Serato Video General Discussion

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 Serato Video General Discussion
2 Laptops, 2 Twitches, 2 Serato Video - Is 4 Deck Mixing Possible?
Talk about Serato Video and Video-SL.

2 Laptops, 2 Twitches, 2 Serato Video - Is 4 Deck Mixing Possible?

BOY COM (of Atlantiks) 2:08 PM - 4 April, 2012
Hey y'all
I'm gonna be joining the Serato family hopefully in the next couple of weeks when I get my Twitch and had a few questions before I do, that hopefully you can help me with
Me and my DJ partner will both be using a 13" Macbook Pro each (with 8GB of RAM), we will have a Twitch each, and most likely that little powerMix III to boost them.

What we're using at the moment for our AV show, is 1 laptop, running Virtual DJ, with an X-Session Pro and a Launchpad. This is ok, but as we're kind of doing 1 song each, it requires us to constantly exchange positions to mix in the next track, with whoever is mixing being on the side of the X-session, and whoever isn't, triggering effects and doing the looping on the launchpad. It's all a bit cumbersome.

So, is there any way of Midi-Clocking both laptops so we can do 4 deck mixing with Serato Video each on our own laptop, each with our own twitch?
And if 4 deck mixing isn't possible, is there anyway of having whatever is on the Master laptop show up on the Slave laptop, so that you can at least have 2 deck mixing, but use to 2 computers to do it?

Also, is there a way of 1 laptop doing the mixing and the other one be used to control the effects in some way (and then switch)?

I'm guessing this one is a no but I'll ask it anyway - is there any way of choosing your laptop output as Serato's output instead of the Twitch's because everywhere is saying that it has a really low output (due to them not giving it power to make it cheaper)?

And lastly, can I also have another midi controller like the Launchpad if need be?

Thanks for reading through this, and hello to all!!
Hope to be rocking a set with all of you soon

Here's our ATLANTIKS promo for you to get an idea of what we're doing now, and thus why we want to move everything over to Serato (besides the helpful community, and apparently awesome technlogy): youtu.be

Noah
phatbob 2:36 PM - 4 April, 2012
Simple answer is no, to all of your questions. Sorry!

There are other solutions (Scratch Live & Ableton possibly), but really the best answer is to forget about syncing the two laptops, just mix by ear, and use a video mixer like the Edirol V4 to mix between the two video streams.
BOY COM (of Atlantiks) 3:36 PM - 4 April, 2012
thanks for your answer dude!
It's kind of a necessity for us to be synced if we're using visuals and yeah, i don't think an Edirol V4 is really the direction we're after....but yeah, do you reckon using The Bridge could possibly midi sync both computers?

Also, is that a no on additional midi controllers? i could have sworn I've seen it done before....
phatbob 4:47 PM - 4 April, 2012
Thing is, at best, the only thing you'll be able to sync to on the second computer is Ableton, not Itch or Scratch Live, even with the Bridge.

What you want to do is feasible in Traktor, but that doesn't have video obviously.

External midi control is not an option in Itch, you can make a midi controller duplicate the keyboard shortcuts but that is pretty limited.

I'm wondering in what respect syncing is so important to you? I've done plenty of 4-deck/2-DJ sets in my time with Scratch Live and no sync, it's totally achievable.
phatbob 5:01 PM - 4 April, 2012
And, by the way...

Two laptops running video: You WILL need a V4 or similar.

The only way to avoid that will be to capture one with the other, and overlay a live feed, which will cost almost as much, and will basically tax a 13" Pro FAR beyond it's capabilities.
BOY COM (of Atlantiks) 11:56 AM - 5 April, 2012
again man, thanks for such a quick answer
but yeah, we really want to be sending one video feed out to the projector out of one laptop, but i'd like to be able to control serato from both laptops. It's not a question of not wanting to do 4-deck/2-DJ setup, it's more for practicality's sake.
I just thought this would be a good option so that 2 DJ's could hook up their systems via an ethernet cable or even a wireless network - would this work www.nerds.de ?? - so that everything would sync up smoothly.

I'm guessing if there's no way of sending midi clock info out of serato, then is that ipmidi idea useless?
phatbob 12:07 PM - 5 April, 2012
Your guess is correct...

Forget the second laptop, it's not gonna happen. If you don't want 4 decks running at the same time, then you're really gonna have to continue working kind of how you do now.

As Itch doesn't have midi mapping for external controllers, my suggestion would be to use Scratch Live with decks or CDJs for the main mix, and then you can add on extra midi controllers for FX and looping.

You'll need a Rane SL mixer to fade the video and audio simultaneously, but as you seem to want to both 'look busy', the video faders could be mapped to a midi controller instead, and the second user could take charge of the video fading. That means the 'DJ' can concentrate on the audio and the other guy can be responsible for making it all look good.
BOY COM (of Atlantiks) 12:25 PM - 5 April, 2012
damn! i thought i was on to something there.
Also, it's not so much about looking busy as it is keeping everything simple.
I think it makes for a better show if we don't keep stepping over each other to get the next mix done. But yes, it would be cool for the other one to maybe be doing some visual effects - is it possible to run a program through Fina Cut's effects? that's probably for another thread...

Anyway, here's to hoping it'll be in the next version, then we'll probably move to Serato.
Thanks :)
phatbob 1:53 PM - 5 April, 2012
Quote:
But yes, it would be cool for the other one to maybe be doing some visual effects - is it possible to run a program through Fina Cut's effects?


It is DEFINITELY not. Again, this sort of thing can be achieved by using Syphon to feed MixEmergency into Modul8 or Resolume, but again not really with a 13" MBP.

Ultimately mate I think you need to do a bit more research on the subject, there are a lot of options available to you but until you get your head around the whole thing a bit more, your expectations of what can be done are a bit unrealistic.

Spend the coming months hanging out on here, and vjforums.com, and then you might be able to work out a setup which will work best for you. ;-)
XRM5 2:22 PM - 5 April, 2012
I don't know much about it, but djworx said VDJ just added video on the sample decks for V8 or whatever their new version's gonna be, along with a bunch of other improvements. You might be better off staying with them, b/c one of you could be on the sample deck while the other's mixing.

Serato's never been about staying ahead of the curve with video, so you can be pretty sure they'll be the last to add features like this. I would love to be proven wrong, of course, but it's been 3 pretty slow years from their side.
WarpNote 2:32 PM - 5 April, 2012
Yeah, when I saw Beat Torrent last year, they were using 2 TTM57s and a video mixer.
Watchwww.youtube.com
Guess you could do something like that. Personally I'd rather go with SSL than Itch.
WarpNote 2:34 PM - 5 April, 2012
Have a look at around 00:30 in the youtube video...
XRM5 3:00 PM - 5 April, 2012
Quote:
Personally I'd rather go with SSL than Itch.


Yeah, right now you don't know if Itch will ever be customizable--or how much they'll add when they finally DO get to it.

If you went SL instead of Itch there are old generations of all the hardware that are tough as hell and easy to get cheap. If you want to output SD video to a mixer, you might even be better off getting a couple of the last 17" MacBooks that came out before the unibody redesign, because they output SD video natively without converters & you could probably get them for a couple hundred. I play with another VJ so I still haven't ditched mine and it's hanging on no problem.

Then what you save on the hardware you can spend on the V4 or V8. I still want to get this beast: www.vixid.com