After five years of the last big improvement in our website, and to celebrate the 10th Anniversary of Red Karaoke and we have already surpassed the 10 million registered members, we are pleased to introduce the new “Recording Studio” for our website: a new beautiful look & feel much easier to use, faster loading and ultra speed saving and publishing recordings and videos, and with some unprecedented features that will delight users of our website.
Although in recent years we have been very focused on improving our mobile apps to become one of the world leaders of the market, we do not forget our origins: Red Karaoke was born as a web page, and it is something that we will never leave aside, while there are users interested in our service. The truth is that the web had stayed a little behind in the technical possibilities offered, and we had been wanting to improve it for years. And the year of our 10th Anniversary has been the perfect excuse. 
In this article we will tell you all the news of this change so important for the users of our website. The changes are as follows:
AN IMPROVED PERFORMANCE: FASTER & LIGHTER
The new system has been developed with HTML 5 technology, a standard that comes integrated in modern browsers such as Chrome, Firefox or Opera. The use of HTML 5 makes the Recording Studio loads faster than with the previous Flash system, and consumes less RAM and less processor time. Thus the process is much more fluid and efficient.
But in addition to the faster loading, our team has also worked to reduce the time of video and recordings postings on the web. We know that waiting is annoying, so we have shortened it considerably (more than 60%) in order to spend more time singing and participating in the community. To achieve this, we have transferred part of the video processing to our servers, which will make the video take one or two minutes to be available for viewing, but in return the singer is released to continue singing without unnecessary waits.
PRIVATE DOWNLOAD OF RECORDINGS AND VIDEOS
With the previous system, the only option to be able to download a recording or a video was to record it, publish it on the web, and only then could it be downloaded. Now, instead, the singer has the option to save in private directly in the Recording Studio, which means to be able to download the video directly without publishing it in Red Karaoke. This offers more flexibility to users and the process of saving a recording on your computer is much simpler.
NEW FEATURES: VIDEO EFFECTS & AUDIO EDITION
Among the most spectacular features of this new Recording Studio stand out two because of their technical difficulty and the spectacular results they provide. First of all, we have added VIDEO EFFECTS to improve our users’ video clips. At the moment there are 16 effects available, some to improve the image and others to add a bit of fantasy to our recordings. In that same screen, in addition, you can change the camera if you have more than one connected, and of course turn it off to record with audio only.
The other big change is the Audio Edition, which is enhanced with several improvements (only when you record with headphones, of course): we add a BALANCE tool to change the volume of music and voice in a simple way, in real time; we radically improve the synchronization between music and voice, which now almost never fails, but just in case we have completely remodeled the synchronization tool to make it much more accurate and easy to use; for the more professional, we even have music and voice graphic charts separately; and of course, we keep the old voice effects, which we will complement with new effects very soon.
CHANGE OF TECHNOLOGY & COMPATIBILITY
The new Recording Studio is the heart of the Red Karaoke website, the software that allows you to play karaokes and videos from YouTube, and record yourself singing in audio and video using any computer. So far this was done through Flash technology, which forced to install this “plug in” in your browser, but from now on will no longer be necessary because the new system uses standard technology HTML 5.
Those who prefer the old system because they don’t like changes, or those who use unsupported browsers (such as Safari, Microsoft Explorer and Edge), can continue to use the old Flash player without problem. In the case of unsupported browsers they will not even be able to load the new software, so they will not even notice the difference, and everything will work the same as it has until now. Those who do use compatible browsers, such as Chrome, Firefox or Opera users, will see the new Recording Studio loaded by default, but they can use the classic player by pressing a visible button in the bottom right of the screen.
OTHER “SMALL” IMPROVEMENTS
Apart from the big changes, we have added some not-so-small improvements that are barely noticeable at first, but that make life easier for us to sing. For example, now when the Recording Studio is opened, it is always put the browser to FULL SCREEN. That allows us to see the lyrics at a larger size (with the additional option of increasing the font size in our own karaokes), and forces us to focus on singing without other distractions. Everything looks clearer and bigger with this screen.
When you begin to sing, there is also a TIMELINE that marks how much we have sung, and how much remains to sing, all visible discreetly at the bottom of the screen.
To those who record in video, it may surprise them a little that now, unlike as with the previous system, the player shows us the video in “MIRROR MODE“. That is, we will see ourselves in the camera as if we were in front of a mirror, which makes the recording more natural. In fact, this mirror mode is a standard in most video recording programs, video conferencing, mobile applications, etc. Of course, there is no need to worry about the final video, because magically the final video will be shown properly, as recorded, without the mirror effect.
Another thing that got a small improvement is the VU meter, the graphic element that indicates the volume of sound of our microphone, and that now incorporates a warning zone when the sound of the micro is too saturated.
The user can now choose the thumbnail of their video or audio recording, choosing a capture of the video itself, taking a new picture with the webcam, or even uploading a photo from your hard disk if you prefer.
Last but not least, we have doubled the recording quality of the videos, the previous standard was clearly insufficient for the current times.
In the end, the goal of all this is that we can sing more easily, quickly and efficiently from our computers, and at the same time have more powerful editing tools and improvements to get a record of more quality, more impactful, more fun, and that we are all proud to share.
We hope you enjoy it … and HAPPY 10TH ANNIVERSARY!
