Karaoke Forums

Hi everybody...

Since I am making the lyrics screens, I am hoping to ask what you think is the best combination of background and font color for easier reading in the dark...

I am mainly hoping to get an idea of what has worked for you best since I am new in the area...

Thank you in advance for your time...

Black background. Yellow, white or orange lettering.

+1 for this

There is a reason why book publishers stick to black text on white pages......contrast.

For karaoke, reversing the contrast to accommodate for typically darker rooms makes the most sense.

_________________
-Chris

Thank you guys... I thought about the black and white combination, but I kept seeing videos with blue background...

I've done somewhere around 200 songs now and have tried all sorts of combinations.
Most of my earliest efforts were the default Green but now I use only a Black background.
Most recently I've set the text to Yellow, wiping to a nice pink colour. I don't know its name but the three colour bars are set to:

RED=15
GREEN=3
BLUE=15

For an Instrumental Break I make the text turquoise wiping to black so the text disappears as the Break progresses.

Of course, I might change this in future, who knows.

I USE A BLACK BACKGROUND WITH WHITE LETTERS THAT CHANGE TO A BRIGHT RED. If the song is a duet I use bright green letters that change to red for the second singer. I have some visual problems and these three colors seem to work the best for me. I started out using a BLUE Background but the red didn't blend well with it when the letters changed color. I was trying to be patriotic by using red white and blue but it didn't work out as well as I would have liked. Dark Blue letters on a black background is another bad choice in my opinion. not enough contrast. Some of the professional karaoke companies have used these colors and I have a very difficult time picking up the words in that combination. I've made quite a few karaoke tracks in my day and I'm sticking with red white and black.

I've tried various colours for duets. But my biggest challenge was Frank Sinatra & Sammy Davis Jnr - Me And My Shadow. Not only were there places where the lyrics moved fairly quickly with both vocalists singing different lyrics simultaneously, but I also needed a different colour to signify both vocalists singing the same lyrics together. Phew! It's just as frantic as it sounds.
Here's what I settled on.

Background - Black
Vocalist #1 - Yellow (colour 12)
Vocalist #2 - Pink (colour 11)
Both Vocalists - White (colour #1)

All text wipes to Blue (colour 7)

BTW I just discovered these colours today when hovering the mouse over the styles palette.
Another thing I just realised (OK, I'm a slow learner) is that there are two whites, #1 and #14, the latter being slightly dirtier than the other.

I wouldn't be swayed by what the 'professionals' do. They sometimes get it wrong, blue on black, yellow on white etc. And another thing to beware of is mistakes in lyrics. I started out googling the song title followed by the word lyric. I assumed the lyrics would be correct. Oh, boy, was I deluded. It is a very rare thing to find an online lyric 100% correct. Sometimes they get close with very minor errors such as "crying" when the vocalist plainly sings "cryin" and most other words ending in 'ing' when it should be "in' ". That might make me sound pedantic but I feel I owe it to the performer to present them with precisely what's on the original recording.

Another thing I dislike is the way they chop a line of lyrics into little bits so they can have huge fonts on screen. It sometimes is necessary, for instance,
Like the wallpaper
Sticks to the wall
But I strive for a balance between fair sized lyrics and keeping a sung line all in one piece.

This is turning into a rant so I'll stop now.