Video Hoster^® Obsolete Versions 4.09d - 4.000

V4.32 - First Released October 20, 2010

1. 432.03 UPGRADE 03/01/2011
2. 432.01 UPGRADE 01/06/2011
3. 432.12 UPGRADE 12/01/2010
   
   • FIXED Hoster On Windows 64-bit Systems Would NOT Upgrade - Versions 432.11 and prior had a problem with registering on Windows 64-bit versions that prevented upgrading. This was fixed in 4.32.12. If you run 4.32.11 or prior, and run Windows 64-bit OS, please submit a Support Ticket and include these two facts and we will correct the problem so you can upgrade. We apologize for this problem, but Microsoft gave us no warning they changed Windows operations!
4. 432.11 UPGRADE 11/08/2010
5. 432.10 UPGRADE 10/01/2010
   
   
   • CHANGED Search Dialog Play Controls - When a second audio card is not present (none selected for Search Play) the Search dialog play button and volume control are now hidden.
   • CHANGED Search Dialog Play Key Change - Playing a song in the Search dialog plays the file ignoring the Key Change setting. Before, if a song was playing from the Playlist, and you select a song in the Search dialog and click its Play button with a key change applied, it would change the Playlist key also. We expect to replace the Key Change code in Hoster 5.xx, and expect to have unique key changes playing in both players.
   • UPGRADED Search Dialog Audio Card/Port Recognition - Windows 7 (and Vista) can create "virtual" audio ports that it uses internally. However, because these are no longer identified as before, Hoster's code presented these virtual ports. Now it only presents and uses physical audio cards or ports (not virtual ports) for the Playlist and the Search dialog preview play feature.

V4.31 - Released September 27, 2010, upgraded October 5, 2010

1. UPGRADED October 5 - SATA Optical Drives Not found on New Computers - Some new computer users started reporting Hoster or Hoster Lite did not find their optical drives, even though Windows Explorer showed them. We quickly identified the problem and released a new 4.31 code that identifies and uses all optical drives. It's Help menu About Hoster... dialog shows 4.31. for the version.
2. NEW Audio, Karaoke, Video Buttons - These were added into the Edit Songs Dialog search switches at top. They allow limiting searches to these Song Types. They are enabled (orange) whenever the dialog appears.
3. NEW SKIP tracks in Search & Singers Dialogs - When checked, when you add one or more Songs to the Playlist, their Status is set to SKIP. The settings are independent, and appear the next time Hoster runs (persistent).
4. NEW Background Audio Player Double-click to Play - In prior versions double-click a song in the BA song list was not supported. If you did this the On button stayed gray and the Off button remained red. We upgraded the code to handle double-click.
5. CHANGED Search & Singers Dialogs - The controls were re-arranged in these dialogs to make room for SKIP tracks.
6. CHANGED Edit Songs Dialog - Now the dialog width is resizable by click and dragging the right edge to the right (or back to the left). This allows expanding the search results window to show all the field columns. Your changes are power-down persistent, remaining when you run Hoster again.
7. CHANGED Singers Dialog Export Report - We changed the exported file (C:\MTU\Hoster\SongList.rtf), expanding the header columns to include the following: BookID, Title, Artist, Key, Date, Brand, DiscID. We removed the Tempo column until Tempo is supported. The "'s Songs" was removed from the end of each Singer so the Singer's name appears as it is in the database, and the names are now bold. We added a View File button in the message box that appears after the export is finished.
8. CHANGED Singers Dialog - Song View - The songs are now displayed in alphabetic order to make them easy to find.
9. CHANGED Instabuttons Settings Dialog - We changed the text at the top and added a WARNING about Instabutton Video file's audio not playing if you select an audio card for the Playlist that is not the Windows default audio card.
10. CHANGED 99 Instabuttons - You can now have up to 99 Instabuttons, but only one line shows them on your Playlist screen. However, the screen can be resized (moe the bottom and right edges) to show more Instabuttons at the same time.
11. FIXED Remove Silence End Removal - Even if you set the End point on a song to not play silence beyond that point, when the song was played the silence played and the DUR field showed a negative number counting down. We found and fixed the problem.
12. FIXED Search Dialog Key Change - The Upgrade button now upgrades the Key change field for the selected song in the List window.
13. FIXED Singer's Dialog Songs Not Appearing - When you click the Singers button to display its dialog, the first Singer displayed does not show its Songs until you select another Singer, then click the first Singer again. Now the first Singer's Songs will appear the first time.

V4.30 - Released September 1, 2010, Updated September 3, 2010

1. UPGRADE Sept 3 Drives Now Recognized - There were various drives Hoster would not import from, including Matsushita brands. Hoster now recognizes these and other drives that use the same more demanding interface.
2. NEW - Automatic Check for Updates - When Keyrite first runs and the computer is on-line, it automatically checks to see if 7 days have passed since the last access to the MTU web site. If under 7 days, it won't check now. If more than 7 days, it checks for a new release. This does not delay the program running. The message box that appears has a "Hide this message for version NNN" checkbox where NNN is the new version number. If clicked, the message for the version being reported will not appear again. When a new version is released later than this one, the message appears with text explaining this new version's features.
3. UPGRADE Help Menu Check For Upgrades Command - When clicked, this launches your Browser and accesses a script that receives data about the version you are running so it can tell you the status.
4. CHANGED Disable Cancel button in Detect Drive Dialog - The Cancel button only appears when a Reader drive is selected and saved.
5. UPGRADE Move Dialogs & Screens to Default Location - If the Preview screen, Singers screen, Search dialog or Singers dialog are moved off of any Display "area" so they are no longer accessible, clicking the Tools menu Options command Reset Displays button will reset both screens and both dialogs back to the center of the computer display showing Hoster's Playlist screen.

V4.22 - Released June 24, 2010

1. NEW Added an Open Folder Field to Import HD Files Screen - Once you select the file Type button, and select the folder where your song files are, that field now appears at the top of the screen.
2. FIXED Lyrics Out-of-Sync - On some computers, the first song played with the lyrics in sync, but on the second and higher songs the lyrics were out-of-sync. We found and fixed the problem. Beta testers report the sync is now the best of the 4.xx series. We also rebuilt Hoster using the latest Microsoft Direct-X and Windows Media Player developers tools to further overcome sync problems caused by older versions of these tools.
3. FIXED Crash with Remove Silence - This was preventing unattended removing silence from the start/end of karaoke and audio files. We found and fixed the bug.
4. UPGRADED Random Crashing - Hoster on XP runs fine. However, on Vista and Windows 7, it was randomly crashing after hours of operation. Rebuilding Hoster using the latest Microsoft Direct-X and Windows Media Player tools solved these problems. You now need to upgrade your computer to the latest Direct-X and Windows Media Player versions to run Hoster 4.22.
5. UPGRADED DVD Drives Now Persistent On 64-Bit Vista or Windows 7 - When Hoster runs it no longer asks for the Default Drive selection that was already made when you first run Hoster.
6. FIXED Background Audio Player ">>" Play Next - When this button is clicked to stop the current audio song and play the next, the button now grays out until the playing song ends, including fade-out. In prior versions you could click this button repeatedly during the fade out time, which ignored the button click.

V4.21 - Released May 27, 2010

1. FIXED Random Crashing - We found and fixed a problem. We tested playing a Playlist with over 9 hours without crashing.
2. NEW Upgrade Needed Notification - When installing 4.21, if the RegCode being used was ordered or upgraded more than 12 months ago, your web browser will display a page to allow upgrading that RegCode. Orders and Upgrades allow their RegCode to install future versions for the next 12 months.

V4.20 - Released March 2, 2010

1. MASSIVE UPGRADE Almost New Import Hard Drive Files Screen - This has been massively upgraded to be much easier to use. The TYPE buttons determine whether you index your files with the new KMH format or duplicate them with the standard KMA format.
2. NEW Index Video Files - Many users have been waiting to index their video files in the Songs Database. Click the Video Type button, select the video format to import, select the folder (with sub-folders) and follow the on-screen instructions. Your large video files are not duplicated!
3. NEW KMH Indexing File Format - Instead of duplicating audio/lyrics/video files as the KMA format does, a new KMH format has been created that now indexes Karaoke ZIP, MP3+G, WMA+G, and Audio MP3, WMA, and Video files. KMH is a 256-byte header file, with the same name as the song file it indexes, and saves in the folder holding the song file. KMH files can be edited, played, searched for, deleted, indexed in the Songs Database, and can print or be excluded in your Song Books... just like KMA files.
4. NEW Easy / Advanced Import Methods - The New Easy Method allows you to quickly indexing a large number of ZIP, MP3+G, WMA+G, MP3 or WMA files at around 6 per second so you can find and play them quickly. See the KMH -vs- KMA differences.
5. NEW Added Guide Text in Each Screen - Now step-by-step instructions appear at the left in each screen for what to do next.
6. NEW Added "Type" Column to Search Dialog Window - Now you can see file Types in the Search dialog.
7. UPGRADE Preserve Custom BookID Root Numbers - Enter a custom BookID Root number when Importing CD/CDG Discs or Hard Drive files in Batch mode and your entered custom number is used to create the next higher numbers above your number for each disc or file imported.
8. UPGRADE Playback Offset - We changed the selections from 0.25 increments to 0.10 increments for finer adjustment.
9. UPGRADE Removed Check For HDZIP Files - When Hoster first ran or Build Song Database ran, it verified HDZIP files did not exist (they should have been converted to HDMP3G format in V4.11 and prior). V4.20 supports playing ZIP and HDZIP flies so these check were removed.
10. FIXED Custom BookID Overwrote Existing BookID - When files are assigned "Unknown" for DiscID, the KMA filename is saved as "unknown-tk#.kma", which will overwrite existing "unknown-tk#.kma" files, if you click the Sel check box beside one or more tracks. Hoster now assigns a unique DiscID so this no longer happens.
11. FIXED Locked Up: Error "509" Appeared When Batch Importing Sub-folders - We fixed this problem. The "509" could be a different number. We found that code portions were not being closed, causing a buildup that would consume all available RAM for this type of operation, and then lock up Hoster.
12. FIXED Visualization Dialog in Intermission View - This dialog would require multiple clicks to close. This was fixed.
13. FIXED Searching DiscID - Currently (for example) entering "1" matches DiscIDs with "1" anywhere in it. This has been changed.
14. FIXED Add Files to an Existing Song Database - Several rare bugs were fixed in this function.

V4.11 - Released October 5, 2009, #2 October 15, 2009

1. CHANGED (Version #2) Delete and Move Tracks In Playlist - You can now delete or move tracks in the Playlist while playing. Before, if you deleted or moved a track above the playing song, when the playing song finished, the second next track below would play instead of the next track. This is fixed.
2. FIXED Hoster Would Crash Within 30-40 Seconds - There was a bug. If the Show Display Intermission View checkbox for Always On was disabled, within 30-40 seconds the Time fields in the SND would try to be incremented for the next minute (during Intermission only). Since the Intermission was disabled, the Time fields were missing and the code would crash. This is fixed.
3. CHANGED Background Audio Player Volume - The range was changed from 50% to 100% to now be 20% to 100%.
4. CHANGED These Edit Song dialog changes have been made:
   
   
   1. NEW Edit Songs Select Multiple View - Brand, Title and Artist fields (same as in the Select Single View) now allow selecting multiple songs and applying the same Brand, Title or Artist name(s). All other parameters that were not changed remain the same.
   2. CHANGED Edit Songs Search Buttons - The BookID, Title, Artist... buttons that turn green are now on the top row and the "On/Off Switch" buttons on the bottom row that limit to the checkboxes they represent.
   3. FIXED "No S-E" Button - When clicked to Find only songs where the Start-End Remove Silence pointers were not set, this showed songs where the Start-End pointers had been edited. Now it shows those without Start-End pointers so you can edit them or go to the Tools menu Remove Silence... dialog and process them. This can occur after importing songs if you haven't process them to remove silence.
   4. CHANGED Results Window - Two new columns have been added to this window to show Hide SB (Hide in Songbook flag) and S-E Set (Start-End silence set for Remove Silence). These allow viewing the state of these flags.
   5. UPGRADED Edit Songs Select Multiple Screen - If you clicked into any field or changed a checkbox and even changed it back, internal flags were set to update all the selected songs with the changed fields/checkboxes current setting. It was not made known this would happen. Now, when you click the Apply Changes button, a dialog appears showing the names of the fields and/or checkboxes that will be used for updating, plus the number of selected songs that will be updated. If you don't agree with this, click the Cancel button, ALL CHANGES are discarded and the fields and checkboxes reset to blank. If you agree with the items that will update the quantity of selected files, click the Continue button. A second message will appear with the warning that you are about to permanently modify your KMA files and Songs Database with buttons to Continue or Cancel. Clicking Continue starts modifying all selected KMA files with the identical changes. Unmodified fields/checkboxes remain unchanged.
   6. CHANGED Select Multiple View Fields - In Select Multiple view if you selected ONE song, its parameters now appear in the blank fields below as it does in Select Single view.

V4.10 - Released September 23, 2009

1. NEW Remove Silence From Karaoke Songs - The Tools menu Remove Silence... command automatically scans and marks leading and trailing silence in your KMA (karaoke only) files and in your Songs Database. Once processed, you can select to play with or without the silence. The Edit Songs dialog allows adjusting or clearing the Start or End pointers on any song.
2. NEW Automated Background Audio Player - The Bkgnd Audio button displays the new BA Player where you can open a folder containing MP3 and WMA files audio files to play. Hoster automatically controls this Player, providing background audio whenever silence would happen. You no longer need to use other audio players like WinAmp, DJ programs, etc.
3. NEW Talkover Button - When Background Audio is playing, clicking this button drops the amplitude down so you can talk while the background continues playing.
4. NEW Intermission View Visualization Shows Background Audio - While Background Audio is playing, the Intermission View appears. If you have Visualization selected, the gyrating images respond to the Background Audio.
5. NEW Audio Fade In and Out - You can now set adjustable separate fade durations for Hoster and the Background Audio Player so the music comes up and fades away.
6. NEW Windows 7 Compliant - Version 4.10 can install and run on Windows 7. Those who tested on Windows 7 report faster performance. So far it appears to be function the same as with Vista, but more stable.
7. NEW Video Button Supports .MP4 Files - You can now open and add .MP4 file types using the Video button.
8. UPGRADED Import Database - There are now 278,000 Brand-DiscID-Track#-Artist-Title definitions, all cleaned through Google manual searches.
9. UPGRADED Rewritten And Reformatted Manual - The manual has been totally reorganized to make it easier to find what you are looking for. More images now have "image maps" that make each control in the image a hyperlink to the details about it; just click what you want to know about and read it.
10. UPGRADED Printer Friendly Version Links - The Printer Friendly Version link at the top of the Installation Manual, User Manual, and Import Songs Manual to print that manual section correctly without chopping off the right edge.
11. CHANGED Show Button is Now SND Button - This now is titled SND button. When clicked, it blanks the Singers Names Display when clicked (red) and un-blanks it when clicked again (green). This allows you to edit the SND order or names and they are not visible until you are finished.
12. CHANGED InstaButtons Stop Button - This now is gray when no InstaButtons are Playing, and red when one is playing. Clicking it stops the playing button.
13. UPGRADE Auto-Build Your Songs Database when Hoster 4.0 first runs, if it finds an existing Songs Database. Automatically rebuilding it insures you have the new database format required to use the new features.
14. UPGRADED Tools Menu Audio Controls... Command - We added new Fade in: and Fade out: fields so you can select how fast Hoster songs fade up when they start, and back down when they are finished.
15. UPGRADED Speed Up Performance - We modified our drive detection code that significantly speeds up Hoster starting up. Some users would see tens of seconds for Hoster to start, while others would have Hoster running in under 10 seconds. Now everyone should see faster performance.
16. UPGRADED Visualization Images - Selecting Visualization images to appear in the Intermission or Audio DJ views adds a major load on the computer processor and RAM. A warning message appears whenever you click the Visualization radio button to remind you of this.
17. MOVED Man-Auto Buttons - These were moved to directly above where they were.
18. UPGRADED Search Dialog Would Not Play Some Songs - Older KMA files created with Hoster 1.x series would not play in the Search dialog. This is fixed.
19. FIXED Audio InstaButtons Stopped Playing - Audio InstaButtons now keep playing when a new Playlist song starts.
20. FIXED Import CD Tracks Could Lock Hoster - We found and fixed the bug so Hoster no longer can lock up.
21. FIXED Crash When InstaButton Dialog Launched - The problem was found in Version 4.09D and fixed in 4.10. The crash only happened when the open Playlist was empty.
22. REMOVED X-Fade Button - The new Fade controls give more flexibility.
23. FIXED Title Page On SAV Tracks - Title page graphics now draw correctly for SAV and similar "artistic" drawing mode discs.
24. Tools Menu
    
    1. CHANGED Order - After 7 years of evolving, we changed the order of commands so the most often are easier to reach.
    2. NEW Show Display... controls the Show Display where you can select what appears in the; Lyrics, Intermission, Audio DJ, Video VJ views, and the Hoster Screen Preview window.
    3. NEW Songs Database... shows a dialog to choose the operation you want to perform on this database; Add songs to your existing database, rebuild the database or (coming in 4.2x) quickly repair it if files aren't found or folders moved.
    4. NEW InstaButtons... you create that instantly play Audio or Video files on clicked. You assign your own button title and color, and click-n-drag any time to change their order. When enabled they appear on a line above the Playlist Window.
    5. CHANGED Use Longer Filenames when adding KMA files, such as created in MTU Songverter.
    6. NEW Reset Displays Size/Location instantly forces all displays to appear in their factory default location if needed.
    7. NEW Automatic Start enables the Show Display to appear all the time, showing the Intermission view when no song is playing. It is best to disable this when using a single display instead of a dual display.
    8. REMOVED Playback Offset as it is no longer required. In past years, if your graphics display card driver was out dated the lyrics highlighting could be offset. Current graphic cards no longer have this problem. This was added back into the Tools Menu Options command in Hoster 4.10.
    9. REMOVED Preview Display as this is now the Song Display Preview section Unlock and Resize Display checkbox.
25. Import Hard Drive Files Screen
    
    1. NEW Add Auto-Complete Lists For Artist and Title Fields. When you type into these fields, they now instantly show lists build from the Local Database and your imported Songs Database, allowing you to quickly type a few characters to see and click the right name, already formatted to order correctly in your Songbook. If the name is missing, you can type the rest of it, which will never require typing again.
    2. NEW Audio Button allows importing Audio files as KMA files indexed in the Songs Database, and able to appear in your Songbook. Video Files (available in 4.1x) will also be added as KMA files in a new way so as not to duplicate the files. If a Video has lyrics, click the "Video with lyrics" checkbox before importing so these files play in the Lyrics view versus the Video VJ view.
    3. NEW Opens Sub-Folders if the selected folder has sub-folders. When enabled, they are also scanned and their files imported.
    4. NEW Auto-Remove Leading Spaces in Artist and Title names so they appear in the correct order in your Songbook.
    5. NEW Set Mux and Duet for one or multiple files being imported at the same time.
    6. NEW Allow Periods In Filenames - Filenames containing Artist and Title fields with periods "." now remain.
    7. ADDED Genre List Patriotic and Blues selections.
    8. ADDED Language List Hebrew and Greek selections.
    9. NEW HDWMAG Type - When importing WMA+CDG paired files or the same within a .ZIP file on the hard drive now import as HDWMAG instead of HDBIN Type files.
    10. RENAMED "***+G" Renamed to MP3G - Some users didn't know what "***+G" meant. After splitting the WMAG Type to a new button, we renamed "***+G" to MP3G to make it clearer which button to click for the two file types.
    11. REMOVED CDG Button In Import HD Files Screen - This supported the older MTU .CDG audio+lyrics format that was discontinued years ago due to conflicts with the MP3+CDG format that became popular. If you have any .CDG MTU style files remaining, rename them to .BIN and they will import.
    12. MOVED BIN Type - The BIN button was moved to where the CDG button was.
26. Import CD Tracks Screen
    
    1. NEW Auto-Complete Lists For Artist and Title Fields. When you type a few characters into the Artist or Title fields, they now have lists that auto-scroll to matching names to select one quickly. These are formatted to order correctly in your professional Songbook. You can enter new names if what you need is not in the list, and that name is added to the list to never enter again!
    2. NEW Auto-Remove Leading Spaces in Artist and Title names so they alphabetize correctly in the Songbook. This just happens without you doing anything.
    3. CHANGED WMA ratio: Buttons are now a single drop list box.
27. Edit Songs Dialog
    
    1. NEW Add Auto-Complete Lists For Artist and Title Fields. When you type into these fields, they now instantly show lists built from the Local Database and your imported Songs Database, allowing you to quickly type a few characters to see and click the right name, already formatted to order correctly in your Songbook. If the name is missing, you can type the rest of it, which will never require typing again.
    2. NEW Find Leading Spaces to locate existing files with a leading space in the Title or Artist name. Removing blanks orders the songs correctly in the Songbook.
    3. NEW Hide in Songbook Checkbox allows you to mark duplicate songs to not appear in your Songbook, but still appear in searches to add to the Playlist.
    4. NEW "Video with lyrics" Checkbox allows you to mark video songs that contain sweeping lyrics to play in the Lyrics view instead of the Video VJ view.
    5. Coming In 4.1x Language Button allows adding up to 128 custom Languages in addition to the build-in list.
    6. Coming In 4.1x Genre Button allows adding up to 128 custom Genres in addition to the build-in list.
28. Song Book Changes
    
    1. NEW Select 1, 2 or 3 Columns in your Songbook.
    2. NEW Select Last Field Contents, which was forced to BookID, now you can select "None, BookID or DiscID-Tk".
    3. NEW Automatically Strip Leading & Trailing Spaces from Title and Artist entries to insure correct alphabetic order.
    4. NEW Hide in Song Book Field that can now be set in the Edit Songs dialog can be used here to hide duplicate songs from printing.
29. Search Dialog
    
    1. NEW Add+Close Button closes the Search dialog when adding a song.
    2. CHANGED Smaller Default Size makes it easier to keep this open all the time, and is re-sizeable to make it larger if you want.
30. Installation & Registration
    
    1. NEW Requires New 4.0 Registration Code to install Hoster 4.x. You can buy a New Product to install on new computers, or buy the Upgrade Product to upgrade Hoster on existing computers to version 4.x.
    2. NEW Updates Prior Versions when found, automatically presenting an instruction page to guide you in moving your existing files. Windows Vista does not allow programs to move files, so you must manually do this (this is optional but recommended for Windows XP).
    3. NEW Detect VISTA On Installation since Vista requires files to be in different folders than Windows XP. The new created C:\MTU\Hoster folder now holds your Playlists, Songs, Local (Bucket), and Singers Databases, and Log files. The C:\MTU\KMA Files is created to store your imported KMA files. As Microsoft requires,the Hoster.exe program is forced to the C:\Program Files\Micro Technology Unlimited\Hoster folder, along with the \Manual folder and files.
    4. NEW Lower Cost Loyalty Upgrade Registration Codes allows existing customers to pay a lower cost to upgrade. Upgrade Registration Codes can only install over existing Hoster installations. Full Hoster Registration Codes can install on new computers, not requiring a prior version already be installed. Both require Internet connection to install, but not to run.
    5. NEW A CPU Name must be entered when installing Hoster. This is sent up to MTU.com and saved in your Registration Record. If you need to communicate with MTU staff about this computer, you can now reference this name. All MTU new software releases use this same name. The Tools menu View Registration Code dialog shows the assigned name.