JP3085615B2 - Karaoke equipment - Google Patents

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a karaoke apparatus, and more particularly to a karaoke apparatus suitable for a system for playing a karaoke accompaniment by driving a tone synthesizer as a sound source apparatus based on performance information.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art In recent years, accompaniment music excluding singing parts of singing songs such as popular songs has been used. Karaoke devices are widely used. In many karaoke apparatuses, the singing voice is mixed with karaoke through a microphone (hereinafter, referred to as a “microphone”) by adding a reverberation effect or the like, so that the singing can be enjoyed as being richer. For example, many karaoke apparatuses using an optical disk or the like display not only the replay performance of the accompaniment music, but also the display apparatus to display the lyric information and the appropriate video information. The karaoke apparatus used for enjoying such karaoke also has various types of accompaniment music sources, how to provide lyric information, how to set an environment according to the tune, etc., as the environment and conditions for enjoying karaoke diversify. Is also diversifying.

In recent years, a musical sound synthesizer used for electronic musical instruments, computer music, and the like, that is, a synthesizer is used as a sound source device, and such a sound source device is driven by performance information of accompaniment music, and the accompaniment music is reproduced. A karaoke apparatus of a type in which a display corresponding to the accompaniment music is displayed in characters by driving a display with the lyrics information together with the performance information is being developed. Unlike the conventional karaoke apparatus, the karaoke apparatus of this type has a relatively small data amount of information because the performance information is not audio information based on analog voice but information similar to a musical score (score). It is also easy to handle performance information transmission and copying.

[0004]

In a conventional karaoke apparatus, lyrics displayed on a display together with image information such as video images are merely superimposed on a display image based on the image information and displayed. Was. For this reason, if the background image has a similar color to the character string of the lyrics, the lyrics become unsightly. In view of this, conventionally, there has been devised a method of forming a border around each character of the character string of the lyrics to be superimposed in a color that is clearly different from the display character so that the displayed character string is easy to see.

[0005] However, in order to display such a trimmed character, a character font having a trimming is prepared in advance, and the trimming portion and the character inner portion are displayed in different colors using the trimming font. The way to display was taken. The method of preparing a trimming font in advance requires a large-capacity memory as a memory for storing the trimming font. For this reason, the above-described synthesizer is not suitable for a karaoke apparatus which is driven by accompaniment music performance information by using the synthesizer as a sound source apparatus and uses lyrics information stored separately from a background image.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION The present invention has been made in view of the above circumstances, and superimposes a character string of lyrics as a trimming font on image information using ordinary simple character fonts and easily and with simple processing. It is an object of the present invention to provide a karaoke device capable of displaying.

[0007]

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION A karaoke apparatus according to the present invention is capable of determining performance information and its execution timing.
The first track information including the interval information, the lyrics information and the
The second track including the time information defining the display timing
Storage means for storing music data and a click information, storage
From the first track information of the music data stored in the means.
The performance information is sequenced according to the time information included in the
To the song data stored in the storage means.
According to the time information included in the second track information,
Control means for sequentially reading the lyrics information from the memory means, accompaniment music generation means for generating accompaniment music for the singing song based on the performance information read from the storage means, and lyrics read from the storage means. an image creation means for generating an image of the lyrics text of a song唱曲based on the information, and an image synthesizing means for superimposing text lyrics generated by the image forming means on the background image, in the image synthesizing means A display device for displaying an image in which the background image and the character string of the lyrics are combined , wherein the image creating means stores predetermined character font data, and forms characters forming the character string of the lyrics based on the lyrics information. A font generating means for generating a font, and a character font generated by the character font generating means being shifted by a predetermined number of dots in a plurality of directions with respect to a designated character display position. A first character display unit for multiplexing display in a predetermined display color while displaying a character font generated by the character font generation unit in a character display position designated by a display color different from the predetermined display color. Character display means
And characterized in that:

[0008]

In the karaoke apparatus according to the present invention, character font data of the character string of the lyrics is generated at least one character at a time, and a plurality of characters are displayed on the display in a first display color from a predetermined character display position by the character font data. A background is displayed by shifting the image by a predetermined small amount in the direction and multiplexing the image, and displaying the character at the predetermined character display position on the display in a second display color different from the first display color by the character font data. Since the character string of the lyrics is superimposed on the image and displayed on the display, the character string of the lyrics can be superimposed and displayed on the image information as a trimming font using a normal character font with easy and simple processing. Become.

[0009]

Embodiments of the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings. FIG. 1 schematically shows a configuration of a karaoke apparatus according to one embodiment of the present invention. In this embodiment, a trimming font is formed in real time from a normal character font, and a character string of lyrics is displayed on a display.

The karaoke apparatus shown in FIG. 1 has a CPU (central processing unit) 11, a ROM (read only memory) 12,
AM (read / write memory) 13, operation panel 14, tone synthesizer 15, microphone 16, mixer 17, speaker 1
8, a computer graphics device (hereinafter, referred to as an "image creation device") 19, and an optical disc playback device (hereinafter, referred to as an "image creation device").
20, referred to as an “LD reproducing device”), an image synthesizing device 21,
Display device (CRT) 22, hard disk device (HDD) 23, CD-ROM playback device (CD-RO)
M) 24, a floppy disk drive (FDD) 25, and a modem 26. Here, a modem 26 is used as a network interface. The CPU 11, the ROM 12, the RAM 13, the operation panel 14, the tone synthesizer 15, the image creating device 19, the LD reproducing device 20, the hard disk device 23, the floppy disk device 25, and the modem 26 are connected to a common bus BL.

The CPU 11 controls and manages the operation of the entire karaoke apparatus. The ROM 12 stores an operation program including a performance control program and the like. The performance control program is a program for performing karaoke. The RAM 13 is a memory used when the CPU 11 controls and manages the operation of the karaoke apparatus. The operation program in the ROM 12 is loaded into the RAM 13 under the control of the CPU 11 when the power of the karaoke apparatus is turned on. The operation panel 14 includes various operation units including switches, knobs, and the like for operating the karaoke apparatus. The musical sound synthesizer 15 is a so-called music synthesizer that is driven by accompaniment performance information to generate musical sound signals of accompaniment music, and includes a sound source section such as a MIDI sound source and a control section for controlling the same.

The microphone 16 is used to input a voice of a singer who sings using the karaoke apparatus. The mixer 17 is connected to the output of the tone synthesizer 15 and the microphone 1.
6 and the output of FIG. An echo device or a reverb device for adding a reverberation component to the output of the microphone 16 is attached to the mixer 17 as necessary. The speaker 18 is driven by the output of the mixer 17 in which the accompaniment music from the musical sound synthesizer 15 and the sound from the microphone 16 are mixed, and emits accompaniment music and singing voice.

The image forming apparatus 19 processes the character information such as lyrics supplied with the accompaniment performance information and the drawing information such as still images and moving images to generate image signals for display. The image forming apparatus 19 also performs a process of converting the character string of the lyrics into a trimming character. The LD playback device 20 functions when playing a karaoke tune designated to use the video information recorded on the optical disc, and synchronizes with the accompaniment performance information by drawing information to synchronize a predetermined frame of a predetermined disc. , Or video information composed of a moving image starting from a predetermined frame. For this reason, the LD playback device 20
Preferably has an optical disc autochanger function. The image synthesizing device 21 includes the image creating device 19
And the output of the LD playback device 20 are combined to generate a combined video signal. The display device 22 displays the combined video signal combined by the image combining device 21.

The hard disk device 23 stores song data of the karaoke song including song title, singer name, release date, keyword, performance information, drawing information, bar line information, lyrics information and the like. In accordance with the music selection operation via the operation panel 14, the CPU 11 loads music data on the selected music to the RAM 13 by the CPU 11. Then, C
Sequentially read from the RAM 13 under the control of the PU 11,
The music data including the accompaniment music data and the lyric data is transmitted to the above-described musical sound synthesizing device 15 and the image creating device 19, and is used for karaoke performance. The CD-ROM playback device 24 is used to read music data from a CD-ROM, which is a music data recording medium, and download it to the hard disk device 23.

The floppy disk device 25 is provided for recording and reproducing music data. The floppy disk device 25 writes music data in the hard disk device 23 to a floppy disk and reads music data from the floppy disk. To the hard disk drive 23. This floppy disk is used for exchanging music data between devices. The modem 26 is connected to another device or a host system via a communication line, and is used for transmitting / receiving data such as music data or performance data via the communication line.

In the karaoke apparatus shown in FIG. 1, a CD-RO
While the music data is downloaded from the CD-ROM to the hard disk drive 23 by the M playback device 24,
The necessary optical disk is set in the LD playback device 20. The music data to be downloaded to the hard disk device 23 can be provided from a floppy disk by the floppy disk device 25 or provided from a communication line by the modem 26. When the power of the karaoke apparatus shown in FIG. 1 is turned on, the operation program written in the ROM 12 is loaded into the RAM 13 and the operation is started. By operating the operation panel 14, the CPU 1
1 operates in accordance with the operation program of the RAM 13 to execute various functions, for example, the above-mentioned function of playing music data. The above-mentioned download to the hard disk drive 23 is also executed under the control of the CPU 11 by operating the operation panel 14 while the power is on.

When a music piece is designated by operating the operation panel 14, music data of the designated music piece is read out from the hard disk device 23, loaded into the RAM 13, and
Karaoke performance is started according to the music data. At the time of performing a karaoke, musical sound information is sequentially generated in the musical sound synthesizer 15 in accordance with the music data, reproduced from the speaker 18 via the mixer 17, and also in accordance with the lyrics information included in the music data. The character image information of the character string of the lyrics is generated from the creating device 19 by a predetermined amount according to the progress of the music, and is displayed on the display device 22 via the image synthesizing device 21.

At this time, the character string of the lyrics is sequentially colored in another color in accordance with the progress of the singing according to the coloring position designation information in the lyrics information, and an instruction is given so that the singer can easily grasp the place to be sung. You. When a character string is generated based on the character information of the lyrics, the character string is sequentially changed to a trimming character. Further, in accordance with the drawing information included in the song data, image information is generated from the image creating device 19 in accordance with the progress of the song, is superimposed on the character image information of the lyrics, and is displayed on the display device via the image synthesizing device 21. 22
Will be displayed. In the case of a karaoke song using an optical disk, at the start of a performance, a predetermined optical disk is selected, and the designated portion of the optical disk is reproduced according to the drawing information in the song data, and is displayed on the display device 22 via the image synthesizing device 21. Is displayed. Therefore, the singer may sing while watching the display on the display device 22.

In this embodiment, the performance data, which is the main part of the music data of each music piece which is transferred from the hard disk device 23 to the RAM 13 in accordance with the selection of the music piece and which is sequentially read out and used for the performance, is constituted as follows. ing. As shown in FIG. 2, the performance data includes a plurality of tracks TK1, TK.
2, TK3... Are provided. First track TK1
Contains performance information, and the tone synthesizer 15 generates a tone signal of accompaniment music based on the performance information. The second track TK2 stores drawing information of an image created by the image creating device 19, drawing information for instructing the LD reproducing device 20 to read video data to be read from the optical disk, or both image information. I have.

The third track TK3 stores bar line information indicating the bar line number (bar line No.) of the accompaniment music. This bar line information is used when performing a special performance or the like, but may be omitted when the system does not particularly need it. The fourth track TK4 has an image creation device 19
To generate character image information of the lyrics and store the lyrics information for forming the display image signal. When the drawing information includes drawing information for causing the image forming device 19 to generate an image signal, the display image signal generated by the image forming device 19 includes the image signal based on the drawing information and the lyrics. Both the information and the character image information are included. The display image signal including at least the character image information of the lyrics generated by the image creating device 19 and the video signal read by the LD playback device 20 are combined into a combined video signal by the image combining device 21 and displayed on the display 22. .

These pieces of information are set for each event such as one sound and one image, and time information Δt indicating the elapsed time between adjacent events is inserted between adjacent events. For example, taking the performance information as an example, the first performance information is used to start a certain sound, and after the lapse of Δt, give the performance information to end the next sound. Perform the performance. Therefore, in FIG. 2, the performance information is shown as a series of information on the first track TK1, but more specifically, is constituted by performance information for each sound of each musical instrument. Also, information such as the tone color of each musical instrument is appropriately included. In this case, the time information Δt may be time information that changes at any time, but as shown in FIG. 2, the basic unit is Δt set in advance based on the minimum time unit of the performance, and the time of 2Δt is Δt = 2. It may be expressed by successive insertions.

The above-mentioned lyrics information has a data structure in which, as shown in detail in FIG. 3, a plurality of coloring position information CPs are interposed with time information ΔT between them, following the lyrics character string information WS. Have. The coloring position information CP is specified by a coordinate position on the display screen in relation to the character arrangement. In the lyrics character string information WS, for example, a character code indicating a character string of lyrics for one line displayed at a time is arranged.

When a character string of lyrics is displayed based on the lyrics character string information WS in the lyrics information, a trimming character font is generated from a normal character font.
As shown in FIG. 4, in addition to the basic configuration, the image creating device 19 includes a lyric information analysis unit 3 for displaying a trimmed font of the lyric character string according to the lyric character string information WS.
1, font generation unit 32, first display control unit 33, second
Display control unit 34, character arrangement unit 35, and color control unit 36
have. The lyric information analysis unit 31 converts the lyric character string information WS and the coloring position information C from the lyric information shown in FIG.
P and time information ΔT are discriminated, and the lyrics character string information WS and the coloring position information CP are managed according to the time information ΔT.

The font generation unit 32 stores character font data in advance, and generates a character font according to the character code of the lyrics character string information WS provided from the lyrics information analysis unit 31. The first display control unit 33 controls the character arrangement unit 35 in accordance with the lyrics character string information WS and the coloring position information CP given from the lyrics information analysis unit 31,
The character font generated by the font generation unit 32 is deflected, for example, by one dot in eight directions, for example, up, down, left, and right, and the color control unit 36 is controlled to invert the display color to display, for example, a predetermined character display. For example, a complementary color that is clearly different from the color is displayed in multiplex.

The second display control unit 34 waits for the processing of the first display control unit 33 to be completed, and receives the lyrics character string information WS and the coloring position information C given from the lyrics information analysis unit 31.
In accordance with P, the character arrangement unit 35 is controlled to arrange the character font generated from the font generation unit 32 at a regular position, and the color control unit 36 is controlled to change the display color to the original A predetermined character display color is superimposed on the multiple display image by the first display control unit 33 and displayed. Note that the predetermined character display color is determined by the lyrics information analysis unit 3.
The predetermined color is gradually changed from one predetermined color to another second predetermined color in accordance with the progress of the singing in accordance with the coloring position information CP given from 1.

The character placement unit 35 determines the position of the character font generated by the font generation unit 32 and displayed on the screen of the display 22 by the first and second display control units 33.
And 34 in accordance with the control. The color control unit 36
The display color of the character displayed on the screen of the display 22 is controlled by the first and second display control units 33 and 34, and the color position information C obtained by the lyrics information analysis unit 31 is used.
According to P, it changes sequentially according to the progress of the singing.

Next, the process of locating the character font for displaying lyrics in this embodiment will be described with reference to the flowchart shown in FIG. First, character font data is read in the font generation unit 32 according to the lyrics character string information WS and the coloring position information CP obtained by the lyrics information analysis unit 31 (step S11). This character font data is read in units of a predetermined amount of one or more characters, such as one character, one line of character string, two lines of character string, and the like, and is provided for processing. Then, the first display control unit 3
3, the color control unit 36 is controlled to invert the display color of the character (step S12), and the first display control unit 33 controls the character arrangement unit 35 to shift the character position in multiple directions. (Steps S13 to S13)
S20).

In step S13, the display character font is displayed shifted vertically by +1 dot. Step S1
4, the display character font is +1 dot vertically and +
It is displayed shifted by one dot. In step S15, the display character font is displayed shifted horizontally by +1 dot. In step S16, the display character font is
The display is shifted by one dot and +1 dot horizontally.

In step S17, the display character font is displayed shifted vertically by -1 dot. Step S1
8, the display character font is -1 dot vertically and-
It is displayed shifted by one dot. In step S19, the display character font is displayed shifted horizontally by -1 dot. In step S20, the display character font is
It is displayed shifted by one dot and -1 dot horizontally.

After the multiple display is performed in this manner,
The second display control unit 34 controls the color control unit 36 to return the display color of the character to the original color, and controls the character arrangement unit 35 to return the character position to the normal position.
Characters are displayed so as to be superimposed on the multiple display by the first display control unit 33 (step S21). For example, if the display characters are white and “up” as shown in FIG. 6, the characters displayed by the multiplex display by the first display control unit 33 are the original characters as shown in FIG. It is a black character with a thicker color and inverted color. Then, the second display control unit 3 is superimposed on the character as shown in FIG.
When a character having a predetermined display color is displayed at a regular position by the step 4, a character having a character portion with a frame portion of a different color is displayed as shown in FIG.

Instead of performing such processing one character at a time, for example, as shown in FIG. 9 (a), a character string “from when a night train departs from Ueno” is replaced with a character string font pattern As described above, after the character color is inverted and shifted in multiple directions by a small amount in multiple directions to be multiplexed and displayed, a character of a predetermined display color is displayed at a regular position by being superimposed on the color, as shown in FIG. ), The entire character string can be trimmed at once. As described above, a trimming font can be easily generated from a normal character font by simple processing without preparing a special character font for the trimming font.

It should be noted that the display color at the time of generating the trimming font only needs to be a color in which the original character portion and the trimming portion are different. For example, the trimming portion is set as the original display color, and the internal original character portion is set as the display color. A different display color may be used. Also, the number of characters when generating the border font may be appropriately set according to system conditions and the like. This trimming font generation method can be carried out in exactly the same manner even if the character font is not a dot pattern font but a so-called outline font based on an outline vector, and can be applied to character display other than the karaoke apparatus. .

[0033]

As described above, according to the present invention,
Character font data of the character string of the lyrics is generated at least one character at a time, and the character font data is displayed in a first display color on the display in a plurality of directions shifted from a predetermined character display position by a predetermined small amount in a plurality of directions. The character font data is further displayed at the predetermined character display position on the display in a second display color different from the first display color by the character font data, and a character string of the lyrics is superimposed on a background image on the display. It is possible to provide a karaoke apparatus capable of displaying a character string of lyrics as a trimming font in a superimposed manner on image information by using a normal character font to display the character string easily and easily.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram schematically showing a configuration of an embodiment of a karaoke apparatus according to the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a diagram showing a data structure of performance data of music data in the embodiment of FIG. 1;

FIG. 3 is a diagram showing a data structure of lyrics information of performance data in the embodiment of FIG. 1;

FIG. 4 is a block diagram showing a detailed functional configuration of a part of the computer graphics device (image creating device) in the embodiment of FIG.

FIG. 5 is a flowchart illustrating a method of generating a border font in the embodiment of FIG. 1;

FIG. 6 is a schematic diagram for explaining a method of generating a border font in the embodiment of FIG. 1;

FIG. 7 is a schematic diagram for explaining a method of generating a border font in the embodiment of FIG. 1;

FIG. 8 is a schematic diagram for explaining a method of generating a border font in the embodiment of FIG. 1;

FIG. 9 is a schematic diagram for explaining another example of generation of a trimmed font in the embodiment of FIG. 1;

[Explanation of symbols]

11 CPU (central processing unit), 12 ROM (read only memory), 13 RAM (read / write memory),
14 operation panel, 15 musical tone synthesizer, 16 microphone, 17 mixer, 18 speaker, 19 computer graphic device (image creation device), 20 optical disk playback device (LD playback device), 21 image synthesis apparatus,
22: display device (CRT), 23: hard disk device (HDD), 24: CD-ROM playback device (C
D-ROM), 25: Floppy disk drive (FD)
D), 26 modem, 31 lyrics information analyzing unit, 32 font generating unit, 33 first display control unit, 34 second display control unit, 35 character arrangement unit, 36 color control unit.

──────────────────────────────────────────────────の Continued on the front page (51) Int.Cl. ⁷ Identification code FI G11B 27/34 G11B 27/34 P H04N 5/278 H04N 5/278 (56) References JP-A-3-290694 (JP, A JP-A-4-76595 (JP, A) JP-A-4-162,093 (JP, A)

Claims (2)

(57) [Claims] 1. Define performance information and its execution timing
A first track information including time information, lyric information 及
And time information defining the display timing of the second
Storage means for storing music data and a track information, whether the first track information of the music data stored in the storage means
Performance information according to the time information contained in the
Read the song data and the song data stored in the storage means.
From the second track information of the data to the time information contained in it
Therefore, control means for sequentially reading out the lyrics information
And, the serial and the accompaniment music generation means for generating a musical accompaniment of singing songs based on the performance information read out from憶means, the lyrics of the song唱曲based on the lyrics information read from the storage means of the string an image creation means for generating an image, image and image combining means for superimposing text lyrics generated by the image forming means on the background image, in which the character string of the background image and lyrics by the image synthesizing means is synthesized And a display device for displaying character font data . The image creation device stores predetermined character font data, and generates a character font constituting a character string of lyrics based on the lyrics information. Character font generated by means
A first character display unit for multiplexing display in a predetermined display color while shifting the display position by a predetermined number of dots in a plurality of directions with respect to the designated character display position, and a character font generated by the character font generation unit. karaoke apparatus, characterized in that is obtained and a second character display means for displaying the character display position designated by different display colors and display colors. 2. The first character display means displays an entire character string including a plurality of characters with reference to a predetermined character display position.
2. The karaoke apparatus according to claim 1, wherein a predetermined display color is multiplexed while being shifted in the direction .