being saved and restored properly.
FIXED - Scanning Subfolders Includes More Results - We found and fixed an issue where some folders were being skipped as we scanned down a folder tree looking for subfolders. You may or may not have seen this in your Song Indexing.
FIXED - Scanning DiscID already in Database - We fixed an issue where a DiscID is in your Songs Database, and you want to Index another Song with the same DiscID. They will now use the same BookID Root.
FIXED - Singers Lists Updated - When a Song is added to the Playlist, the open Singers List windows should be updated appropriately.
FIXED - Crash on CD Import - When Microsoft put out their Windows 10 Anniversary Update, they broke the code that Hoster uses to compress WAV audio data into WMA. Hoster now detects this and applies a fix to the software. You will be asked to close and reopen Hoster to make activate this fix.
FIXED - Drive Not Ready - If you select one or more tracks to Import from a CD, and then open the CD/DVD Drive door, you would get stuck in Hoster with no way out except killing the process in Task Manager. Now, you will see a message stating that the Drive is Not Ready.
FIXED - Play to End of Song - Some of your songs my have ended up to one second too soon. All songs should now play to the very end.
V5.41.04- July 13, 2016
You can purchase the upgrade from here
NEW - Drag Songs to Singer List/Rotation - You can still drag and drop Songs from the Search, Singer List, and Edit Singers windows
into Hoster's Playlist. Now, in addition you can drag Songs onto the Singer List/Rotation and the Singer that you drop the Song onto will be the Singer for that Song.
NEW - Add & Edit Song Notes - Right-click on any Song in Hoster's Playlist, and you can Add & Edit Song Notes for that Song.
Once a Song has a Note associated with it, you can display the Note by right-clicking on the Song again and selecting *View Note from...
If you clear the text of the Note, then the asterisk (*) will be removed from the Status column, as no Note will be associated with the Song.
NEW - Background Audio Song in the Marquee - We added a new option to the Marquee Setup.
This new option is %b. If you place this on a line by itself, then whenever a Song is playing in the Background Audio player, the Marquee will contain the
following line: Now Playing: "Song Title" by Song Artist.
NEW - Allow Hiding Messages in Edit Songs> - If you are doing a lot of editing and clean-up of your Songs Database,
you now can select a check box on the confirmation messages in the Edit Songs window and only see them once per session.
NEW - Hot Keys in Edit Songs - If you have a lot of Songs to repair using the Re scan button, Hoster now offers you two new Hot Keys for this:
Ctrl-F - You can quickly open the Define Field Order window by pressing and holding the Ctrl key and then pressing the F key.
Ctrl-R - After you have selected the Song(s) to Re scan, simply press and hold the Ctrl key and then press the R key.
NEW - Allow Backslash in Define Field Order - You can now specify that a Folder contains one of the fields in your DFO.
For example, the file path may be:
CHANGED - Display Field Order in Index Song Files - So you don't have to click on the Define Field Order
button to see what you have it set to, thet DFO will be displayed next to the button when the selected Song File matches the DFO.
CHANGED - Widen File List in Index Song Files - When you widen the Index Song Files window,
the File List window will now widen along with it.
FIXED - Index Video Song Files - Some file types were being bypassed in previous versions of Hoster. This has been resolved.
FIXED - Stereo - We fixed a bug that played Audio songs in Mono all the time.
FIXED - Adding Songs using Ctrl - We fixed a bug that allows you to add a Song to the Singer's Song List but not to the live Playlist.
To do this, press and hold the Ctrl button and then click the button.
FIXED - Parameter is invalid - You may have seen this message when a Song ends. We found and fixed this bug.
FIXED - Marquee Set to Middle - If you set your Marquee to "Middle" and your Singer Name Display set to "Bottom",
the Marquee was misplaced. This has been fixed.
V5.41.03- June 8, 2016
You can purchase the upgrade from here
NEW - <Please Pick a Song> - You can now override this feature which was added in V5.41.02 by clearing the check box labeled
"Display Singers without Songs in the SND and Marquee" in the Playlist settings.
NEW - Progress Bar for Remove Folders - Since this can take some time if you have many songs in your folders or you select multiple folders at once for removal,
we put in a Progress Bar. This bar is "indefinite", since we don't know how many files have to be processed until we open all of the folders.
IMPROVED - Index Song Files - When indexing songs in Batch mode, songs will be imported more quickly,
and the results will better reflect your choice of your Defined Field Order.
FIXED - Play Certain WAV Files as InstaButtons - You may have found certain WAV files that would not play as InstaButtons. This is now fixed.
FIXED - Song Added to Singer's List - When you add a Song to a Singer's List using the right-click menu in the Playlist, you will now see that Singer's List in the Edit Singers dialog window updated accordingly.
FIXED - Long Wait when Select Multiple in Edit Songs - We found and fixed a problem in Edit Songs when you have a lot of .kma files (and very few or no .kmh files).
If you selected more than a few Songs (in "Multiple" mode), Hoster would appear to freeze up. This is now fixed.
FIXED - Flashing Singers List - When a Song is playing, and you click on any other Song in the Playlist, you may have noticed some flashing in the Singers List. This has been resolved.
FIXED - Time Column - While a Song is playing, if you reorder your Rotation, the Time column in the Playlist will now be correct for the new Rotation order.
FIXED - Inactive Singers in the Marquee - If you mark one of your Singers as Inactive, that Singer will not appear in either the Singer Name Display
or the Marquee.
FIXED - Sorting Columns in Edit Songs - A bug in version 5.41.02 caused the right-most columns in Edit Songs to be unsortable. This has been fixed.
CHANGED - WAV InstaButtons - Hoster now limits the ability to play WAV InstaButtons only when you are playing a Song directly from Disc.
CHANGED - Singers Disc - The Singers Disc button is now disabled when you are playing directly from the Singers Disc.
CHANGED - Allow During a Show - In the Edit Singers dialog window, we have added back the ability to:
Remove Songs
Rename Singers
Delete Singers
Save Singers As...
Merge Singers
Edit Venues
CHANGED - "Before audio start" - In the Remove Silence settings dialog window, Hoster will now allow zero and one second in this field.
This may seem like a small change, but you could get more singers up on the stage during your show by shortening each song by a few seconds.
CHANGED - Mark Song - We added an easy way to clear the MarkSong.txt file.
Simply right-click on the Mark Song button, and choose Clear Mark Song file.
CHANGED - Removed the Bucket Database from the Installer - We redesigned the method by which the Bucket database is delivered to your system.
Now, it is only downloaded when there are changes. This will save you time and data when downloading each Hoster installation file.
V5.41.02- April 27, 2016
You can purchase the upgrade from here
NEW - Copy Song To… - From the following dialog windows, you can now choose "Copy Song To…"
from any entry or entries, and the Song file(s) – along with any corresponding .cdg and .lrc file(s) – will be copied to the location that you specify:
Playlist
Singer's Current Song List (from Rotation)
Search & Singer's List
Edit Singers
Edit Songs
Background Audio
Note: If the Song file is already in the selected folder, the Copy will fail.
NEW - Hot Keys: - We added the following functions to the 12 Function keys on your keyboard:
F1 = Open / Hide the Search Window
F2 = Play / Pause the Background Audio Player
F3 = Volume Down (-10)
F4 = Volume Up (+10)
F5 = Live Sync Timing Backward (-0.25 sec)
F6 = Live Sync Timing Forward (+0.25 sec)
F7 = Restart the Playing Song
F8 = Play / Pause the Playing Song
F9 = Stop the Playing Song
F10 = Toggle Show Display Full Screen
F11 = Go to Next Song in Singer's List
F12 = Go to Next Singer in Rotation
We also added Ctrl + I to play the first song or video in your list of InstaButtons. This will allow you to set the one InstaButton that you
want to be able to play quickly in the top row of your InstaButton definitions.
Then in Hoster, just press and hold the Ctrl key and then press the I key to quickly play this song or video.
Note: We also added a new button to the Help > View Hot Keys… window. Pressing this button will swap between the
Keyboard and F-Keys Hot Key lists.
NEW - 3-D Buttons - Hoster will now display most buttons with a 3-D effect. You can choose to display your buttons
the previous way by un-checking the new check box in Tools > Settings... in the General section.
NEW - Sorting Columns in Search and Edit Songs - If the song list is rather large, it can take a few seconds (or longer)
to sort each column when you click on the column header. If you attempt to sort one column while another sort is taking place, your results may be unexpected.
To avoid this, Hoster will block the second sort request, and you will see a message pop up that says: "Please Wait. Still sorting."
NEW - "No Songs" Indicator - If you manage your Singers in a Singers' List, you will notice a new
indicator in the list. A warning icon will be displayed if the Singer has no Songs in the Playlist. Also, if you have chosen to use colored fonts, the Singer's Name will appear in yellow.
NEW - <Please Pick a Song> - When you manage your Singers in either a Singers' List or a
Rotation, if one or more of your Singers does not have a Song in the Playlist, you will now see <Please Pick a Song> next to
their names.
Note: This only shows if you have the Show Song Title check box checked in the Tools > Show Display…
window.
NEW - "Sync Adj" Column - We added this column to both the Edit Singers
and the Singer List windows.
NEW - "Path" Column - We added this column to the Edit Songs
and the window to display the full file path of each Song in the list.
CHANGED - Defaults in Tools > Options… > Playlist:
Keep Songs After Play will now default to unchecked.
Manage the Singers in a Singers List will now default to checked, along with all three check boxes below this selection.
CHANGED - Removed "Always on top" - Having the Show Display and un-docked Preview Display
set to "Always on top" causes problems with viewing other windows. The recommended setting is "On top when playing".
CHANGED - Default in Search and Edit Songs - We changed the default for Search and Edit Songs to be a "Words"
search, instead of a "String" search, since the results from a "Words" search are usually more in line with what is expected.
CHANGED - Default in Import CD Tracks - We changed the defaults in this dialog to be the best
compression ratio (320k for MP3, and 192k for WMA), and to Zip the audio and cdg files.
CHANGED - Set Focus on Main Window - Whenever you click on the Show Display or the undocked Preview Display,
focus was removed from the main Hoster Window. Now, each time you click on either of these windows, you will see the Focus return to the main window.
This facilitates the use of Hot Keys, including the new ones mentioned above.
REMOVED - "Auto Stop on Rotation" - This was the last check box in the Tools > Settings…
window within the Playlist group. Since Hoster plays its Rotations in any order, based solely on the order of the Singers, the "Auto Stop" concept
has no meaning. We removed this check box to clear up any misconceptions the user might have.
REMOVED - Singer Color in Rotation - If you mark one of your Singers Inactive, the text of the
Singer's Name will no longer be displayed in a different color. This was done because Hoster also displays green, yellow, and red icons in front of each name,
based on the current status of that Singer.
FIXED - Time Column in SND - The Singers Name Display had a problem where the Next Time to Sing would have
an incorrect value if a Singer was listed with no Songs. This happens when you list the complete Rotation, and one of the next Singers has not turned in a request for a new Song.
FIXED - Singer's Songs Columns - These have been fixed to be wider & visible by default.
FIXED - Show Display at Startup - Allowing the Show Display to be Fullscreen when Hoster launches can cause problems.
To avoid this, Hoster will place the Show Display window at its last known location in non-Fullscreen mode.
FIXED - Launch SongbookDB at Startup - Customers who selected "No, thanks" still saw this dialog
at startup. This has been fixed.
FIXED - Volume in InstaButtons - Some customers were getting very strange Volume values for their InstaButtons.
The code has been fixed to limit the volume to be always between zero and 100.
FIXED - Invalid Playlist - When customers open an invalid Playlist file, they are left not knowing what state Hoster is left in.
Now, they will know that a "New" Playlist has been created for them.
FIXED - Select Singer or Song - It was discovered that clicking a Singer in the Rotation would not select his or her first Song,
or clicking a Song in the Playlist would not select the associated Singer. This has been resolved.
Note: This is only applicable when the Show is not playing. While the Show is playing, selecting a Singer will not alter the selected Song.
FIXED - Bug in Preview Window Size - We fixed some issues with the undocked Preview Window, when reopening Hoster
and when double-clicking on the Preview Window to quickly enlarge it. You should see expected behavior from the Preview Window now.
FIXED - Live Sync on Restart - Live Sync was always being reset to 0.00 when Restarting the same Song.
In the case of a Restart, the Live Sync value should remain unchanged.
FIXED - Removed Delays in Edit Singer Database - The window that opens when you click Singers
in the main Hoster window allows you to make changes to your Singers Database. We found and removed some unnecessary delays in this window, especially when you
Add a Song to your Hoster Playlist.
FIXED - Key Change Set Wrong on Next Song - At the start of a new Song, the Key Change would sometimes be set
to the modified Key Change from the previous Song. This has been fixed.
V5.41.01- February 22, 2016
You can purchase the upgrade from here
NEW - Field Order & Re scan in Edit Songs - If you have some songs that have incorrect Song Title and/or Artist Name fields,
you can quickly check to see if the source file name has the desired information by right-clicking on the Song and selecting File Properties. If it does, then you can click the new Field Order button to select/set the proper Field Order,
and then click the new Re scan button to update those two fields. The Field Order also allows you to check theID3 Header information included in most MP3 and WMA files.
The Song Title and Artist Name information may also be found there.
Note: You can select Single or Multiple Songs for processing with the new Re scan button.
NEW - Capitalization Button in Edit Songs - Edit Songs also contains a new button next to Re scan.
This button will allow you to fix capitalization errors in your songs' Artist and Title fields, one at a time, or multiples at once.
Examples of corrected capitalization are:
"JENNY JONES" to "Jenny Jones",
"daniel's, charlie" to "Daniel's, Charlie",
"jay-z" to "Jay-Z",
"MCDONALD, MICHAEL" to "McDonald, Michael", and
"don't say goodbye" to "Don't Say Goodbye".
Notice that the "Z" in "Jay-Z" is capitalized, but not the "t" in "Don't". Also, the character after "Mc" is capitalized, as in "McDonald".
NEW - Auto Start Play - You can now right-click on the Auto button on Hoster's main window and set Hoster's Player to automatically start playing if the show is stopped and a new song is added.
Note: You must be in Auto Mode to take advantage of this new feature. This Feature is GREAT when Playing Audio files using the SongbookDB Phone Application.
NEW - Hot Keys
Alt+S & Alt+M in Edit Songs - To quickly select Single or Multiple mode in Edit Songs, you can now press and hold either Alt key and then press the S or M key, respectively. Focus (the cursor) will be placed into the Search window at that time.
Ctrl + 0 thru 5 Sets Plus ("+") Key - In the main Playlist, Search and Edit Singers, you can now press and hold the Ctrl key, and press 0 through 5 to set the plus key changes.
Ctrl + Alt + 0 thru 5 Sets Minus ("-") Key - Likewise, press and hold the Ctrl & Alt keys, and press 0 through 5 to set the minus key changes.
Ctrl + Shift + S - In the main Playlist will launch Search.
Ctrl + Alt + S - In the main Playlist will launch Edit Singers.
Ctrl + B - In the main Playlist will launch the Background Audio Player.
Hot Keys for Add Song Key Change - If you are a keyboard user, you can now set the Key Change buttons found within the Add Singers & Songs box at the top of the Hoster window using Hot Keys.
"Ctrl-Shift" and 0 through 5 will set the "plus" keys, and "Ctrl-Alt-Shift" and 0 through 5 will set the "minus" keys.
Note: If "Ctrl-Shift-0" does not work for you, it is because this Hot Key is reserved by Windows to change your keyboard's default language.
If you want to use "Ctrl-Shift-0" to change the Key button to "0" in Hoster, follow these "simple" steps:
Open your Control Panel,
Choose Region & Language,
Select the Keyboards & Languages tab,
Click the Change Keyboards… button,
Choose the Advanced Key Settings tab,
Select Between input languages from the list,
Click the Change Key Sequence… button,
Select Not Assigned for the Switch Input Language setting,
Click OK three times.
NEW - Max # Per Singer - We added a new "spinner" control between Abort and Tempo. This will allow you to set the Maximum Number of Songs Per Singer in the Playlist at any given time.
It can be set from "Unlimited" to 100 in increments of 1.
Note: SongbookDB users will see an error message on the Plugin's window stating that the Singers Song Limit is Exceeded, and the Song will be rejected by Hoster.
NEW - "Help > View Hot Keys…" - We added a new dialog window that you can open by clicking on Help and selecting View Hot Keys…
This window can stay open while you continue to run your shows. We have added the most-used Hot Keys to this list.
NEW - SND in Preview - You can now Hide the SND in the Preview window. Simply click on the "Preview" button in Tools > Show Display… and then check the "Hide" check box in the "Singers Names Display" area.
NEW - Mono - You can now click on the Stereo button to set your system to Monophonic output.
Note: Each time you open Hoster, it'll go back to Stereo.
NEW - Update Key, Tempo, & Sync - When you display the Rotation Singer's Songs, you can now update the Key, Tempo and Sync by changing the values in the small window, and clicking the Update button.
NEW - Halloween Genre - New Genre added.
NEW -"Brand" added to SongbookDB - The SongbookDB developer asked us to include Brand in the SongbookDB.csv file. This now allows the Brand of your songs in Hoster to be shown to the SongbookDB Phone App user.
NEW - Remove Silence for Videos -
There has been a surge in Karaoke Videos on the market. As a result, we have modified the Remove Silence code to handle Video files as well.
You can either process individual Video files in the Tools > Edit Songs… dialog, or you can process them all at once using the Tools > Remove Silence… dialog.
The first time you run Remove Silence on your Video songs, you may be prompted to download a 3rd party tool. Simply follow the instructions, and you can continue with the Remove Silence.
NEW - Warning if "Add" Window Open Too Long - The problem with leaving this window open is that it freezes Hoster's main processing thread.
If someone does this, and the window "disappears" behind other windows, then Hoster will not go on to the next song until the Add window is closed. Now, if it remains open for more than a minute, you will receive a warning message.
CHANGED - BA Player "Path" Column - By request, we have made the width of the Path column persistent.
If you wish to view this column, you can slide the width of the Artist column slightly to the left using the Header column separator bars. Then you can "grab" the sizer for the (default hidden) Path column and slide it to the right.
From then on, this column will maintain its width as you resize the BA Player window or when you close and reopen Hoster.
CHANGED - Timer in Index Songs - Some customers have folders with a lot of songs. When Include Sub-folders is not checked, there was no indication that Hoster was doing anything.
Now, we will display the same "clock" icon that sub-folders uses.
CHANGED - Tab Order in Edit Singers - After selecting a Singer, if you wish to tab directly to that Singer's Songs, now the focus will go there directly.
CHANGED - Video Default to Stereo - It has been determined that the proper way to handle all song files (audio or video) is to default them to Stereo,
and then allow you to set the MUX accordingly. This is especially valid now that we can index video files into the Song Database – allowing you to set the MUX value for a given video file individually.
CHANGED - SND Rotation - We made the Tools > Show Display… window slightly taller to allow the new check box "Show Rotation & List Singers with their Song count."
all the time. This check box used to only apply to the SND on the Left or Right. Now, it applies all the time.
If you want to show your Rotation in one of the three Horizontal positions (Top, Middle, or Bottom), you can now tell Hoster to display your entire Rotation (except for Inactive Singers), along with the current count of Songs that they have in the Playlist.
CHANGED - Rotation (#) - We included the total number of Singers in your Rotation in the Rotation header.
CHANGED - Playing Song Not Counted in Total - Once a song starts playing, the SND will no longer reflect that song in the Singer's total.
FIXED - BA Player - In version 5.40.03 you could not select and play a different song than the one that is currently playing. Now, you can.
FIXED - Song Book - When creating a Song Book listing the Artist Name followed by the Artist's Songs, Hoster will now group all Artists together, ignoring different cases in the names.
For example, "Pink Floyd" will now match "PINK FLOYD" (but not "Pynk Floyd"). If you have Artists with mismatched cases in your Songs Database, this will slightly shrink your Song Books and also make them look more professional.
FIXED - Hang When Adding a New Song - A SongbookDB customer contacted us about a hang in Hoster when he added a new song using the Plugin.
FIXED - Start Play from CD - We found out why songs were immediately disappearing from the Playlist when they were "Play from CD" type.
It has to do with the "spin up" time for a CD. This has been fixed, as long as a disc spins up within five seconds. If you have a drive that takes longer, please let MTU know by e-mail to support@mtu.com.
FIXED - Drag & Drop from the "Add" Window - We re-enabled this feature from the Add window, to allow you to select files from multiple sub folders without having to press the Add button repeatedly.
FIXED - BA Player Restore to Full screen - If you closed Hoster with the BA Player set to Full screen, you may have noticed that when you reopened Hoster, the columns in the BA Player Playlist were all very narrow.
This has been fixed.
FIXED - Search Add Songs - We sped this process up considerably. You should see marked improvement.
FIXED - Play Button Enabled - When adding songs to an empty Playlist from the Singers List or the Edit Singers windows,
the Play button will now be enabled for you to start you show, without having to click songs in the Playlist first.
FIXED - Add Song Using Kiosk - A customer reported this problem: When a single song is in the Playlist, and it is playing,
if you add a song using the SongbookDB Kiosk station, Hoster would lock up. The problem has been found and fixed – verified by the customer who called it in.
FIXED - Add Song for Inactive Singer - Adding a Song for an Inactive Singer did not set that Song's Status to "Skip". Now it will.
FIXED - Focus Rectangle on Colored Buttons - You may have noticed that the "dotted" rectangle did not always show up on buttons. This has been fixed.
FIXED - Multiple Select when switching to Single in Edit Songs - When switching from Multiple to Single in Edit Songs, if you had selected multiple Songs, now Hoster will leave only the first Song selected.
FIXED - Scroll Playlist using Arrow Keys - This feature was not working correctly. Now, any action you take (e.g. "Ctrl-K" to mark "SKIP") will work on the selected Song.
FIXED - SND with 2nd Singer - We fixed the issue that was reported in Beta 9, where adding a 2nd Singer to a Song would remove the Title from the SND.
FIXED - Power-On Drive with Inactive Singers - When powering on an external hard drive, any Songs in your Playlist that are on that drive will change from UNAVAIL to READY.
Now, any Songs in the Playlist for an Inactive Singer will be marked SKIP, appropriately.
FIXED - SND Alignment - The problem arose because some Singers did not have Songs, so their "Next Time to Sing" value was not being placed into the SND. Now, a blank "filler" is placed in there to maintain alignment.
FIXED - Reset Key & Tempo - After adding a song in either the Search or the Singers List window, the Key and Tempo values will be set to their defaults (0 and 100, respectively).
FIXED - Drag Item Below List - Dragging an item to the area below the list would give in unpredictable results. Now, dragging to the area below the list will always place the dragged item at the bottom of the list.
FIXED - Drag Item Onto Itself - If you started dragging a List Item and ended up dropping it onto itself, the selected item would actually be the one above the item you chose. This has been fixed to leave the selection where it should be.
FIXED - New User & Rotation, CD Drive - A new customer called us about a problem. In previous versions, if you select Rotation when prompted,
and then set your default CD/DVD Drive, the Rotation selection was lost. Now, it will all be saved as expected.
FIXED - Playing Videos Back-to-Back - We found and fixed the problem with this scenario.
FIXED - Video & SND - We found and fixed the problem that was reported where playing Videos would mess up your Singer Name Display (SND).
FIXED - Batch Indexing - Batch indexing of Audio or Video files is now much faster.
FIXED - DFO & Songs with Sub-Folders - If you set your Define Field Order and then select a Song in the Index Song Files list that includes a Sub-Folder,
the DFO field would turn pink and you would get an error, even if the file name parses successfully. This has been fixed.
FIXED - Warning in Index Songs - If the Folders and Sub-folders you are trying to Index contain Duplicate Songs (DiscID & Track #), the Index Song Files code did not check for this.
Therefore, the list of Songs to Index contained several Songs with the same Track #. We will now detect this situation and warn the user accordingly.
FIXED - Select New Folder - In Build Songs Database, if you choose a folder that as a LOT of Songs,
it may still be populating the list on the right when you select a different folder. This fix will stop the current request before beginning the new one.
FIXED - Hoster Opens Off Desktop - If Hoster is not appearing on your desktop when you launch, it may be that you have removed a monitor from your system, and Hoster was still being placed there.
The code will now detect the actual available desktop area when launching Hoster and place the window in view.
V5.40.03- September 30, 2015
You can purchase the upgrade from here
NEW - InstaButton Auto Stop - There is a new check box in the InstaButton setup dialog window.
This check box will allow you to choose whether you want InstaButtons to immediately stop when you start playing a song in the main Playlist, or if you prefer that they continue until either they end or you click the Stop button yourself.
NEW - Display Note from Singer - SongbookDB users know that the Singer can send a Note to the KJ using the smart phone app or the Kiosk.
The SongbookDB Plugin is now passing this note to Hoster, and Hoster will display the note to you.
You will recognize Songs with Notes by an asterisk ('*') after the Status. If you have not viewed the Note yet, the color of the Status box will be pink.
The default is to display the Note in a pop-up message when you first slide your mouse over a Song that contains a Note.
Once the note has been viewed, the color of the status will return to normal, and you can show the Note again by right-clicking on the Song and selecting the menu item: "*View note from...".
You can turn off the default action by un-checking the check box in the message.
IMPROVED- Edit Songs > Delete - We greatly reduced the time it takes to delete multiple files using Edit Songs….
CHANGED- Edit Songs & BookID - Since the only thing in Edit Songs that affects the BookID list is "Delete", we changed the design slightly.
Instead of regenerating the BookID list every time a change is made in Edit Songs, we are now deleting each BookID from the list in the main window as each Song is deleted.
This means that the BookID list will always be up-to-date when closing the Edit Songs window. Ergo, there is no more need to regenerate the BookID list for Edit Songs.
CHANGED- Drop-down Menu in the Playlist - It was reported that the drop-down menu when you right-click on the Playlist had some problems:
Several items were enabled when you clicked on the empty space below all songs. The only thing you should be able to do here is "Add Auto Stop" (or "Add Rotation").
The three "Mark As..." options were enabled for "Auto Stop" entries.
Now, anything you can do using the drop-down menu should make sense given where you right-click.
CHANGED- Allow Stop, Restart and Abort when Paused - These three buttons were being disabled when your Show was Paused.
But enabling them and allowing these functions works just fine. They are now available to you.
CHANGED- SongbookDB Singer Name - With the addition of SongbookDB, Hoster added the ability to manage Singer Names from the SongbookDB plugin.
Singer Names can be "First Name Only", "First Name, Last Initial", or "Whole Name". Customers have requested that Hoster recognize Singers' First Names of more than two names.
For example, "John Paul Jones" should result in the First Name being set as "John Paul", and the First Name, Last Initial should be "John Paul J". This has been changed to handle situations like this.
CHANGED- BA Player "Mark As" - These are now disabled this for the Playing song. You shouldn't be able to change the state of this song.
FIXED- BA Player Stopping at 00:01.
FIXED - Index Song Files: Brand - In 5.40.02, Hoster left this field blank when it should have placed *Unknown Brand* into it.
This will save you from having to choose a brand if this is good enough.
FIXED - Index Song Files: DiscID - A bug was fixed where if you Index some song files with DiscID, and want to go back and add more songs with the same DiscID,
they would not match if the DiscID had some lowercase letters. This is now fixed to match DiscID's regardless of the upper- or lower-case.
FIXED - Strange Message Box - Several reports were received of seeing a very tall and narrow message box when closing Hoster.
This message box should contain the "Do you want to save the Rotation?" message. This situation has been resolved.
FIXED - Tempo Mode - If you change the Tempo Mode setting in Tools > Settings…, the slider on the main window did not get enabled or disabled appropriately. This is now in order.
FIXED- Restarting Song Marked "PLAYED" - Restarting a Song will no longer set the Song's status to PLAYED.
FIXED- Several Crashes and Hangs.
V5.40.02- August 31, 2015
You can purchase the upgrade from here
NEW - Prompt for Rotation - With the addition of Singers List and Rotation to Hoster in version 5.40.01,
many customers contacted us asking how to use these new features. We decided that a one-time prompt for the user would be helpful. If you do not have Singers List or Rotation enabled in Hoster, then the first time you run version 5.40.02,
you will see a prompt, asking you if you would like to try the new Rotation feature.
If you answer Yes, you will see the Tools > Settings window with Playlist selected, and a little "balloon message" will point you at the check boxes you need to select to use the new features.
Note: This is a one-time only prompt, so once it's gone, you will not see it again.
NEW - Random Song Buttons - To further enhance your Karaoke Hosting experience, we added two new Random Song buttons.
The first one is in the Search window's Singers Song List window. The second is in the Edit Singers window.
They both work the same way. Pressing this button will select a random song from among the selected Singer's songs. Then you can click "Add" or double-click the song to add it to the main Playlist.
NEW - Progress Bars - For those users with a lot of songs in your Songs Database, the first time Hoster opens it may take some time.
The reason for this is that if you have a lot of Songs in your Songs Database, the BookID's must all be read from the Database and stored in the drop-down list on the main Hoster panel.
Suggestion: To avoid this time-consuming process, you can leave Hoster in the Brand view. Then, when you reopen Hoster, it will take less time to initialize.
Index Song Files:
IMPROVED- Add Files - The time it takes
to populate the list of song files to be indexed has been greatly reduced. This applies when you are using Single mode, and you have defined a Field Order
that includes the DiscID.
FIXED- Brand - A problem was reported where some songs existed in the Songs Database, and new ones were to be added with the same DiscID.
Clicking on the file name in the top list would populate the Brand and DiscID properly, but then clicking on Add Songs would change the Brand to "*Unknown Brand*". This has been fixed.
FIXED- DiscID - It was reported that if more than one DiscID is listed
in the File List at the top of the Index Song Files window, the last DiscID would be used for all indexing. Now, Hoster will always use the DiscID of the selected (highlighted) file name.
FIXED- First File Selected - It was pointed out to us by a customer
that when you click on any of the buttons on the left and select a folder, the first file name is selected, but the Fields & Separators field was not filled in. This has been remedied.
In addition to this, if the Field Order doesn't match the pattern of the selected file name, the field will get a pink-colored background, and the warning message stating this fact will appear.
FIXED- Singer's Current Songs - When you have Singers List or Rotation active, you can view any singer's current songs
by right-clicking with your mouse on the singer's name and choosing Show Current Songs…. In the new window that opens, you can drag and drop the songs in the list to reorder them.
A problem existed where the singer's songs would not be placed in the proper order after clicking the Update button. This problem has been fixed.
FIXED- Play Button Disabled - When a song is playing in the main Playlist, and you click on a different song, and then click back on the playing song,
the Play button would remain enabled. The Play button will now be disabled, as it has no meaning in this case.
FIXED- Skip in Edit Singers - The problem here was that checking the Skip check box
and then double-clicking on a song would not set the song to "SKIP" in the Playlist. The same is true if Skip was checked, and you un-checked it then double-clicked on a song. The Skip check box now works as expected.
FIXED- Song Book with Certain Exclusions - Certain conditions existed where your Song Book would not be created.
These conditions involved the Use the 'Exclude Checked Items'…. For example, excluding Type: Audio and Video without Lyrics
might have resulted in zero (0) entries in your Song Book.
DISABLED- Dragging Objects into Show Display - In previous versions of Hoster, you could drag objects, such as File Folders, into the frames within the
Show Display. This would give undesirable results. Hoster will ignore any attempt at this.
REMOVED- "&This" from the First DFO Field - The first field in the Field Order contained this string. However, it is not appropriate in the first field,
since it indicates that you want to join the previous field to the this one. It has been removed.
V5.40.01- August 10, 2015
You can purchase the upgrade from here
NEW!!!
TOOLS > SETTINGS - We combined several of Hoster's options settings windows into one location. The left side column contains buttons that will guide you to the appropriate settings.
SINGER ROTATION - MTU's Video Hoster now offers you the ability to create and manage your Singers in a Rotation. You have several options with regard to this new feature. You can run your shows:
just as you always have by leaving all of the new check boxes unchecked.
with a simple Singers List, that will keep track of how many Songs your Singers have sung, along with the last time each Singer was on stage.
using a full Rotation, with all of the features of the Singers List, and in addition, allowing Hoster to select the next Song based on the order of the Singers in the Rotation.
If you wish, Hoster can also insert your Singer's new Songs in a logical "Rotation" order for you.
All of these options are available to you by clicking on Tools > Settings…, and then selecting the Playlist button on the left.
You can place the Singers List on the Left or Right side of your Playlist.
You have total control over the Singers List. You can:
Set the List on the Left or Right side of the Playlist
Adjust the Width of the Signers List
Add/Remove/Rename Singers
Reorder the List by dragging and dropping Singers
Mark Singers Inactive and then Active again
Show all current Songs for any Singer
Show any Singer's saved Song List (Edit Singers)
Clear the # Times and Last Time columns for each Singer or All Singers
Refresh the entire Singers List
Note: When you quit out of Hoster, you will be asked whether you want to save your Rotation for the next time Hoster starts. You can check the box to choose the same answer each time.
The Rotation is continually saved during Hoster operation in case of a crash. When you restart Hoster, the Rotation will be intact.
VENUES - Hoster also has a new feature which allows you to store and track your gig Venues. The information for each venue includes:
Name of the Venue
Address
Contact Name
Contact Phone Number
Venue's Web page
Any Notes that you may want to include
In addition, all of your Singers can be associated with one or more Venues. You assign Singers to Venues in the Edit Singers window.
Simply click on the Singers button, and then select any Singer and click the Venues button,
or right-click on the Singer and select Venues… from the drop-down menu.
SONGBOOKDB - MTU has partnered with SongbookDB to bring you a new suite of products that will revolutionize the way you run your shows.
Using SongbookDB, your Singers can request Songs from the "Cloud", thereby removing the need for slips of paper or users having to come up to your KJ Station.
All your Singers have to do is download the free SongbookDB app from the Apple's iTunes or from the Google Play Store.
Visit the SongbookDB section of Tools > Settings… to customize the SongbookDB features within Video Hoster.
You will also note a new SongbookDB button near the top-center of Hoster.
The button will flash when the SongbookDB Plugin wants your attention. Click this button to bring the SongbookDB Plugin program to the foreground of your desktop.
In addition, you can right-click on the button to quickly launch the SongbookDB Settings dialog window.
Note: It is strongly recommended that you install the SongbookDB Plugin into its default location (usually C:\Program Files (x86)\).
RANDOM SONG - This new button offers you a quick and fun way to choose a new song.
To use this new feature, you simply have to be in the BookID view (as opposed to the Brand view),
and the "Random Song" button will appear. Click it, and a new song from your database will be chosen at random.
A great way to use this would be to have contests with your regular singers to see who can sing a random song the best.
GENERAL
NEW - Multiple Singers - Using the Singers List, when you add multiple Singers, only the Primary Singer will be added to the List. All Singers will appear in the Playlist. You can separate the Primary and Additional Singers by using:
" and "
" with "
w/
&
/
+
Note: " and " and " with " require a space on both sides. This will avoid finding "and" in a name like "Sandy".
NEW - Singer Name Display - You can now set your SND to appear on the Left or Right side of the Lyrics panel in the Show Display window.
This new location will only list Singers Names, with an optional column for the number of Songs each Singer currently has in the Playlist.
NEW - Countdown Timer - In addition to the current time, your Marquee can now display a countdown timer for the currently playing Song.
Also, you can choose to display the countdown timer without having to display the current time.
NEW - Karaoke Videos - Your Video files are made up of simple videos and Karaoke Videos (Videos with Lyrics). Now, Hoster gives you a way to mark your Karaoke Videos so that
they are easier to find. Use Tools > Edit Songs… to mark your Karaoke Videos. Then use Search to quickly find them and add them to your Playlist.
NEW - Playlist Report ON/OFF - There are times when you do not want to log every Song that you Play. For example, if you are at home, running a "mock" show,
you would not want those Singers and Songs to appear in your Playlist Report. Set this by opening File > Playlist Report… and checking or un checking the new check box:
"Temporarily turn off logging of Songs played…"
The default for this setting is ON.
IMPROVED - Initial Opening - We have shortened the time it takes for Hoster to first appear after launching the program.
CHANGED- Audio and Graphics Priority Level - We removed "Highest" as a choice for these two processes.
If you had Highest chosen, you will be defaulted to "Above Normal".
CHANGED- Hoster Backup & Restore - Now, this program can be run independent of Hoster. To launch this program, go to
C:\Program Files (x86)\Micro Technology Unlimited\Hoster\ and run the program HosterBackup.exe.
FIXED - Free Space on Hard Drives - Before importing songs from CD, Hoster will verify that you have plenty of space available.
If you see the warning message, you can continue with the imports. It is strongly recommended that you clear off unnecessary files or add new (fixed or external) drive space to your system.
EXPANDED - Number of Singers Per Line - In the Tools > Show Display… window, you can set this value
to a maximum of nine (9). This will allow you to list a larger number of Singers in the Singer Name Display when using Top, Middle or Bottom location.
This is especially useful if you do not include the Song Title or the Time.
PLAYLIST
NEW - "Played Through" Setting - In the Tools > Settings… window, the Playlist group has a new setting.
Set this new value to the number of seconds left at the end of a Song when the Song will be considered "Played". If you set this to "30", and you click Stop, Skip or Abort with more than 30 seconds remaining in the Song,
the Song will return to "Ready" status. If there are fewer than 30 seconds remaining, the Song will be set to "Played".
This value will also affect when a Song is logged in your Playlist History, using the same reasoning.
NEW - "Quick Add" and "Update Singer before Add" - The three buttons – K-oke, Audio, & Video – now allow
you to select whether the Song is immediately added to the Playlist, or if you wish to update the Singer's Name and Key before adding the Song. Simply right-click on any of the three buttons, and make your selection.
NEW - Auto Add Song to Singer's List - There is a new check box option in the Tools > Settings… window Playlist group.
Choosing this option will cause every Song added to the Playlist to also be added to that Singer's Song List. It is the same as clicking the S+ button for each song.
NEW - Find Same… - We added three check boxes to the Find Same… dialog window that you can use to limit the types of files that are found.
These new check boxes are: Karaoke, Audio, and Video.
CHANGED - Singers Disc - You can choose to look up any Song's Title & Artist on-line, if they are available. To select this option, go to Tools > Settings…
and click the General button. Then select the check box that says "Use on-line CD Title & Artist database.". Obviously, you must be on-line to take advantage of this. When you insert a Singers Disc
and click on the Singers Disc button, Hoster will show you the Title & Artist of each track, if they are available.
CHANGED - Title Column Editable - The Title column of the Playlist is now editable. Use this feature if you wish to shorten or change a Song's Title in any way.
INDEXING SONGS
FIXED - Brand - We discovered an oversight in Hoster, where the Brand was not being pulled from the File Name. If you choose "Brand" in the defined Field Order,
it will now be recognized and used in the Indexing of the new Songs.
BUILD SONG DATABASE
NEW - Open Folder - Right-click on any folder, and you can immediately open it to view the files it contains.
SINGERS LIST
NEWRemove Song From Singers List - Right click on any Song in the Playlist, and you will see a new option that will allow you to remove the Song from the Singer's List of Songs.
This can be undone by adding the Song back into the list. Note: Removing and reading a Song will clear out the Last Date and Number of Times Sung fields.
NEWMerge Singers - You now have the option to combine all Songs from two different Singers into either of the two Singers, or create a third (new) Singer with the combined Song list.
Click on the "Singers" button, and then select two Singers from the list. The "Merge" button will become active. You can click this, or right-click on either Singer and choose "Merge…" from the drop-down menu.
Please note, this is a non-reversible function. Once it's done, it's done. The only version of this that is easily undone is merging into a third (new) Singer. This new Singer could easily be deleted, if you decided that this was not what you wanted to do.
V5.35.01- March 20, 2015
You can purchase the upgrade from here
GENERAL
NEW - Noting Songs in the Playlist - In the Search, Singer's List & Edit Singers windows, any song that is in your Playlist will now be shown in underscored green.
This will help you when searching for new songs to add to the Playlist. You can also mark songs as strikeout red by choosing "Mark As > Unavailable".
We have also added the ability to change the colors that are used to display the "In Playlist" and "Played" songs, if you prefer colors other than red & green. You can make turn this on or off under Tools\Options
NEW - Reset all Played Songs to Available - In the Search, Singer's List & Edit Singers windows, you can now reset all Played songs to Available with one click.
Right click on any song list window, and select Mark As > Reset All.
NEW - File Properties - In the Main Hoster Playlist and in the Search, Singer's List Edit Singers, & Edit Songs windows, you can view the File Properties of any song.
This will show you the full path name and file name of the song file, along with any other details that Microsoft displays.
NEW - Show Display... - In the Tools > Show Display... settings window:
You now have the option under Audio DJ to cause those settings to take effect when the Background Audio player is playing a song.
If you leave this new checkbox unchecked, then the Intermission settings will be used.
You can set the Singer Name Display to appear on the Left or Right of the Graphics Area window.
If you choose either of these, the SND will contain only the Singers' Names, and there will be only one Singer Name per line. The list will begin with "Singer List" at the top.
Use these options when you want to show more than just a few Singers' Names in the SND area.
Note: The Marquee will span the entire width of the Show Display, regardless of the SND position setting.
IMPROVED - CD/DVD Drives... - We redesigned the Tools > CD/DVD Drives... settings window. The changes include:
Display/recognize more than four (4) drives
Widen the list of drives for better visibility
Right-click on any drive to access the Test and Mark tools
New Excluded status, to use when you do not want to mark a drive Bad .
CHANGED - Tempo Mode - You can now set the Tempo of a song from 75% to 125%.
In addition, we have added another option in Tools > Tempo Mode... which will allow you to adjust the Tempo more precisely.
This new option is Tempo Increment and will give you ranges as follows:
5% - giving you a range of 75% to 125% in increments of 5%
4% - giving you a range of 80% to 120% in increments of 4%
3% - giving you a range of 85% to 115% in increments of 3%
2% - giving you a range of 90% to 110% in increments of 2%
1% - giving you a range of 95% to 105% in increments of 1%
Regardless of the Tempo Increment, you can manually enter any Tempo Change value from 75% to 125% for any song in the Playlist (except Videos or "Play from Singers Disc") at any time.
CHANGED - Visualizations - Due to performance issues, Windows Media Player Visualizations will no longer appear in the Preview window.
They are only displayed in the main Show Display window.
FIXED - Restore from Launch Bar - Running Hoster on Windows 8, sometimes when you minimize your Hoster window, it would not restore to its previous position when you clicked in the Hoster icon.
This has been resolved.
FIXED - Playback Offset - If you have the Playback Offset set in your Tools > Audio Controls,
you may have noticed that this feature stopped working in version 5.34. It is now fixed and working again.
PLAYLIST
NEW- InstaButton Limit - When your InstaButtons are in view, there is now a floating "+" mark that will allow you to set the right margin for your InstaButtons.
This will give you control over where the buttons wrap to the next line. You adjust this by clicking on it with your left mouse button and dragging it left and right on the Hoster panel. Release the left mouse button to set its position.
If you set it up against the right side of the Hoster window, it will stay there as your resize – or maximize – the window.
NEW- Delete Song Prompt - The menu item Tools > Options... contains a new option: Prompt me before deleting a song from the Playlist.
Checking this option will ask you if you are sure you want to delete a song before the deletion happens. The default is un-checked.
EXPANDED- Playlist Report:
The Playlist Report will now log the Brand, DiscID, and BookID of each song after they play.
The Playlist Report... dialog has also been updated to allow you to rearrange the order of the columns in the reports.
And we made the From date and the Karaoke, Audio, and Video checkboxes persistent. They will be remembered & set the same when you close and reopen Playlist Report.
CHANGED- Mark Song - When no song is playing in Hoster's Playlist, the button will remain enabled (green).
You can now click on this button to display the contents of the MarkSong.txt file. While viewing this file, you can edit the contents, or clear it completely. If you clear it, future Mark Song information will be written to it starting at the top.
CHANGED- BookID & Brand - We combined these two buttons into one that switches between the two selections. Since most users choose one of these and stay with it, it seemed like a waste of space to have both.
This also gives us some room for new functions in the future.
FIXED- Sync Adjust - When adding songs from the Singer's List or Edit Singers windows, the Sync Adjust value will now appear correctly in Hoster's Playlist.
SEARCH
NEW- Interrupt Search - If your search is taking too long, you can now interrupt it by pressing the Esc button. This will present you with the songs that were already found
to match your search criteria.
CHANGED- Better Matching - Hoster will now match other contractions like "I'm" and "You'll" if you only type "Im" or "You'll" respectively.
This will allow you to be faster when typing in search terms in the Search and Edit Songs windows.
CHANGED- Search Options - We removed the "Show Fields" button. Now, to show – or hide – the Search Options,
you simply need to right-click on the Search Field or on the button.
The "Search Options" will appear, and you can make changes to the type of Search that you wish to perform. By removing this button, we are able to give you a larger Search Field.
EDIT SONGS
NEW- Swap Title & Artist in Multiple View - If you have more than just a few songs that have the Title & Artist swapped, you can now take care of them all at once.
Click on the Multiple button, select the songs you want to fix, and click the Swap button to the right of the Title & Artist fields.
NEW- My Drive Letter has Changed - If Microsoft Windows happens to change the drive letter assigned to an external drive, you can quickly and easily change the drive letter
in your Songs Database. When you click on this button, you will see a dialog that will ask you for the From & To drive letters.
Note: This should only be used if you
are certain that the drive letter has changed and you don't have any other options!
CHANGED- Remove 2nd Warning Message - In Multiple View, if you click the Apply Changes button, you will see a list of the fields you have changed.
You will no longer have to click OK twice in order to process the songs you have chosen.
FIXED- Sync Adjust - The &Sync Adj& setting now will affect the Play feature in Edit Songs.
SONGBOOK
NEW- SongbookDB Button - We have been working with the people at SongbookDB to create a product that you can use
during your shows to streamline the song request process. This button will create a formatted .CSV file named SongbookDB.csv that you can upload to their servers. You can then use that Song Book and their application
to present to your singers using either their smart phones or a kiosk that you provide.
NEW- Export to .CSV - You now have the option of creating both .RTF and .CSV format files. CSV (Comma Separated Values) files are especially useful when using
Microsoft Excel or any other program that can understand this format.
NEW- Exclude Duplicates - If you only want one listing for a given Song Title and Artist in your SongBook, now you can archive this easily with the SongBook tool.
Simply check the new box that says Include only one entry for songs with the same Artist Name & Song Title.
This will bypass any duplicates, in case you have more than one version of a song from different Karaoke Producers, for example.
IMPROVED- Creation Speed - We have greatly reduced the time it takes to create your Song Book files.
SUNG BY
NEW- Add selected song to the Playlist - Using the Sung By... tool, you can now quickly add that song to the Playlist for the chosen singer or for a different singer.
BACKGROUND AUDIO
NEW - Status Column - The left-most column is now the Status column. This column will contain one of the following words:
Ready - Not played. Will eventually be chosen to play while the Background Audio player is active.
Play - Currently playing. The Duration column will also display the time remaining for this song. This status will also be displayed in reverse colors to help it stand out.
Played - This song has been played in the current rotation.
Skip - You marked this song to Skip, so it will not be played until you mark it either Ready or Played.
You can change the state of any song (except the song currently Playing) by right-clicking on it and choosing from the Mark As... list. You can also begin playing, stop playing, or delete a song from the list using this drop-down menu.
NEW - Repeat All / Play Once Through Button - A new button on the BA Player will allow you to select whether to repeat every song in the Playlist once they have all played or to stop at that time.
CHANGED - Random Play Button - The Random Play setting was moved from the top menu under "Settings" to a new button on the main window. It is located next to the Repeat/Once button.
NEW - Delete Songs using the "Del" Key - In addition to the "Del" button, you can now also delete songs using the "Del" key on your keyboard.
NEW - Pause Play for Other Windows - When the BA Player is playing, and you open the Edit Songs, the Import CD Tracks, or the InstaButtons settings window,
the BA Player will pause, but only when you click the Play button in these windows. This will allow you to make changes during a show, without interrupting the BA Player. But if you want to hear a song in any of these windows,
you no longer need to remember to Stop or Pause the BA Player first.
CHANGED - Total Time Display - The box in the upper-right corner of the BA Player will now display the total amount of time for all songs in your Playlist. Note: Skipped songs will not be counted.
FIXED - Play Selected Song First - The Background Audio player will no longer jump away from the song you have selected (highlighted) when you click ON or Play.
button to start the download for that version of Video Hoster.
button for any reason.
button will allow you to Register an Account,
input a Payment method and Subscribe to their service.
Once you are logged into your Account, you can search for songs by Artist and/or Title.
button
or by dragging the songs to the Playlist. If you enter a Singer Name in the Search window, that Singer will be assigned to the Song(s).
You will notice that the song takes a short while to download. The progress bar will appear in the Playlist while this is happening.
button to quickly find all of your Favorite songs.
- We fixed a bug that allows you to add a Song to the Singer's Song List but not to the live Playlist.
To do this, press and hold the Ctrl button and then click the 
button will remain enabled (green).
You can now click on this button to display the contents of the MarkSong.txt file. While viewing this file, you can edit the contents, or clear it completely. If you clear it, future Mark Song information will be written to it starting at the top.
button.
The "Search Options" will appear, and you can make changes to the type of Search that you wish to perform. By removing this button, we are able to give you a larger Search Field.