Some users are getting VSL working smoothly on PC, but more users are getting better results with Mac's. I suggest going exactly by the system requirements Serato lists and then taking those requirements a step further to cover your basis.

under $700??

well... let us know if you succeed with that.

Remember you get what you pay for.

+1 - The Truth from AL's typing. I buckled down and went full out on the Mac side. Let's just say I probably won't be buying a PC for a long time ;-P

Hurry up and wait...

All of this because Video-SL is a resource Hog. I'm able to get competitor products running on a PC with less gusto and it's smooth. But I can't get Video-SL to look good for anything.

Sucks because I bought the Serato hardware and it's rock solid and is the reliability that I need in a time-coded controlled software, but if I need to drop $2500 down on a laptop to add video, i'll just buy the competitor product and get more features.

yeah, unless your gonna roll the dice with a refurb.
you really need to EXCEED the minimum specs though

Less features but a more stable product works for me. Software video mixing brought pricing down to a more reasonable level but it still isn't cheap to get into. You gotta spend money to make money.

Ok well forget a recommendation and head on a different note. My desktop PC more than exceeds minimum requirements.

Quad core 2.6ghz
4gb DDR
dual 1TB drives
Nvidia 8600GTS

Clean install, nothing bogging the system down, videos are choppy and cut up when ever there is more than one playing, even if both aren't live on the output screen.

I'm not going to change platforms just because Serato doesn't run. It's advertised as Windows compatible, and in reality, not many people can get it running. Rane/Serato need to step up and figure this out. VDJ is running smooth as can be on all my PC's that are spec'd to be compatible with Video-SL, why is this such a problem?

Im willing to bet its the Driver/video card.

I went through about 8 drivers till I found an unsigned one that works well with
serato

I wanted to spin video, so I bought the best macbook pro money can buy. Now Ive been spinning video with Serato, graduated from virtual crapj. I can only say...and i cant even say that....

I'm willing to bet it's Windows and not Mac OSX! Something about the operating system ... (hmmmmm)

The problem is that Serato is using the crappy Quicktime Engine because it´s the easy way to code a video app running on mac and windows, but this engine has no performance no Support for GFX-Card Decoding and so on on windows,

it will be better when they change to a VLC or other new Open-source engine and then Video-SL can decode all Material (divx, mpeg2, dvd, vcd and so on) and need not half of the System Power it need today. But i think they will never do that , so there are only 2 ways

- switch to Mac because there Quicktime supports Hardware Acceleration
- wait that Apple will do a Quicktime Update on windows i think that will come in the next months wen they not wait that the windows version will die

I was once the guy saying i will never get a mac because i dont need it!
Then with vsl i was like hmmmmmm i wanna do video and windows is not performing the way it should, well i spend the money and bought a macbook pro.....
Best thing i have done in years! is not just because im able to do videos without problems but the mac it self its alot easy to use and way better OS than windows, so yeah you will be spending some money but is worth it!
If you are serious about doing video and have the gigs that demand video i say go for it but if you are a bedroom dj trying to impress friends and family then use virtual dj =) heheheh.

i think with Windows7 VSL will improve on Windows very nice, in windows7 Quicktime is not more needed for playing Quicktime files MS has included Quicktime decoding and GPU Acceleration in the Operating System

when you work with AVCHD Material in 1080p and have to edit and cut this you will see that Mac-OX is very slow @ this time for full hd Video editing, with a cheap Pentium DC 2GHZ i can cut and edit Full-HD AVCHD Material with Magix Video in realtime without long renderings, my Macbook i owned before and iMovie was not able to edit this stutterfree and lagfree,

Serato has only used the wrong video engine on windows , Windows7 is for Video Encoding and Decoding much faster than OSX *imho* try a CUDA Encoder like Badaboom it encodes in same quality like handbrake a complete DVD to h264 with 60fps (handbrake run around 20fps on macbook) on a cheap Windows Notebook because he encodes the movie completely on the Geforce240M GPU , CPU has only around 15% load while encoding