Plarpebu, plays mp3, ogg, midi, kar, mp3+cdg files on any architecture (Windows, Linux, Mac)

22/01/07 New release out ! Check on the sourceforge site

Thanks to Kevin Schmidt, a new release is out, with several improvements, including:

• Support for zipped karaoke files,
• Firefox-like quicksearch feature for the playlist. Just type parts of the song name and the playlist will scroll + highlight the songs you're looking for!
• Optional line numbers in playlist,
• Optional "Play one song at a time" mode,
• Fixed the album grabber plugin that stopped working recently,
• Fixed skins management, more parts of the ui are skinned, skins load faster, many more skins added...
• Upgrade many libs used by Plarpebu : use BasicPlayer? 3.0 now, etc.
• Lots of code refactor including cleaner separation of plugin and core code,

You can get the source distrib on the sourceforge site : http://sourceforge.net/projects/plarpebu/

Installers will follow very soon...

Introduction

Plaberpu is java clone of winamp, that comes with an open architecture based on plugins. Plugins for midi karaoke support and mp3+cdg karaoke support are included. Nice point : Plaperbu is the only free karaoke player that supports the two most popular karaoke formats (.kar and mp3+cdg), and the only one that runs under Linux and Mac OS X. It should also work under Mac OS 9 and Solaris but has not been tested on these systems.

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Help us ...

Screenshots and doc

You want to see Plarpebu in action ? Why don't you go to the ScreenshotsPage ?

Authors

The player has been written by MichelBuffa and two of his students : Jean-Michel Arnaud and Michel Pepino. We all started from the jlGui2.0 player from the great javazoom team (http://www.javazoom.net) and from some mp3+cdg karaoke plugins written by M.Buffa. Plaerpebu uses a plugin API written by RichardGrin, and lies on many APIs from the javazoom team and the open source community. Plarpebu also uses the SkinLF package and some gui components (JFontChoser, JDirChoser) from www.l2fprod.com. The midi karaoke plugin is based on a code by Taras Gerchenko that has been slighty enhanced and modified by MichelBuffa. The album grabber plugins uses some code from the album grabber 0.77 from http://bluedragontavern.dyndns.org/albumgrabber/. Other plugins are from the Plarpebu team.

Last version

Last version is beta 20 (very stable). Check my devlog (in french) if you are really curious about WIP!

WORK IN PROGRESS : two new karaoke plugins are under development, that will use Open GL (through the jogl API). Smooth vertical scrolling at 60 frames/s, nice special FX, hmmm... seems promising... wait a few weeks before a public release...

Download installers

• The project is now on sourceforge. Go get the last installer and sources from http://sourceforge.net/projects/plarpebu/

You can download last versions of the player from this page. If you are not sure what version to get, get the version that comes "with a VM". In that case the java runtime environment will be installed on your system with the player. If you prefer to try an installer "without a VM", check that you have Java Runtime Environment version 1.4.2 at least, installed on your system.

MAC OS X : READ THIS !

• • If you use the installer, sometimes, clicking on the icon does not launch the player. Try to edit the file install dir/plarpebu beta xx.app/Info.list, at the end there is something like jvm version... with "1.3*", if you upgraded java to 1.4.*, you need to change "1.3*" to "1.4*"
  • Fullscreen mode does not work on Mac OS X. Do not double click on the lyrics windows for the moment.

Install new fonts on your system for better display

FOR BETTER LOOKING : install the fonts provided in the install_dir/fonts_to_install on your OS. This will give a better look to the clock and to the midi lyrics display (with default values).

Under Linux, go to install_dir/jre/lib, and append to the font.properties file the following line :

appendedfontpath=install_dir/fonts_you_can_install

Then in the font chosers, you should see all the new fonts you just installed.

Download source

• The project is now on sourceforge. Go get the last installer and sources from http://sourceforge.net/projects/plarpebu/

You need a jdk >= 1.4.2 and ant >= 1.6 in order to compile parpebu. Just do "ant make" to compile, "ant archive" to make the jars for the plugins and the player, then "ant run" or "java -jar player.jar" in order to run the player. Some parts of the code are rather experimental...

• PlarpebuBeta_src.zip (2.8 Mo): Sources do not come with demo files... go get some mp3, ogg, kar, mid or mp3+cdg files !

Features (Sell also the screenshot page)

• Skinnable through the skinLF API (Gnome, KDE linux themes can be used, see the SkinLF web site for getting more skins)
• Plays mp3, ogg, midi, au, wav, kar, mp3+cdg formats.
• The first player that can play both midi karaoke files and mp3 + cdg karaoke files under Linux and Mac OS.
• Comes with a nice playlist with all common options : drag'n'drop from desktop (Mac, Windows, Linux/Gnome, not yet KDE -sorry-), add dir, add dir recursive, add files, load/save playlist, preferences for font and color of displayed text, etc...
• Playlist manager, allows you to fill the regular playlist from different locations on your hard disk or network. You can bookmark the different locations where you have your music files; when you run the player again, you can find back all your favorite folders. Drag'n'drop within the playlist manager... try it and you'll love it !
• Equalizer 32 bands,
• Nice midi karaoke display (.kar and .mid files), with anti-aliased shadowed fonts, nice gradiant or image background... Uses an exclusive "animated ribbon" that helps you to know when singing will start within a song. Supports exotic languages like russian, chinese, japanese, Thaï etc... See screenshot page.
• MP3 + cdg support with several options (try the popup menu). Hardware accelerated full screen mode supported experimentally (works great under windows, locks on mac, works under some linux like Red Hat 9). Windowed mode (resizable) works on any system.
• Remember windows locations, size, etc... many options are remembered every time you run the player.
• Open architecture : everything is a plugin in this player. A pluginSDK will be available with the source release.
• An Album Grabber plugin is shipped with the player, in the non_installed_plugins dir. Just copy the albumgrabber.jar file into the plugins dir and run the plkayer again : you'll have a new menu entry in the plugins menu. This plugin will try to find the album cover that matches the song that you are playing. Works with tagged mp3 or ogg files. Works also with all midi kar files.

Old versions of this page

You can go to the old version of this page, that presented some karaoke players written in java by MichelBuffa on this page.