CAVS Graphics Editor
Version 1.0.1.3
July, 2012
CAVS Graphics Editor Program enables editing of graphic files commonly known as CDG, MCG, and NCG. The program repairs, replaces, and removes any broken or unwanted blocks or words in the graphic files. The program does so without disturbing the embedded synchronization between the graphic files and the music.
We have selected the name “CAVS Graphics Editor” over others such as “CDG Nanny”, “Cuss Buster”, etc. As the other names suggest, we wish for the concerned customers of karaoke to be able to repair, replace or remove broken or unwanted words and blocks in the graphic files for better karaoke enjoyment.
Go to Tools > Settingsa as shown below.
The following pop-up window will appear.
Place the check marks on the type of graphic files (.cdg, .ncg, .mcg, .zip) that you would like to edit.
Place a check mark on “Search All Subdirectories” if you wish to see the graphics files in all subfolders.
Place a check mark on “AutoSave” if you wish to have the graphic files that you edited saved automatically when opening a new file. To use this option, we recommend that you make a copy of graphic files before starting the program to edit.
Next, the match criteria for automatic scanning of a graphic file can be set. The filters would hold the designs and shapes that you are looking for, and the method to store a design or shape in a filter is described in Section 3.1 of this Manual. The default values for the Pixel and Block match criteria are 50% and 50%. Higher percentages mean more stringent search criteria and less matching results.
Press OK to return to the main screen.
Go to File > Open as shown below.
The following pop-up window will appear. Select a graphic file that you wish to edit.
Press Open and the selected file will open in the main display.
You can also open a folder by pressing the Path button as shown below.
The following window will pop up. Select a folder and press OK.
The graphic files in the folder (along with the graphic files in the subfolders if the option for “Search All Subdirectories” is checked) will appear under Current Path. Select a file by double click and the graphic file will appear in the main display.
The graphic file shown in the main display can move in time forward (>, >>) or backward (<, <<). You can also fine-tune the time line by pressing the (-, +) buttons under the main display, next to the time indicator.
For example, by pressing the + button, we move forward in time from 00:02:456 to 00:02:073 and obtained the full picture of CAVS logo as shown below.
Next, you can mark any part of the screen by simple click and drag. That is, left click and drag over an area, and then let go the left click. For example, we mark the CAVS logo as shown below.
Next, right click on the screen for a menu of Commands.
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From the menu, select Delete to delete the marked block (area) which will be removed as below.
Press Control-Z to Undo any command.
If you do not mark any block in the main display and right-click, the entire screen becomes marked and subject to the commands.
You can also replace the marked block with a newly created block. To create a block first, press the Create button as shown below. "Create a Block” window will appear.
The new block will be created in two colors containing 3 text lines. There is no limit on the length of the text lines, but note that the new block has to fit into the space of the old block being deleted. This means that the available space is limited and longer the text lines, smaller the fonts will be in the new block.
Here as an example, we put in the 3 text lines as follows:
CAVS USA Inc
562-777-1850
www.cavsusa.com
Click OK. You can see the newly created block in the New Block section as below.
Next we again mark a block on the main screen as before and right click for the menu of commands.
This time we select the command “Replace with New Block”. As shown below, the new block has replaced the marked block in the graphic file.
Press Save under the New Block to save the newly created block and press Load to open an existing block.
2.4. Create a block with Autofill
New block can be created using Autofill option that will insert the title and artist information of the current graphic file into the new block automatically. Thus when a new graphic file is opened, a new block will also be created accordingly.
This option is useful when you are editing many graphic files, and they contain information such as title and artist name in their file names or in a text file.
Press “Create” button for the “Create a Block” window. Then place a check mark on “Autofill Title and Artist” option. "Autofill Naming” window will appear as shown below.
In the “Autofill Naming” window, the option is set by default for File Naming with “-“ as the delimiter and (Album)-(Track)-(Artist)-(Title) as the sequence of fields in the graphic file names.
If File Naming is a correct choice for you, that is, if the graphic files have the file names according to their title, artist name, etc., make appropriate changes for the delimiter and the sequence of fields. Click OK.
If the title and artist information is stored in another text file, rather than in the file names, place a check mark on “Pull from txt in Folder” as shown below.
The following pop-up window will appear to select a text (txt) file in the same folder as the graphic files.
Select the text file that has the title and artist information of the graphic files. Click Open, OK, and OK.
Note that the text file with the title and artist information must be of the following format.
·
The first field is the file name followed by the pipe "|" sign.
The pipe "|" sign is inserted by typing Shift-\.
· The second field is the title followed by another pipe "|" sign.
· The third field is the artist name followed by Enter for the next line.
· When saving the song list, be sure to save it as a text (txt) file.
Please note that this text file is automatically generated in CAVS JB-199, CAVS Karaoke Laptop, Touch Screen PC, and PlayCDG KJ Deluxe 64 LT players.
Below is a picture of CAVS Graphics Editor editing the NCG files of JB-199 player using Autofill option. The text file in a subfolder JB001000 loads the title and artist information of each song automatically into the new block whenever the song's NCG file is selected.
A word in lyrics is different from a title or logo in the sense that the word will be written twice, first time to display as lyrics and then second time for synchronization using a different color. The second time writing is commonly called “coloring”. Repairing a word in lyrics thus involves the repairing of the word in the first time writing and then repairing of the word in the coloring. Of course if the repairing of a word is only needed in the coloring, you only need to follow the instruction in the second half of this section.
We consider a word with broken or missing pixels in lyrics as shown below. A letter “e” is missing in the word “are” of the 2nd line.
Most likely the letter “e” (or more accurately the command to write the letter “e”) was misread from the extraction source such as a disc. You may wonder then what was read instead of “e”. For the purpose of our work, we don’t care.
To recover the letter “e”, move the Time by pressing + / - buttons to the closest point of when the letter “e” would have been written. In our sample, that is likely to be after the letters “ar” (that are previous to “e”) are written and before the word “gone” (that are after the letter “e”) is written. The time found in our case is 00:24:603 as shown below.
Next, in order to insert “e” into lyrics, Double Click on the desired spot and the following “Edit Block” window will appear.
Note that the spot selected is in fact a block of 6 x 12 pixels which is a unit covered by each graphic command.
For the “Edit Block” window, there are three sections.
· Layers: List of commands that contribute to the final display of the spot. Each command is considered a layer as it covers the block of 6 x 12 pixels. Each layer is noted together with its time of execution.
· Current Layer: Show the graphical layout of a marked layer/command on the 6 x 12 table.
· Preview: Real time preview of the final display of the spot with the changes. The area within the black lines denote the spot consisting of 6 x 12 pixels
In our example, it shows that there is only one layer, Layer 1, with its time of 00:24:140. It is a simple command to write the blue background as shown in the Current Layer and Preview. This means that the spot onto which we want to write “e” was written as blue background at the time 00:24:140 and there is no other command afterwards. This leaves us with only option to insert a command at the time 00:24:603 since the editing the Layer 1 would write the letter “e” much sooner that we wish.
So, press the Insert button and Layer 2 will be created as shown below. Note that for each Insert, this program CAVS Graphics Editor automatically searches for an empty command slot nearest to the time 00:24:603 in order to input the new command without disturbing the synchronization between the graphics and music. In our example, the empty slot was found at the time 00:24:603 as shown in the picture. If there is no empty slot to be found, the program will issue a message stating so.
Next we draw in the graphic detail of “e” into the Layer 2 using the Current Layer table.
In the Current Layer of the Layer 2, we can turn On (black) or Off (white) each pixel in the table to make “e”. Also we can click on the Off Color and On Color to select from 16 available colors. Note that the task of selecting colors can be difficult as the final color shown in the Preview depends on the combined effect of all layers. We can only suggest some practice to find your own best ways.
Press OK to complete you change, or Cancel to return. If you pressed OK but wish to undo your work, go to Edit and select Undo as shown below, or press Control+Z.
We continue to insert “e” by double click on the next block below. We find that this block has five existing layers at times up to 00:24:153 which is too early for our purpose. Insert a layer as before, select the colors, draw the pixels in the Current Layer, and press OK. Note that the Layer 6 is at the time 00:24:606.
Note that after pressing OK, the main display may not show the changes made as shown below. The left bottom side of “e” which we just made is not showing on the display.
This is because the new layer was inserted into an empty slot at the time of 00:24:606. Simply press + to go forward in time to see the change made. At time 00:24:653, the change is shown as below.
Returning to the time 00:24:603, we continue this process of inserting “e” onto the two more blocks on the right.
Next, note that in our example the lyrics have black outliners to make them look more presentable. Since each layer can only insert two colors, this outliner which is of a third color will require an additional layer. So we go back to each block of “e” to insert another layer, add outliner, and press Ok. For the first block, as shown below, note that the new layer is inserted at the time 00:24:616 and the On color is set to Black.
We continue to the block below to insert the outliner. However we are faced with the following message that there are no more empty slots nearby.
Press OK to close the message and press Cancel to close the Edit Block window.
Next, press + in the main display to go forward in time and at each step, double click on the block and try to insert. After a few steps in time, we find success at the time 00:24:753.
Insert a layer, select the On color to be black, draw the outliner, and press OK. Continue to the blocks on the right.
This completes the work of inserting “e”. However our work is not done yet as we need to further check the coloring of “e”. Move forward in time to the point where the coloring has just gone over “e”, which in our example is 00:30:990. You can see as below that the coloring has two pixels that are not correct.
Double click on the block containing each of the two pixels, and correct them. In our example, we need only to turn On (or Off) the problematic pixels in the Current Layer as shown below.
We are now almost done with only one step left for checking the successful erasing of “e”. This is when the lyrics “e” is erased to the blue background in preparation for the next lyric lines.
Moving forward to the time 00:36:193, we see that the bottom part of “e” is not erased completely.
Double click on the remaining piece of “e” and we find that there are 10 layers in the block. It is of good practice to examine the layers. Note that Layers 6 and 7 are the commands we inserted previously to create “e”. Layer 8 is the coloring of “e”. Layers 9 and 10 are the mistaken attempts to erase “e” that is resulting in the segment remaining.
We first go to Layer 9 and change one pixel from On to Off as shown below.
Press OK. Then in Layer 10, we changed the On Color and a pixel as shown below.
Press OK. We repeat the same process on the second half of the segment remaining to erase completely.
That completes the inserting of “e” in lyrics.
To delete a word in lyrics, it must be removed twice, first time from the lyrics and second time from the coloring. Let’s start with a main display of lyrics as shown below. Here we will remove the word “wanna” from the screen.
Frist, we mark the word “wanna”. However, let’s assume that we marked the word with much clumsiness as shown below.
We can certainly try to mark the word “wanna” again. Or we can use Shift-Left Click on each pixel to reverse the selection one pixel at a time to refine our marking which will result in the following.
Next, right click on the screen and select Delete to remove the word.
The word “wanna” will be removed from the screen as below.
Next go forward in time by pressing the > or + button and you will see as below the coloring of the word “wanna” which we just deleted.
Again mark the word “wanna” and delete as shown below.
Now the word “wanna” has been deleted twice and you may feel that our task is done. But we must now continue forward in time to check for any error in the graphic file. If none are found, then we are done. In our example, by going forward, we find an error as below.
When such error is found, use the - or + button to move forward and backward to isolate the pixels causing the error. Moving back in time, we find the cause of error as below.
Next mark the error pixels and delete.
The following screen shows a successful removal of the pixels.
We continue to check by going forward and backward in time and found no other errors. This completes the removal of a word in lyrics
To scan a graphic file to find a design or shape, we must first create a filter containing the design or the shape. This is simply done by marking a design or shape already in a graphic file and saving it as a filter.
As shown below, mark a block and right-click.
Select “Add to Filters” and the following window will appear.
Input a name and click OK. The marked block will be saved as a filter and load into Filters display.
The above procedure can be repeated until all filters are created and saved. Filters that already exist can also be loaded using the Load button. The commands Remove and Delete are self-explanatory.
To view a filter which is in the Filters display, double click on the filter. The following “Preview Filter” window will appear.
You can see what is captured in the filter
Next open a new graphic file and press Scan. As shown below, the progress of the scan will be displayed.
When the scan is complete, blocks that are found matching the filters will be shown in the Blocks Found display. Note that the criteria for matching, i.e. the Pixel and Block matching percentages, are set in the Settings.
Double click on any block found. It will place a check mark on the block and show the block in the context of the graphic file in the main display.
Press Replace to replace the block with a new block or Delete to remove. Press Undo to reverse the action.
When done, it is important to press Scan again to find more possible matches in the graphic file. Repeat the steps above until there are no more matches found in the graphic file.
END