It might play them, but the effects will be low and the output will be choppy unless you choose to play them in the lowest quality. The lowest quality sucks man.

S0 here's what usually happens here:

1) DJ wants to do videos, but is not sure about his laptop
2) Someone on board says, probably not for xxx reasons
3) DJ finds out there is a free demo version of VSL and tries it out anyways
4) DJ then finds out getting and encoding videos is a lot of work
5) DJ encodes their video so it works on their 'out of spec' system and it looks like crap
6) DJ realizes video is very cool and gets a new system to play videos (usually a mac)
7) VJ now re-encodes all of their videos for the better system so they look good
8) VJ now has fun in nightclubs

I would suggest you go straight to step 6 and save yourself about 3 months and many posts on the boards.

Used my friends black macbook last weekend for a video gig... his is the 2.4Gb model and has 4Gb memory..... with 1 firewire and 1 USB external drives connected to it.

worked fine on medium setting but doesn't handle the melt transition that well.. output is 'ok' but the virtual decks go a bit choppy.

here is a pic from the night....
photos-h.ak.fbcdn.net

I'd recommend going to 4gb of memory if you are sticking with your macbook.

Thankx for all responses, Hey justin i already have a mac, just not sure if is up to the task. Is it really neccesary a macbook PRO? is there a really big difference being that anyways V SL is for compressed formats?? or having a PRO will let me encode in a better format or like u said for a better system?
boabmatic mine is already maxout @ 2gb of memory.

OK, 64 MB shared will not be enough to get good quality video out "of the pipes". You will have to lower the quality. You will also not get all of the effects as well. So in my mind, your initial system is not good enough for VSL.

Can you play videos, in reality, sure, some of them. According to others on this board and Serato specs, no...get a new system.

Now, as to the new system. There are some on this board (search for it) that have reported good success using the new macbook 13" for Video. This runs about $1200. Here's my issue with this way.

Why spend $1200 on a system that will not be able to keep up with the next 12 months worth of upgrades coming down the pipeline. Just my opinion.

So, what to buy then. IF you are looking for a new system, I would get no less than the middle of the road macbook pro 15" system. About $1900. This system has both graphic cards that Apple will be using with their newer operating system that will allow H.264 acceleration and the processor power to handle everything Apple and Serato will throw at users for the next 3 years (me guessing here)

And I believe this myself. I just purchased the top of the line 15" system with a 7200 rpm 500GB drive, 4 GB memory, for $2200. This will be my exclusive Serato machine and I wouid expect to get 2-3 years of playing out of it.

These are just my thoughts...other people will have other thoughts.

I want to go straight to step 8

It's fun when you get there.

Hey thanks! that's it then, aprox. $2500 plus more time for proccesing files, i just hope it's worth it (money wise). I do wanna be makin all this effort for the same amount of money.

or you can get the refurb pre unibody one. 2.4 ver with 256mb vid for 1349 or 2.5 ver with 512mb vid for 1499. i have the pre unibody 2.4 ver and the 2nd gen unibody 2.8 ver and they both work great.

Very true, refurbs are a good deal as well! IMO there's not much difference between spending $1500 and $2200 and being able to take advantage of anything newer coming down the pipeline.

I started doing video on a 2.0 white Macbook - it was already a year old at the time. It worked fine, but my transition FX were limited, and my quality setting was at "medium-high"

The small macbook does work, but as VJ JA said, if you're going to invest into something now, get something that will last you a few years, not something that barely does the job for now.

I've since upgraded to a MBP unibody - it does run video smoother, all the fx are available to me, and I will be able to use this laptop for a few years to come

The key thing is of course the video processor.

The oldest MacBooks used the Intel GMA950, which from my testing is completely unsuitable in any circumstance.

Later MacBooks used the Intel GMA3100, which has considerably more horsepower than the GMA950. I consider this a marginal, but workable solution. Frame rates will sometimes look a little jerky, quality settings above "medium" seriously bog things down, and effects are pretty much a no-go. And the machine will be running near 100% CPU and will get extremely hot (SMC Fan Control strongly recommended, and crank the fan to max before running Video-SL).

The newest MacBooks have the NVidia 9400M, which again was a big jump in graphics horsepower. I have not personally tested one, but have heard (and read here) of people using it with Video-SL with good results. Again, since Video-SL running on the integrated video is going to make more use of the CPU than would be happening on a computer with a dedicated graphics processor, I'd expect the CPU use to be high.