CAVS

CAVS is a manufacturer of standalone karaoke disc players, jukeboxes, and streaming audio servers. Their hardware line includes the widely-used DVD-203G series which can play traditional CD+G discs, Video CDs, "Super-CDG" discs (which are actually DVD-ROMs), and external storage devices connected to its USB port, such as a hard drive or USB "key" drive.

Songs on external devices are stored in a series of folders, one for every disc 'ripped' into the system:

 SC08\         <- Folder with "Disc/Album" Name
   00001.MCG   <- graphics file for song #1
   00001.MP3   <-    audio file for song #1
 
   00002.MCG   <- graphics file for song #2
   00002.MP3   <-    audio file for song #2
   ...
   ENGLISH.INX <- encoded text for on-screen navigation menus
   list.txt    <- Text file containing song and artist info for each track

The "list.txt" file provides Artist and Title meta data for all songs in the folder where it resides. It is formatted like so:

 Song#|Song Title|Artist Name
 
 00001|My Best Friend's Girl|Cars, The
 00002|These Boots Are Made For Walking|Nancy Sinatra
 00003|She's A Lady|Tom Jones

Converting

To convert your CAVS library for use with kJams, you can either

1) Use kJams to rip your original CD+G discs, except "Super CDG" discs which are proprietary^[1]; or

2) Convert your existing CAVS files to the universal Audio+G format, which kJams supports. It is not as hard as it might seem!

First, connect your storage device to a PC, and convert the .MCG files to .CDG format using CAVS' DecoderCD+G utility ($30):

1. Set Mode to "To CDG -From MCG, BIN"
2. Click the "Source" button and choose one of your disc folders.
3. Click "Select All" to select all files in that folder.
4. Click the "Target" button and choose the same disc folder as in #2.
5. Click "Decode." Each song now has a CDG graphics file, ready to use with kJams!

Repeat for all disc folders on your storage device, then connect it to your Mac. You're ready to import!

Importing into kJams

1. Launch kJams and choose "Add To Library..."
2. Choose a disc folder containing converted CDG files.
3. There's no step 3! kJams automagically detects the CAVS list.txt file inside each folder and uses its contents to tag all songs with appropriate artist and title names. It even adds genre information like "Musical" or "Duets" whenever possible!.

Note 1: if you get asked whether to use "File Names" or "Tags", pick "File Names" but only because it is slightly faster, it doesn't really matter if you pick "Tags" or if you have it set to automatically always pick "Tags".

Note 2: If your discs were originally ripped using improper meta data or poor CAVS software settings, the resulting list.txt files can look pretty crummy; missing punctuation, truncated names, and ALL CAPS are common problems. kJams corrects as much as it can by filling in common punctuation and setting words in Capital Case. If you want better results, edit the list.txt file(s) before importing, or edit the resulting name fields within kJams after importing.

Note 3: You may leave the MCG files in the converted folder if you wish, kJams will ignore them. It's recommended that you also keep the list.txt file for future re-importing, in case you ever need to rebuild your kJams library from scratch.

IMPORTANT NOTE FOR CONTINUING CAVS USERS: If you plan to continue using your MCGs and MP3s with CAVS, it is strongly recommended that you create a backup copy in another location before using them with kJams. This is because kJams renames the files for any song whose info you modify within its list view; for example, 00004.CDG and 00004.MP3 could become 'Cars - Gary Numan.CDG' and 'Cars - Gary Numan.MP3', while the ignored MCG file remains 00004.MCG. Not only does the MP3's new name make it unusable with CAVS, it is now 'orphaned' from its companion MCG graphics file.

References

^[1] SuperCDGs can't be ripped; they have to go through CAVS' laborious processing of using several PC-based utilities to create MCGs and MP3s. If you've already got MCGs and MP3s from these discs, there's no need to recreate them!