I use Video Hoster by MTU to run my karaoke show. It is a fantastic way to keep the show going without the audience seeing an interruption while you add new singers and songs, add items to the scrolling marquee, and more behind the scenes. I’ve used karaoke machines in the past, but with those, the host is tied to the machine the entire night, switching discs every time a new singer comes up. Even if you have a fancy system with a multi-disc changer, you can’t leave it for too long at a time. With Video Hoster, you can queue up dozens of songs (or more) and run off to the restroom, have a chat with a friend, or enjoy yourself in other ways. The marquee at the bottom tells the singers who is up next and who the singers following are – it even gives the approximate times each performer will start.

Video Hoster is what you want to run a seamless karaoke show. It will also let you rip CD+G discs to your hard drive in MP3-G format and it can create song books for you in RTF format.

I use MTU’s Microstudio product to make backup copies of my CD+G discs. I rarely, if ever, use my original discs. The more you use them, the more chance they are going to get scratched, lost, or otherwise damaged. I keep my originals in a safe place, and run karaoke shows from the copies. Of course, now I don’t even use the copies anymore since I imported all of my CD+G discs into digital format to run in Video Hoster.