• Allow user to select a "charset" from the "Charset" submenu under the "Edit" option in the Main Menu, so that Non-English characters can be entered and displayed in the editing area.

• A "Break Line" function is implemented for user to break a lyrics line automatically. Words and syllables separated by spaces and hyphens are evenly distributed with "Word Time Tags <mm:ss.xx>" between the current line and the next line.

• Time tag is allowed to be inserted in the middle of the current line and the next line with interval from 0.2 - 1.0 second.

• Lyrics lines will advance atomatically if any of the last 3 lines at the bottom of the "Lyrics Editor" is clicked during synchronization under "Time Editing Mode".

• Allow the [Down Arrow] key to be used instead of the mouse for auto-synchronization under "Time Editing Mode".

• 4 more functions are added under the "Edit" option of the Main Menu for the automation of lyrics display beautification. They are "Beautify Lyrics Display", "Undo Beautification", "Create / Maximize Leading Time" and "Clear Lyrics Screen":

  • "Beautify Lyrics Display" is a very powerful function combining all the main processes of lyrics display beautification including:

    1. Remove all the empty lines before the first lyrics line and after the last lyrics line.

    2. Remove all the empty spaces at the end of the last word of each lyrics line.

    3. Add an empty "Word Time Tag", if there is none, e.g.
       
       [00:10.50]first word <00:12.50>second word ... <00:13:50>last word<00:14.50>
       
       to the end of each lyrics line to signal A2 Player when the last word ends. The time given to the "Word Time Tag" is somewhere in the middle between the time of the previous time tag and the time of the next time tag, and the maximum time difference with the previous time tag is 1 second.

    4. If the time difference between two lyrics lines is long enough, create a "Leading Time (Leading Blank)", if there is none, e.g.
       
       [00:10.00]<00:10.50>first word <00:12.50>second word ...
       
       at the beginning of each lyrics line, so that lyrics line can be changed from "Non-focused Line" color to "Focused Line" color earlier to give a signal to the singer to prepare for singing. The "leading time", from 0.2 to 0.5 second, will be started at least 0.2 second after the last word of the previous lyrics line is finished. If "Leading Time" already exists in a lyrics line, A2 Player will maximize the "leading time" for that line.

    5. For "Instrumental Section", lyrics displayed on the screen will be cleared about 0.7 - 1.5 seconds after the "Vocal Section" is finished, and the next lyrics line will be shown in "Non-focused Line" color, about 1 - 2 seconds before the time of the first word of that lyrics line is reached.

    6. The first lyrics line will be shown in "Non-focused Line" color, about 0.8 - 2.0 seconds before the time of the first word is reached.

    7. The last lyrics line will be cleared from the screen 1.5 seconds after it is finished.

    Note: with the automation of lyrics display beautification, it may still be necessary to adjust the time in the Time Tags or add empty line between lyrics lines for smoother and better lyrics display.

  • "Undo Beautification" is a function to restore all the lyrics before the operation of "Beautify Lyrics Display".

  • "Create / Maximize Leading Time" is a function separated out from "Beautify Lyrics Display" to create or maximize "Leading Time" only.

  • "Clear Lyrics Screen" is a function to clear lyrics shown on the screen about 0.7 - 1.5 seconds after the selected lyrics line is finished. If there is a next lyrics line, it will be shown in "Non-focused Line" color, about 1 - 2 seconds before the time of the first word is reached.

• With all these new features, a new tutorial is written to teach user how to produce professional Enhanced LRC lyrics file.

• Fully support professional MP3 Karaoke files produced by Great-Art (a well-known European Karaoke production company).

• Allow user to control how the media title is displayed in A2 Theatre (Karaoke Emulator) with settings such as color, outline and display style (hidden, single line, multi-line with tag information). All settings can be changed through the "Title" page of "Lyrics Options", and can be saved for each media file in the playlist.

• Allow user to control the "Leading width" of Focused-word display in the "General" page of "Lyrics Options" when "Progress rate" is applied. "Leading width" of Focused-word display is the width of Focused-word to be filled immediately with the "Focused Word" color when the time to display the Focused-word is reached. This parameter can be used to signal the singer to sing the Focused-word if it is wide enough to be seen. If the "Leading width" is set too wide (say 250), it may have the same effect as NOT applying "Progress rate". The default value is 4 pixels on a 800 x 600 screen, and user may have to increase this value for screen of higher resolution for better lyrics display.

• Allow user to select a "charset" from the "Charset" list in the "Media Tag Editor", so that Non-English characters can be entered and displayed in the editing area.

• A few minor bugs in lyrics display, media title display and CD-Ripper are fixed.

• Support movie subtitle format (*.srt). SRT file can be manipulated as LRC file in A2 Media Player and will be translated to LRC format when it is "played" by attaching it to a video media file as Lyrics, or when it is loaded into the Lyrics Editor.

• Support real-time auto-search of LRC lyrics file from the Internet for CD/MP3/OGG/WMA/Wave audio files in the playlist.

• Support double outline lyrics display.

• Audio Effect - Vocal Removal - Band Filter bug in V2.30 fixed.

• Support lyrics and graphics overlay on video (DVD, VCD, MPG, AVI) in real time without using any other hardware equipments except your computer and A2 Media Player Pro. This means that you can create your own karaoke video in real time by attaching video and lyrics files to an audio file or by attaching audio and lyrics files to a video file.

• Support video screen controls for aspect ratio, brightness, contrast, hue, saturation, sharpness and zooming.

• Support DVD (Digital Video Disc) as video media file. DVD tracks (*.vob) can be manipulated as other video media files in the playlist.

• Support Shock Wave Flash (*.swf) as video media file. SWF files can be manipulated as other video media files in the playlist.

• Support Ogg Vorbis (*.ogg) as audio media file. OGG files can be manipulated as other audio media files in the playlist.

• Support Ogg and ID3v2 tag reading and editing. An advanced "Media Tag Editor" is included. Fields in the old ID3 tag editor will be allowed to have length more than 30 chars and can also be used for Ogg tag editing.

• Allows lyrics to be embedded into Ogg and ID3v2 tag. Old lyrics embedding formats will be converted automatically when lyrics or media tag info is updated.

• A new, accurate and fine-tune 18-bands equalizer is implemented. The new equalizer can be applied to all audio media files including Audio CD, MP3, Ogg, WMA and Wave.

• Support Audio CD digital (software) playback (requires fast data-extraction CD-Rom). Equalizer, Mixer, sound and visual effects can now be applied to Audio CD tracks.

• Support both CDMI and Freedb Audio CD playlist.

• A powerful "CDMI CD-Ripper & Karaoke File Converter" is included. It provides fast conversion from CD tracks to MP3/Ogg/Wave, MP3/Ogg to Wave or Wave to MP3/Ogg. Partial conversion is also allowed. Lyrics can be embedded automatically if available.

• Timing in lyrics synchronisation is standardized, so that, without any modification, the same lyrics file can now be used for audio CD tracks (under digital playback mode) and other audio media files such as MP3, Ogg and Wave if they are created using "CDMI CD-Ripper".

• Resized Visual Effects are allowed to be displayed in A2 Theatre (Karaoke Emulator), so that lyrics can now be displayed under it.

• Sound cards bugs, playlist drag & drop bugs, Windows XP display bugs and some other bugs fixed.

Recommended : Windows 98/ME/2000/XP (PII, PIII, AMD) 300MHz+, 64MB+ of Ram, 3D Sound Card, Video Display Card with 8MB Ram.

1. Download and execute the self-extracting archive. The installation program creates a directory for A2 Media Player, copies all of the files to that directory, creates a Program Group named as A2 Media Player, creates a shortcut on your desktop (optional), installs the necessary files, and sets A2 (optional) as the default player for playback of the supported media file types.

2. If you have older versions of A2 installed in your system, simply let the installation overwrites files to your existing folder.

3. If you have chosen to set A2 as default player (by default) during installation, please restart Windows for this to take effect.