lets just say i been using serato sice 1.3 and vdj since 3.4
i been going back and forth between the two
could never get vdj to work right with master tempo key lock etc probably because of the laptop i was using i suppose and vid
been wanting to video the right way with out glitches when loading another deck and the vid stopping and only to drag another video in the other deck stopped to get the vid to start playing again using vdj
soo i finally gave in and bought serato video , with the mixer of course and on top of it bought a high end asus gaming laptop duo 2 2.16 2gb ram ati 256 dedicated mem 7200 rpm hd internal etc etc...
soo been bragging about how great the serato vid is gonna be to the club owners
hook the bitch up playing a vid while all videos overviews have been built and converted from a perfect vob to a compressed mp4 and drop in another video too deck 2 and wouldnt u know it the damn video stopps and glitched i think i almost wanted to throw that mixer into the dance floor i was so pissed soo i started messin with more settings and etc same thing all night.. oh then i lost control of the decks but the songs in the deck would replay so needless to say i had to restart the program and throw a cd in the deck to keep it playing all for about 700 peeps ,lol so thats how my video exp went with serato , so for the hell of it after close i hooked up vdj and wouldnt u know it worked perfect ,, hmm go figure no glitching at all the transitions worked beautiful, hell even my webcam worked while playing the vids , soo im really thinking about puttin all this stuff up and selling it and sticking with the originator vdj
after reading these forums i see lots of people been having the same problems with the loading of vids stopping , oh and im not gonna go spend more for a macbook pro not gonna happen my laptop has just as good specs as a mac, and i dont know mac os
i guess this post was just something to relieve my frustration from this.

you're brave to use vsl in a real club enviroment. i cant imagine the day i'm gonna able to do that. when that day comes, i'm poppin bottles that night and all you pc heads are invited, and swift too

really , u mean others arent using this live in the clubs,lol
ya i guess i was a little ballsy using this for the first time ever live , i guess i had that much faith in serato vsl

after reading all these post, it almost seems that you need a macbook pro to work video properly. it seems like the members who have macs and have converted properly have had success.

ya i am starting to think that ie. apple quicktime
its a gamble if your using a win pc
but majority of people use win pc
over macs

haha! Im there!

im sure its worse having the 57 and the laptop messin around, bad enough iv got an mbpro but no 57:( - tho when ma mate brought his down i was blown away to see no usb light flickering though it was feedin thourgh my dlp to a 10foot screen, and downloading , with a couple programs open - i know thats not what you want to do for est results i was just testing the limits , just hope if/when the sl1 compatable release comes its not a soggy letdown in comparison

i too gave up on vsl bought it and the 57 and a new dell with core 2 duo 256 video card, spent $3500 total and it won't work
so i went and bought another sl1 box again after i had sold it to get the 57, now i'm using vdj for now. or i could spend another $3500 on a mbp ....? naaaa

Give it a little time people ... It will be right eventually.

the problem is serato sl is still new and rushed it out becuz of all of us users begging for it and they focused more on the mac users then the windows based machines , and thats a shame for us, like i said its a gamble , i mean i can play the highest tech Games on my laptop but it wont do video Sl wtf is that
and did i say vdj Works Perfectly the resources dont even jump over 3
i hear it all the time u use serato and u dont have a mac ,, its not that i cant afford one , its just a personal preference , besides i dont think im cool enuff to own something with a lit up apple on the front

Going to throw my 2 cents in here.

I started my DJ career with videos. Its all I have ever done. This was about a year ago, almost exactly. For my first performance, I used two cheap DVD players with one of those radio shack video selectors and a cheap mixer. I drew upon my IT experience, and having several extra harddrives laying around, I made the switch to computers. Several other programs were involved in the final transition to Virtual DJ about a month later.

Let me put in a quick note about Virtual DJ. Its amazing when it works. It uses VOBs perfectly. Loading videos, transitions, and everything is smooth. I cant do anything that would make the video stutter. Tons of plugins and cool customizable shit you can do with the program. Overlaying text onto the screen is one of my favorites. It has never crashed on me during a live setting. Not once. And I know I will be accused of being a wavie... but the way it will match a tempo for minutes on end without needing adjustments is just fantastic.

It has drawbacks. I, for the life of me, cannot get anything but the innermost inch of the vinyl to work. Normal records and Serato work perfectly across the whole record, but not Virtual. Scratching has latency issues, and sound quality of scratching is and always has been fucked up for me. Once I go forward and backwards twice, it sounds garbled and distorted. Mixing wise, its great. I hate the waveform display it provides. It just serves to confuse you. Serato in this respect makes it easier to mix by identifying different colors to different sounds. As far as setup goes, it is anything but plug and play. I have to plug harddrives and soundcards into exactly the same USB ports every time, else the software will bitch and moan at me.

I guess I have just gotten used to VDJ's nuances and quirks, they dont bother me too much anymore. I just got used to it, and I dont scratch much, I just mix.

I ran out and bought a TTM57SL + Video SL all excited for this, but between having to encode videos, the videos not being as high of a quality as the VDJ output, and it not working on a 3.6ghz dual core(yes thats right, I even overclocked it), I have thrown in the towel.

I will wait for serato to release the next version with MPEG2 support, and PC support. If VDJ can do it, I know serato can do it better. I just hope Serato can get their act together and do it quickly.

wtf. i been rockin videos in clubs for like two years. dude certainly has issues. hopefully people read his post, get discouraged and decide video is not a good way to go. that's all we need is market saturation.

check Charlie Five,
check D-Twizzle,
check A-Swift

thats just a couple forum cats been rockin video in big clubs.

I have been successfully using Virtual DJ for over 2 years doing video with timecode vinyl in major nightclubs from Houston Texas to now in Las Vegas (over a year in Vegas)!!

To compare the two for video would be unfair. VDJ has been ahead of the video game for a while. They have very little to improve other than a tighter timecode vinyl experience. The fact that you can use ANY midi mixer with VDJ to mix video and completely customize it to your specific needs makes more valuable. You are not required to go out and buy a $1,500 2 channel dj mixer & spend another $200 for video capabilities in order to be able to mix video.

I can walk into ANY club and work completely with their existing set-up with out modifying anything & mix videos in full VOB/mpg2 format smoothly!! No glitches!

(ask d-twizzle... he has seen me spin video in vegas!)

I have been curious of Serato's video plug-in when it was released & figured it will take some time for all the bugs to be ironed out. The most promising part of this video venture with Serato will be when it is rock solid, midi, and you don't HAVE to have the 57 mixer to use it for video!!

But for now (and the past 2 years) Virtual DJ will be weapon of choice!!

- DJ Phat AL

I agree with PHAT ALL. You guys should all go get Virtual DJ and use that. I'm serious.

Phat Al threw down an awesome 80's video set using VDJ and his mid mapped ecler nuo4.

*midi* mapped

does anyone know if these issues with the pc will be fixed in a beta or when we will be seeing something soon

Nope ... They have decided not to waste their time on people with PC's cause Mac is the only way to go.

Come on man. What do you think?

sweet

I couldnt get virtual dj to work for a damn. each release i give it another go, and eachtime the failboat cometh.

I am about to drop some serious coin on a mbp, but as someone pointed out to me, anytime u see a serious career dj, even with regular serato, its on a mac.


Time to step up my game and make an investment.

mac shmack , thats a crock, pc is just as fast and good as a mac, its the developers of the software

i'm not shittin on macs or anything, they're incredible computers, but why do most mac users always have to puff out their chest and preach mac to everyone? i swear mac users are almost like a cult.

what the hell do u need to have a cad drafting machine or a professional editing computer to dj , thats the stupidiest thing ive ever heard
i got some info for u , where u think serato got the video idea from ,,, hmm let me see VDJ ,, vdj working right blows away video sl ask phat AL and larry d
i wonder why 2nd nature and roonie g dont start using video sl, maybe cuz its not even close to dvj dvd quality

ya exactly stevenwayne

i have twice as many macs as i do pcs. i work for a company who manufactures over 100 software products FOR PC! i wouldnt call myself a mac user, i'm primarily a pc user (linux specifically). with all these PCs i already own, why do you think i choose to spend hard earned money on macs when i have pcs that are actually faster and more available?

hmm. i wonder.

i mean, i have twice as many PCs as I do macs.

well in this case macs r the superior to pc's for video sl

though i do think my serato on pc runs smoother than on a mac just not for video

Most of the PC problems are due to DRIVER problems, not VSL. Make sure you have the updated (and working) drivers and then retest.

I bought a mac just for VSL. Not going to lie, apple's drivers are MUCH better than their pc counterparts. Even the Serato mods have said that.

I've been there on the PC side dealing with shitty video drivers. It sucks. I'm not screaming "MAC MAC MAC!", but you really do need to research and test which video driver will work good for you.

does anyone have a pc and have serato video running smoothly? speak up
or ill be selling this stuff probably

like i said, im not shittin on mac computers, i'm not saying they're better or worse than pc's, my point is, you rarely see a pc guy ravin about "you should've bought a pc, blah blah blah..", but how often do you hear mac guys shoutin this out? more than enough.

haa this is old allready, u can debate vdj to serato to mac to pc all day long]
just like lexus to acura , or bmw to mercedes
the main fact is my shit dont work, lol on pc

That is unfortunate. I think that is crock to say "buy a MacBook" is the fix...
Most software developers whom have software that is cross-platform have the biggest challenge to ensure both versions work 100%. It wasn't until recently that VDJ made a mac version which from I hear is alright but not all there yet.

Funny thing...
I have a friend who bought the TT57SL mixer & video plug-in. He says that VDJ runs SMOOTHER than the VSL on his pc he set it up on. Different software with similar tasks... play video using timecode...

== Not bashing macs or serato.. so no haters about my post... I only post my personal experience.

If VSL is the way to go in the near future then I am sooo there... but it seems not for now.

--- still not buying a mac though... :-)

im with ya too al
i dont no, if i can just sit and watch this stuff collect dust, i think i rather ebay it and go by some 22's for my suv lol
and use vdj
and then when serato fixes the stuff maybe ill try it again

Its hard to understand what 'Macattude' is until you own one.

lol nice but why , just cuz u have a mac doesnt mean u can mix lol , or does it do that too

No it doesn't mix for us, it just means that we can mix with video.

i was kidding , i wonder why they dont put in the specs that it doesnt work for pc users yet, prob the same reason they never put u have to have 256 or more dedicated memory available for your video card
sales....

at first i meant they changed that now it says u have to have those specs

funny.... I don't have a mac.. and I have mixing video for years.... hmmmm

and btw.. I bought final scratch when it was first released trying to jump on the new cutting edge technology of use timecode to play mp3's... that shit never worked and I had ALL the specs they required... it just goes to show... don't jump on something as new as this and expect it to be flawless. For a select few it has worked great.. but for the masses... not so much.

in my case, I have had the same frustrations as PC many times. I found the fix, for myself....
I think it would be puffing out our chests if MAC didn't say something. I wasn't born with a .MAC membership. No one jumped me in, no apple tattoos, I just like shit that works right.

hey al what r u converting your vids 2 mp4 . or just using vob

that's great that its working out for you, but why discount pc's then? just like you said above, you found the fix for yourself, good for you. some people feel pc's work for them, right? given that pc guys are running into problems with vsl, shit happens, doesnt mean mac is better. when regular ssl was introduced, it worked alot smoother on pc's, but i don't recall alot of pc guys bad mouthin macs, right? to each their own. my point is, why bad mouth something if it aint your cup of tea?

well personally i never owned a mac , and everytime i used one i didnt like it much ,and thought it was slower with regular serato
so thats my reason for not having one
plus i know computers and defiantly know my way around pc's fixing and tweaking etc
all m friends when they have problems come to me and i can fix whats wrong most times
like i said if serato video would of worked with my comfiguration i wouldnt of said a damn thing but it doesnt and thats it well at least for now
remember first impression is what people remember at least i do
i thought the tilting of the video was neat , but woopie , the mixer faders r very loose and vibrate with the bass in the club i noticed ,, also u have to run the channel faders at full or otherwise it fades the brightness of the video , also i dont like using a fader so i wasnt thrilled about that one
i give it a 5 out of 10 even if it worked like it shouldve id still give it about the same rating
vdj i was impressed with the first time i saw that it had the auto transition and controlled by the play and stop on the cd players , i dont use vinyl i use cdjs
just my prefernce , of course i can mix on vinyl but why , needle dust vibration lack of space for the tables etc etc ,,

You can disable that.


Why use TT's...Respect. There are alot of benefits of CDJ's and Turntables (To much to go into the pro's and con's in this thread). I personally went back to using Turntables strictly for RESPECT and to work on my SCRATCHING. Watching a DJ working with TT's just provides a different allure.

I guess the bad taste in my mouth comes from hours of "tweaking" my computer to get it to do what I thought it should be doing. I resisted the mac for a long time, it was only after I switched that I really found out why people think they are.......







nevermind. I'm not playing this game.

OP,

sorry to bring the warzone to your thread. I was trying to help.

hahah its cool , ya respect is keepin the club packed and hoppin , most people dont care what your using , tapes , cd records 45's 8 trackss
u can turn the fader off how?
and u can still do the transitions , in my case the lack of transitioning

click the "link" button under the fader in the video hardware tab

you can turn video control for all the faders off. you can also use the 'cue' fader to control the video transition and the crossfader for audio w/o affecting the video

did that make sense?

ya thanks

me :) I just got a new laptop see spec below...
www.laptopsdirect.co.uk

when i got it it had vista on it, it worked but the 3 mini screens were a bit jittery but the output window was ok.
Just installed xp pro onto the laptop and its working smoother than i could have imagined.

I've got the 3 screens fully tracking both tracks,with the video quality set to the highest.with the output window fullscreen on an external monitor.
i can needle drop to a middle of the track and the video starts instantly with no usb dropouts or black screen appearing.

the only think that will slighty slow down the video is fast scratching with the melt transition on (which i heard it the most cpu heavy effect),its only a slight slow down but when i drop the output quality one notch this goes away also with no noticable difference in image quality.

one thing i'm going to try is updating the vista install with the drivers from here...
www.laptopvideo2go.com
as thats where i got the xp ones from incase it was the video drivers that were pre-installed causing the issue.

but i would recommend running xp if you are seeing issue on PC platform.

My Q6600 g0 will be in tommorow ... Thats the last thing I can do for now unless there are new video drivers somewhere.

I'm hopeing for 50% on all four cores across the board.

If not, I will be overclocking the bitch to 3.90ghz on a fan.

Yeah id like to know why VDJ runs great on my current laptop (40-95/100 CPU useage), but its not up to spec for VSL...i guess im gonna have to shell out some big bucks but hopefully it'll all be worth it in the end.

Toshiba m70
1.8 (single core!)
1.5 gb Ram
Intel 915gm 128 shared VRAM!?

At the moment im looking at this laptop..does anyone have any experience with HP's?
Cheers

HP Pavilion DV9500
* Core2Duo T7300 @ 2GHz w/ 4MB Cache
* 3GB RAM,
* NVIDIA GeForce8600M, Total 1023MB Video RAM (w/ 256MB fully dedicated)
* 2x160GB Duo-HDD system total 320GB.
* 17" Huge WXGA+ (1440x900) Crystal SuperBight Widescreen

DUH. VDJ can use VOB/MPEG2 directly. lot less CPU util so yes it will be smoother on low spec hardware or windows.

im using xp because vista 64 bit was not compatable

Sounds OK but if you can get a faster processor go for it. However the most important thing with VSL is how you encode your files.

I don't think vista is compatible with itself yet.

i got a PC and its running smooth, i been rocking it out at my Saturday gig. 3 1/2hrs. no problems, people are loving it. i also have a crazy laptop though...

You mean VSL doesn't play VOB/MPEG2?! i didn't know that...i might have to do some revision cause i have no idea what H.264 is.

well vsl supports many formats. none as crisp and cpu nice as mpeg2/vob

I have played on Video-SL every weekend since the release. No major problems, sometimes video dont run 100% smooth but it works.

What I want most is to be able to play VOB files, converting take to much of my time and I lose quality.

I use a MacBook Pro (2,4 duo, 4gb ram) all video on external WD 1TB firewire800 disk.

patients.

Quad was a success! My main output window is smooth as silk. All the preview windows are smooth as silk.

Still have the 1 second stutter on the main output screen when loading a video.

Here's a Vid showing the CPU Usage. Still don't see why it goes to 60% with no Videos even playing ... Just turning on the video plugin does that.

www.youtube.com view

thats cool matt. whats your cpu while doing real time mixing?

Actually the same as playing one track. 78% - 88%. It constantly varies.

Remember ... After turning on the video plugin, Mine uses 60% of all four at idle and It's not doing anything. That is definatly something that needs worked on in the code. I don't see how thats necessary.

In my opinion, If that gets fixed ... everyones boxes including ones that don't meet minimums should work well. I think thats the biggest problem.

Just having the Video-SL plugin "on" shouldn't suck up that much of the cpu.

Scratch Live alone sits at about 4% for me when at Idle.

I belive it's like this. When you activate the plug-in the "video engine" (3D surface) starts (thats the guy alowing you to mix two videos and applay fx), and this is running even if no video are loaded in the decks, that's why the constant CPU load. Memory load on the otherhand should change when you load video depending on the size of the video.

Mad Matt, does the main screen also freeze if you load tracks from the Serato library. it looks like you drop video from windows explorer on the youtube video.

Serato Library or Explorer ... same thing. I'm a needle dropper and an explorer dropper.

78% - 88% on vids ... But its doin 60% at idle after launching the Video-SL plugin with out playing anything.

I know what you were playing as the first track you loaded ;-)

haha, me too.

Just FYI guys, i bought a HP DV2799 T9300 C2D 2.5ghz 6MB cache and 4 gig ram Nvidia 8400 GS 128MB Dedicated.

Brand new processor, top of the range with a massive 6mb cache! Still 100% cpu and major glitches on the video side. I've given up and returned the laptop and the 57sl to the relevent stores. i refuse to spend more than £2000 on just getting the video to work with at least a decent quality video.

I'll wait till it works on a PC, then re-think.

GUTTED :(

damn looks like alot of major problems for Video for Serato. Eventually things will get ironed out. However I do agree that the developers should of released it for SL-1 box first, you have more users who would be able to really help test the product. Like quite a few users on this site, I have both SL-1 and also Virtual Dj. I did have do have Ecler Nuo4 but just bought the Ecler EVO 5 (if you havent seen it its a most to check out). I do love using Virtual DJ for my Video (thats all I basically do now) My SL-1 box sits and collects dust, waiting for the day until they release Video for the SL-1.
Just like Serato is having issues, Virtual DJ has run into problems as well. The reason video is working better on Virtual DJ is that they have been capable of doing video for over 2 years now.
I do have high end pc I built to do video, I have 120gb SATA II drive for the OS (Windows XP) and (2) 1TB drives that have all .vob on them This is all housed in my shuttle case (Small Form Factor). The CPU is a Dual Core 2 DUO 2.2ghz and 1gb memory.
I also have a MacBook Pro that I just bought (damn twice as expensive of a nice high end Sony Laptop). I havent install Serato or VDJ on it but I am going to test it out and see if the mac is better. I am not biased, however like most on her I think PC's are great if you know what your doing.

I am curios to see tho how many people bought the 57 just to do video, than found out they needed better computers, and than found out that the video is working great.

I do think in time Serato will have the bugs ironed out, just not sure how long alot of the users will wait before jumping ship.

I also have faith, that along with the SL1 compatability, they will tweak things to work on windows, but my "boggle" is that we were led to believe that there was no difference in compatability for VSL between Mac and Windows, although this was never actually said.

I would love to know the spec of the laptop that they tried it on in testing, that they must have been satisfied with the performance enough to include the windows version in the general release.

Anyway, the bottom line is currently, if you want to use VSL, you need a MacBook, i just wish they'd been upfront from the start. Bad form :(

Mods: Please don't take anything i have said personally, i'm sure it was a "policy decision", i am just annoyed as i've spent £2000 and a week of late nights trying to get something to work, that was never going to work. I hope you understand my dissapointment.

i guess you were running it with vista... I recommend downgrading (dual booting) to XP as I was not happy with the perfomance on vista but as soon as I installed XP on the same laptop everything ran smoothly with no glitches.

my specs are ...
sony vaio
2.2 dual 2 core
2gb memory
8600m gs (512mb dedicated memory)

It came with Vista, but i blatted it and stuck XP on. It was an improvement, but far short of useable. What quality/format are you encoding your video's with ?

Last nights show was awesome ... Videos were all smooth on the output and previews. Like 1 second pause on the video output when loading a song but other than that, its butta!

So PC people ... If you wanna run it on a desktop successfully right now, I can give you my specs.

Lugging a desktop around is not a viable option for me i'm afraid. Do you lug a monitor around with you also? Also, a 1 second pause when you load another video is unacceptable to me. It either works, or it doesn't. If it's pausing ... it's not working.

But thank you for taking the time to offer to help. That itself, is much appreciated.

The devolpers of the OS matter too....

As its been pointed out a million times, OpenGL works so much better on mac its silly!

I put osx 10.5.2 on my HP laptop and ran Video SL...HUGE difference. I guess part of it could rest on Serato's developers, but after seeing the difference on the EXACT SAME PC...I cant say i blame them for the obvious focus...

Im still buying aMBP, but my 1.77 core2duo HP is working fairly well...practice worthy, not really show worthy. I have osx on my desktop now too so i can do all my prep work (video conversion etc)

As soon as the new mbp come out....its buy time :)

That would be great, more info the better i reckon, i was thinking about a desk top that would fit into a tt case, what do you carry yours in.

the vids I'm using are from my12inch.com and are mp4 format ,I think with h264 codec.

Hi boabmatic,

I've checked out my12inch.com, and they have some good vids on there. Some are a little choppy as they have encoded them at 24 frames per second at only 1meg, and at 640x480, but generally the quality is ok. I imagine most systems could cope with these ok, but they are not of a quality that i could use playing live. too choppy and too low bitrate to be shown on projector screens.

Just checked one of their more recent ones, and it's at 2meg and 720x544, but for some reason, still only encoded at 24fps ?!

Maybe if they tweaked their settings a little, these could be ok.

Shame about the shameless plug on their intro watermark too. This would stop me playing these out live.

Are they definitely 24fps or 23.976?
23.976 is generally more common than 29.97 if the original video was shot using 24p or on 35mm film.

720x544 is the sign of someone doing the encoding who doesn't have a clue what they're doing. They've taken a 720x480 input video and then tried to make the pixels square.
For a start there is no point in making the pixels square you might as well leave them as they are, secondly if you do insist on it then you need to keep the vertical figure the same at 480 and change the horizontal.

ya im not luggin a pc desktop or shuttle in the club , hmm can u install mac on any laptop , thats worth a try but im sure it would be hard to find drivers and stuff
if anyone could help me out on that or knows how email me djrix1@gmail.com , might not have to buy a macbook pro afterall

I know you mobile guys don't want to run a desktop but, if there is a house pc in the club or the club wants to install one, i can help out with that.

i ran my video gigs on the shuttle PC for a long time. man what a pain.

@rg1973 - Just do a google for osx86 and you'll see plenty. make sure if you use it and keep it, to buy a genuine copy of osx.

@ DJ Mad Matt - Thanks for the offer, but i have a hard time getting the venues to fork out for light servicing or mixer maintenance, i can't see them spending a few hundred on a pc. they are TIGHT! And i'm not going to buy them all one!

@a-swift - I just bit the bullet and bought a new spec mac book pro! In for a penny !! 2.6ghz 6mb cache, 4 gig ram 512mb 8600 Nvidia .... if THIS doesn't do it, i'm going back to vinyl !!! (Maybe!)

you guys are spending wayyy to much money for a new mac or pc to run video,I have few friends that are cp geeks and the only good thing they say about mac is no virus,but Im running a hp 1.8ghz with 4gb or memory on a new cpu,and cant run video on serato smooth at all,and im not dishing out no more top dollar to spin video on serato, it run good on vdj without much problems.i talked to a tech at hp and told him the specs I had to run video is not powerfull enough,and he laught and was like what program are you djing with and I told him and he was like im go check this out and get back to you,I also told him I can run the same laptop with vdj with no harsh problems,and he was like im going to look into that. well he called me back and said 1st that dumb of serato to make the specs to run video that high.he said you need to have a laptop made in the last 6 months to be even at specs,and said when you run video in quicktime it plays with no problem,and stated that serato doesnt know what their doing at the time or their focusing mainly on mac user cuz they dont have to tweek their machine cuz its already their,then he was like their missing a main part in making the video work right,he said dont waste your money on getting a mac and doing it to play video cuz the pc wont run it that much smooth,he said mac are good but thats because their tweaked at the factory to run graphics,but also said that mac's fuckup big time when running graphic programs full on cuz its pushing the processor at a much faster rate then the mac was design for and said that serato will most likely do the samething down the road.then he went the talk about vdj and was like they did homework on their video and its tons better then serato's video,he said you dont need a high power machine to run it,nor and $1500 mixer (and im not lieing)he was like you can video with $499,compared to $1799 so do the math,he was like by the looks of it to him that serato/rane is trying to corner you guys in to buying the mixer and make $$$$ he said vdj is only $499 and you can use the sl1 box.so after talking to him I gave up on videosl and just use vdj if i want to do it but its not a major factor in djing in a club as the crow I spin at dont care and would rather dance then watch a video.I refuse to spin $2k or less on a mcp to play video plus $1400 for the mixer and $200 for the plugin (Ripoff)then add in the $1k in your old cpu you have and another $579 if you have the sl1 box to.totalling about $4100 on just the top half of the system not including the cdj's or 1200s Thats a nice dwp on a car.so in closing I leave with this,serato/rane dont have the video fully figured out yet and should of put it out with the sl1 first and followed vdj and made it better,cause now theirbasically in the dark by themselves in figureing out what works and what dont.

thats the longest I've ever posted.

that's the longest run-on sentence ever posted. ever.

mixin a paragraph.

A good honest one though, im gonna wait a while and see what happens.

i reckon VSL is still in its early days - give Rane/Serato some slack - it can work, but unfortunately not on all systems (PC users especially). However, I think the developers will eventually get VSL working on most systems (that meet min req specs) that most people who are angry will finally be able to get it working and then we'll work out the bugs, get more new stuff and effects to play with etc.

It would have been nice if it worked for everyone immediately but it didnt - you cant do much about that. It didnt work for me immediately, i had to spend a lot of time experimenting until itchie mentioned the resolution size and then the .mov container which made it work for me.

Serato/Rane can do what Numark and PCDJ did, got to Virtual DJ and have them help out. Actually if they could combine the 2 products into one Serato & Virtual DJ I think everyone would be set and happy. It is a shame tho, that Serato/Rane made everyone invest 200. for the video upgrade when alot of people are having issues. The proper way would of been to allow for many beta testers using multiple platforms.

Ummmmm . NOOOO ... Virtual DJ does not do Video like Serato does ..

Serato Splits Audio and Video into 2 seperate parts .. They just get played at the same time.

VDJ plays the whole track compiled. (Like running winamp in 2 screens.)

There are more pros then cons the way Serato is doing it. It took VDJ 3 releases before they could get it to run properly on everyones machines.

Been there done that and had to listen to everyone bitch that it wasnt stable enough in the first place ... Now why are you adding video?!?!?!?!?!

I think I need to find one of my original posts ... FOUND IT from January 5th!

Right... it only has been doing video successfully longer than Serato.




I do like that...




A list would be nice.

But the pro for VDJ right now would be that you can use it right now without having to be tied into one piece of hardware (ie. the mixer)

I have been using VDJ for over 2 years with great success. I can walk into ANY club right now and set up and play video. oh... and play vob files too.





but it works... wonder how many releases it will take Serato make a version that runs just as smooth. This of course after reading everyone's problems with it so far. It seems to be a resource hog, technical issues, crashes, etc..
Oh and people are forced into encoding their video into a format that is even more compressed than the vob taken directly from DVD content. I can rip a video in seconds of a dvd, rename it and load it ready to play in VDJ with NO problems.

It will take time just like any other NEW software out there released to work out all the kinks.

I plan on getting the Serato video plug-in & ttm57 mixer to test it out for myself with my own configuration. Hopefully it won't be a bad investment... that is alot of dough to shell out for something that is still... in my opinion.. in it's beta phase...



At that point I will use which ever product works best for me... :-)

I'll take the opportunity to disagree with phat-al. The feature I like MOST about serato video is that it's tied to the 57. That's the feature Al likes least. 57 is a fantastic mixer. If it were tied to a Denon DNX-100, i might have issue with that.

The two features I like more about serato is better mac support and of course the vinyl performance goes without saying.

The BEST thing about vdj is the VOB support. Video-SL is really missing that crucial feature.

Most all of the issues being discussed here revolve around people not knowing how to encode videos properly and PCs not having enough power to run compressed videos.

+1 Swifty. I have been using VDJ for the past year strictly for video. The Mac stability and the Timecode performance is the main reason why I moved to Video-SL. Big deal you have to buy a new mixer. 2 smaller gigs and I paid that off. Although I do have to say I like the DJM 800 better than the 57 and wish that it was able to be incorporated. I'm also glad that its expensive, hard, and timeconsuming to get into video. That way every other wavy can't get into to it and drive my prices down. The VOB thing bothers me but I now organize my videos different. All my gig ready videos are tagged and on my laptops HD (320) which is great for building playlists and keeping everything organized.

I have no opinion good or bad about the mixer itself. Just the fact you can't decide which mixer you want to use. And that limits your mobility of doing guest spots in nightclubs that don't have that mixer.





I don't use a mac and I do agree that the timecode is much tighter.





I don't think it isn't a pc not having enough power issue.. it is that they didn't get it on the pc side as solid as the mac side. I have a pc that can run compressed video flawless using vdj with great specs.. I have seen similar specs from other users here who have issues running serato's video.

Well I think everyone will agree that Serato's timecode is much better than VDJ. But like everyone else is saying your tied to the 57. I personally love the ECLER mixers. I have NUO4 and bought the EVO5 back in january. The midi and sound quality of the mixer is topnotch. Yes it cost alot but your getting a high end sound card, 4 channel mixer, and effects for that price. I have seen the 57 first hand (friend has it) and it looks /feels real cheap. I also have read about alot of users having to take the damn thing apart and fix for themselves. COme on you spend 1200-1500 for a RANE mixer and the EU (End User) has to fix it?

Also like others mentioned, VDJ can play .vobs come on thats standard video format. I know its been discussed that Serato will be supporting it sometime in future, but look how much time users are wasteing to convert it for serato use.

Also people are saying to go with MacBook Pro, I personally have one and the damn things are expensive but I also own a computer company and have customers on both PC's and Mac's so it was a must for me. However when I do my Video gigs, I am using PC Dual core 2.4ghz with only 1 gig of ram. I dont have any issues doing video with Virtual DJ. However like others mentioned is the timecode support, is why alot of guys have both Virtual DJ and Serato.
I know Serato has talked about eventually allowing the SL-1 box to do video, but honestly monitoring the site, it looks like its going to be a long time, I think serato should just open it up to other soundcards and mixers, this way users dont have to be locked into RANES products, I understand RANES reasoning (monopoly) but come on honestly I know alot of users here would prefer to be using other mixers.

I love my ecler too!!

way more options than the 57!! and it doesn't feel cheap... but it is actually cheaper in price!!

and midi...

I was talking about the Nuo 4

it all goes back to drivers when you're talking about the PC...no support on the PC side fucks you in the long run...ask kagen.

I returned my Nou 4 a week or 2 after I got it. I didn't like it at all! The only thing that I like was the middle section that was completely mappable. I went with the DJM 800 instead and it was worth it.

well , i hung in there but bought a macbook pro
ill let u know how it works

Hey now...i have one of those, and i bought 2 for my radio station (cheap bastards! lol...)

They are great little mixers :)

Just not for video djing...