Burning

kJams Burning Plugin

• The burning plugin is SOLD SEPARATELY, for $20. It does NOT come with kJams. More info here.
• WARNING: most drives don't burn CDGs!! See the section on Compatible Drives.
• Allows kJams Lite or Pro to burn new CD+G discs from a playlist.
• Burns the song with your pitch bending (shifting) intact (so when you play it on real hardware, it comes out pitch bent, without instructing the playback device to do anything special)
• Is currently in Late Alpha
• Uses an actual installer program to install. You will be able to update, upgrade or replace your kJams application without affecting the availability of the Burning plugin
• Is available now on the Downloads page
• After you install, to see if it installed correctly, run kJams and in preferences select the Burning tab.
• WARNING: Pioneer DVR drives do NOT seem to produce viable CD+G discs. They will play in computers but not on real hardware
• WARNING: Due to their inconsistency in some CD/DVD players, Colored or Black CD-R's are NOT recommended.
• From a customer: I was using (cheap generic) CD-R's that I found on the web, but they would ont read on Numark karaoke machines. After doing a lot of reading it looks CD+G machines are not all as forgiving as normal computers. They recommend only music CD Maxell or Memorex. I used Maxell and use the slowest burn speed. The CD worked great on the Numark machine that I was having trouble with.
• NOTE: When testing burning, use CD-RW discs, so you don't make coasters. When you've verified it is all working just great, THEN switch to using CD-R discs. Most commercial players WILL accept CD-R discs, but will NOT accept CD-RW discs.

How To use it

Please write me directly about any troubles, don't post on the forum. Here's what you need to do:

1. have enough room in your cache drive for > 2x the size of the disc. eg: if you burn an 800 MB disc, you must have > 1.6 GB free
2. show the "Activity" window, you'll want to watch it
3. make a playlist with only the songs you want to burn
4. select that playlist
5. adjust the pitch of each song so it falls within your vocal range (adjusting tempo will have no effect on the disc)
6. make sure you don't have more TIME in the playlist than your media will hold. ie: if your media is spec'd at 70 minutes, don't put more than about 69.5 minutes in the playlist. See the bottom of the browser window for total minutes in the selected playlist. If you're feeling adventurous, tell me what happens if you put more time in than the media will hold, I haven't tried it myself.
7. Press the burn button (upper right of browser window)

If Burning fails

• See what to do in case of a Failed Burn.

Burning bin/cue files

If you have a bin/cue file pair, you can drag it into kJams (or "File->Add To Library…" it) and it will appear as a CD. To burn this image, select the CD and in the file menu the "Burn Playlist…" menu item should now read "Burn bin/cue to disc…", just pick that and burn as normal.

Making Pristine Copies

Normally when you burn a disc, the source audio comes from some compressed format. Using typical settings this means an (optionally zipped) MP3 file. Audiophiles will of course wish to create copies of their discs with all the fidelity of the uncompressed audio from the original disc. It's simple to do this with kJams. When you rip a disc, the original, uncompressed audio, direct from the disc, is stored in the cache. (The MP3 file is then created from this uncompressed cache). Typically this cache gets cleared out to make room for more recent songs that you play (which are decompressed from the MP3 files), so what you want to do is burn your copy immediately after you rip your disc. If you want to make a pristine compilation, just re-rip from the original discs each song you want in your compilation, then burn your new disc.

1. Clear your cache (kJams->Preferences->Audio and press the clear button a few times (yes, a *few* times). If you've recently burned a disc the size may not go to zero, this is fine)
2. Set your cache size to be greater than the number of songs you plan to burn. eg: if you think you'll fit 18 songs on the disc, make sure the cache size is at least 19.
3. Re-rip the songs you want to burn pristine copies of. This copies the original, uncompressed audio into the cache, ready for burning.
4. Make a playlist of the compilation. If you are copying a single disc, and you have the "Create Playlists of Imported Songs" turned on, you can just use the playlist that was created, just make sure you first rename the playlist to the proper disc name before burning.
5. Select the playlist
6. Open the "Activity" window
7. Press the burn button (once!)

At this point, watch the Activity window closely. It should immediately say "assembling bin/cue file". If instead it says "Unpacking song" and/or "Writing CDG to Cache" then a step was missed and you may be getting compressed audio. If so, press the stop sign and check your steps. Otherwise, the bin/cue assembly will complete and then you'll burn a pristine disc using uncompressed audio.