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11 steps to create the perfect song!
Ten steps for song creators in order to provide the perfect USDB Syncer experience!
USDB Syncer supports the creation of a valid meta tag string for copy paste via Tools -> Create Meta Tags. A reference of all supported meta tags can be found here.
The song should have a BPM high enough to allow for good note timings. In general, a BPM between 200 and 400 should be sufficient for the majority of songs. You can use either the USDX internal editor to (repeatedly, if necessary) double the BPM and all note timing via SHIFT+M. Alternatively, the UltraStar Manager offers a task to do exactly that, so it can be used to apply this to a collection of songs.
If this is not the case, you can use the USDX internal editor to automatically set it to zero (hit T in the editor, this also fixes line break timings). Alternatively, the UltraStar Manager offers a task to do exactly that. This ensures that the #GAP value truly represents the gap between the beginning of the song and the start of the singing.
If you used a Youtube source, please use the embed-functionality (little YT button at the bottom) and insert the full YT URL (URLS in the youtu.be format do not seem to work, though). Ideally strip the URL of any additional info such as channel, starting time, etc, which are added at the end of the URL, concatenated with &.
For sites other than Youtube, simply comment the full URL. If you want, you can use <a href=url>url</a> so that it becomes hyperlinked.
If you can’t find a audio/video source for your song on Youtube or other sites, then please describe the version you used, e.g. name the album you extracted the audio file from, state the song’s duration in minutes:seconds, etc., so others at least have a chance to get it right.
Reuse the URL of the previous step and put it in the song’s meta tags. If your source is audio only, then use a=, if it is the source for audio and video, use v=. If you used different sources for audio and video, use both a= and v= (and adjust #VIDEOGAP accordingly, if necessary). If your sources are Youtube-URLs, only use the 11 character id, if it is from Vimeo, use the variable length numerical id, otherwise use the full URL.
If your song is duet, please use p1={Singer name} and p2={Singer name} to identify the names of the duet singers. If unknown of if the song is a pseudo-duet, simply use p1=P1 and p2=P2.
Please insert a cover URL for the song. A good place to look is fanart.tv, since they only host high quality, square cover images. If you can’t find a cover image there, try Google image search, select "Large" in search filter -> size and only if that fails, select medium or small. For images from fanart.tv, you only need to insert the filename without path, for other sources, use the full URL. Commas (,) in the URL must be URL escaped (replace each comma by %2C.
Please insert an audio sample for the song. Apple offers 90 second preview samples (preferred), Spotify and hitparade.ch 30 seconds.
Reuse the URL of the previous step and put it in the song’s meta tags.
In case your cover artwork is not perfect, there are several possibilities to post-process it via meta-tags, e.g. correct rotation (co-rotate=), cropping (co-crop=), resizing (co-resize=) and increasing contrast (co-contrast=). I recommend the freeware XnView, but any image processing tool will help you find the correct values for post-processing the cover. Please ensure that the resulting cover is square.
Since the #PREVIEWSTART, #MEDLEYSTARTBEAT and #MEDLEYENDBAT tags get deleted by usdb, you can add this information to the meta tags via preview={time in seconds, use decimal point} and `medley={startbeat}-{endbeat}.
Either if the song has no video (e.g. album version) or for users with low-end PCs who have disabled video playback, it is nice to have a suitable background. Again, fanart.tv is a great resource and should be prioritized, but pretty much any URL will do. Commas (,) in the URL must be URL escaped (%2C).
Similar to cover post-processing, the background image can be enhanced by post-processing. Rotation should not be required (currently not implemented), but resizing and cropping is. It is recommended that the aspect ratio of the background image is 16:9.