How to Convert a ST3 into KAR File?

Overview

Probably you are one of those RealOrche users who has collected many many of songs in the mean time. For some reasons you decided to change your player, e.g. it keeps on crashing on Windows98 and ME. Then you will find out there is no other player using ST3 format (so far I know).
Fortunately, RealOrche allows you to save files into other formats, e.g. KAR. It is the most popular format at all. If you have tried to convert ST3 into KAR files you might have encountered following problems:

Lyric not synchronized
Compressed file cannot be saved in KAR format

What to do to get it synch'ed in KAR-format?

Additional Information in ST3 files

What is a ST3 file different from a KAR file? First of all let's have a look in the ST3 file. Maybe you have already noticed that a ST3 file contains more information than a KAR file, e.g. Song Title, Singer etc. But at this moment, we are only going to look at the information in the lyrics track.

You can see ST3 additional information in the RealOrche editor:

The above figure shows the three events what you can add in a ST3 file:

Change Image
Change Line
Prepare Next Line

Change Image and Prepare Next Line are events which is not used in a KAR file. That means, this information should not (cannot) be transfered into a KAR file and this is exactly the reason for the synchronization problem in a converted KAR file. Obviously, Realorche is not able to suppress that information properly.

How to eliminate the unused information?

The most straight way to remove the unused events is to do that in the RealOrche editor. But it's hardly possible to make sure that all of them are eliminated. Fortunately, RealOrche allows you to export the lyrics track to a plain text file.

Let's have a look at the same song position where we found those three events in the exported SI3 file, which can be open by any text editor, e.g. Notepad:

00006402 000000 017 ; -- Line Break 00006406 000000 019 : 00006430 000000 018 ; -- Prepare Line 00006801 000149 016 :> 00007007 000149 016 :> 00007160 000149 016 :> 00007352 000149 016 :> 00007532 000149 016 :> 00007705 000000 017 ; -- Line Break 00007719 000000 018 ; -- Prepare Line 00007767 000096 016 :I 00007862 000096 016 : call 00007958 000096 016 : you 00008008 000096 016 : up 00008150 000096 016 : whe 00008246 000096 016 :ne 00008342 000096 016 :ver 00008438 000096 016 : things

I think it's very obvious that Line Break and Prepare Line are two of the events which we saw in the RealOrche editor. We can assume that the second line with a single colon is the Change Image event.

Now what we have to do is simply delete all the lines with a single colon character and lines with 'Prepare Line' and re-import the modified information. Finally, we save it as KAR file.

Using Script to remove lines in SI3 files

I know, you will say there must be a better way to do that. Yes, that's true. I'm using a Perl script to do this job. You can find my script in the Yahoo Group SoftKaraoke in the Files area. The file perl.zip also includes the Perl excutable command file and its library, which you need to run my script. The ActivePerl interpreter is free. For more information, please visit www.activestate.com.

After you have downloaded perl.zip, unpacked all files in a new directory where you will export the SI3 file. Save your export file as st3.si3, then run st3text.bat by double clicking on it. A new SI3 file (kar.si3) will be created. This is the file which you have to import back to your song.

The script does more than just delete some lines. Our exsample will become like this:

00006801 000149 016 :/> 00007007 000149 016 :> 00007160 000149 016 :> 00007352 000149 016 :> 00007532 000149 016 :> 00007767 000096 016 :/I 00007862 000096 016 : call 00007958 000096 016 : you 00008008 000096 016 : up 00008150 000096 016 : whe 00008246 000096 016 :ne 00008342 000096 016 :ver 00008438 000096 016 : things

All unused lines are removed and the time stamp (most left column) has been re-adjusted. You might have noticed that even Line Breaks have been removed as well. The reason is that the line breaks in the converted KAR-file will not be interpreted by some players (e.g. WinKaraoke), because a line break of a KAR-file is represented by a slash '/'. Therefore we remove all the line breaks and insert a slash at the beginning of each line instead.

Summary

Open the ST3 song in RealOrche editor
Export the lyrics track as st3.si3
Run st3text.bat
Import the lyrics track kar.si3
Save song as KAR file

Save Compressed ST3 Song

Problem with Compressed File

If you followed the procedure above you might have converted your first KAR-file successfully. But if you have started to convert your ST3 collection you might have encounted following message:

Obviously, RealOrche does not allow user to save a compressed file as other format. What can we do?

Enable Saving Compressed File

If you open a song with RealOrche editor you cannot see the difference between a normal and a compressed file. The only thing makes RealOrche refusing to save the file is that it can 'remember' the fact that the loaded file was compressed.

Now we need to 'convince' RealOrche that the loaded file is not compressed. What we need is the right tool (e.g. SoftIce) and good knowledge in Assembler, a bit luck and of course a lot of patience. No worries, you don't need to have all these. What you need to do is download the library SrCore.dll and copy it into the RealOrche program directory.

You can find the SrCore.dll in the Files area of the SoftKaraoke Group. Please check your RealOrche version (1.42sh) and make sure you rename the original file instead of overwriting it.

Outstanding Problem

Some ST3 files will lose their lyrics track after conversion. But from now on you will be able to convert 90% of ST3 files. If you have any problems or ideas please post them to the SoftKaraoke Group.