Patent Application
20080276792
Karaoke, an activity in which people sing along with recorded music, has enjoyed tremendous popularity. Advanced features are particularly attractive to the Karaoke market.
For a detailed description of exemplary embodiments of the invention, reference will now be made to the accompanying drawings in which:
Certain terms are used throughout the following description and claims to refer to particular system components. As one skilled in the art will appreciate, computer companies may refer to a component by different names. This document does not intend to distinguish between components that differ in name but not function. In the following discussion and in the claims, the terms “including” and “comprising” are used in an open-ended fashion, and thus should be interpreted to mean “including, but not limited to . . . .” Also, the term “couple” or “couples” is intended to mean either an indirect, direct, optical or wireless electrical connection. Thus, if a first device couples to a second device, that connection may be through a direct electrical connection, through an indirect electrical connection via other devices and connections, through an optical electrical connection, or through a wireless electrical connection.
The camera 24 is a video camera in accordance with various embodiments. The camera 24 may be provided in a housing of the display 18 such that a user seated in front of the system 10 is in view of the camera 24. A video feed from the camera 24 is displayed on display 18. As such, the user can view him or herself in front of the system 10.
The code 14 comprises a Karaoke application that enables a user to sing along with music played through speaker 20. In accordance with various embodiments, the code 14 enables a user to select a song to be played through speaker 20. The song may be a song stored in CRM 12 or downloaded from a network. The code 14 also causes lyrics associated with the song to be shown on display 18 while a vide feed from the camera 24 is being displayed.
In at least some embodiments, the music file being played through speaker 20 comprises audio content and text content (i.e., the lyrics). Suitable file formats for such music files comprise the Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) Karaoke (.KAR) file format and the MPEG-1 Audio Layer-3 (MP3)+text (.LRC) file format.
In various embodiments, the code 14 records the displayed video feed, without the lyrics, as well as the audio detected by the microphone 22 while the video feed is being displayed. The recording may comprise storing digital data representative of the audio and video in the CRM 12 in the form of, for example, a file. The code 14 enables a user to select the recording to be played back at a later time as desired. In some embodiments, only the audio is recorded while in other embodiments only the video is recorded.
In some embodiments, a pre-recorded video file, photograph, or slideshow can be displayed on display 18 instead of a live video feed from the camera 24. In such embodiments, the lyrics are superimposed on such a video file, photograph, or slideshow. A slideshow in this regard may comprise only still photographs or a combination of still photographs and video. Slide shows may contain content that is stored locally on system 10 or streamed from a remote entity across a network (e.g., the Internet).
The above discussion is meant to be illustrative of the principles and various embodiments of the present invention. Numerous variations and modifications will become apparent to those skilled in the art once the above disclosure is fully appreciated. It is intended that the following claims be interpreted to embrace all such variations and modifications.
