Serato Video General Discussion

Talk about Serato Video and Video-SL.

Serato Video - recording video sets

James Falk 11:58 PM - 19 January, 2017
I've had long discussions with people regarding Serato Video in another thread for a few years now. Since the topic of that thread had nothing to do with Serato Video, I figured it was time to start a new thread.

I've just contacted Serato with regards to recording issues & will share my experience with them in this thread, particularly since my last support question ended with me on the phone with a member of their design team that many users here have questioned even existed. This time around I'll make sure to share in detail everythings that comes out of this support session. Anyways...

I've just written Serato the following:

I own 2 Macbook Pro's Retina's. Each has a dedicated video card.

The first is a 15" late 2013 model with a NVIDEA GeoForce 750M dedicated card.

My second is a very recent purchase, a mid 2015 model with a AMD Radeon R9 M370X, currently the best dedicated card that exists inside a Macbook Pro.

Both computers have OS X El Capitan version 10.11.6 installed. Neither computer has anything on the drives other than Serato software. They are exclusively for DJ'ing. All music is played from external drives as recommended on your website.

I have my video library located on an external USB 3.0 4TB WD My Book which is formatted as a Mac OS Extended drive. I have about a dozen of these specific drives & have gigged flawlessly with this setup for nearly 3 years.

That being said, I've never been able to record with either computer. I have diligently followed the directions listed on the Serato website. I always choose the local drive to record to, so that I am reading from my external drive & recording to my local drive as directed so that files are being "read from the external drive & being written to my local drive. For audio mixes this works flawlessly.

To date I have yet to successfully record even a fraction of a second of a video.

I've just purchased (like an hour ago) a 2TB WD Passport Pro which is the one of the faster external drives on the market. It has a Thunderbolt connection & I've now attempted to record to this drive, rather than write to the local drive on either computer.

Finally I have it working but:
-if choosing 1080p I can record 8 seconds of video
-if choosing 720p can record 30 seconds of video
-if choosing 480p I can record 25 minutes of video

I haven't bothered trying the final option 360p. The quality of 480p was bad enough that I wouldn't even begin to look at anything worse.

I'm unsure if I am doing something wrong & am writing to open up a dialogue to discuss. Have any Serato Video users been able to record successfully using a MacBook Pro Retina?

I've yet to find anyone being able to so on your forums & am beginning to wonder if this is even possible. Every forum I've read have users stating to abandon Serato Video & instead choose Mix Emergency.

I do own Mix Emergency, but that isn't my point. I would hope that Serato Video is able to record, otherwise I'm not sure why ithis feature is offered for Mac users.

I will say that two years ago I owned an Alienware 17" model which has one of the best graphics cards on the market (a Geoforce GTX 980M). I was able to record flawlessly with this computer, but it did have the best mobile video card in the world inside that had specs that benched 5x-10x that of the best Macbook Pro Retina both of which are the models I'm using here.

Sadly I returned the Alienware 17 due to a stability issue that had this model crashing at exactly midnight daily. This had nothing to do with Serato, but rather was a bug within the OS. When working, it was a thing of beauty, but no DJ / VJ is interested in crashes. I wrote for support from your team & even spoke on the phone with a senior design memeber, but in the end returned this unit as the problem couldn't be solved in a time frame that matched my next gig date

I'm now almost 3 years into my Macbook experience with zero crashes. I gig daily, spinning in total about 6,000 hours with zero crashes to report, I am pretty happy with how things are with one exception...the inability to record my video sets.

Please advise.
James Falk 5:34 AM - 27 January, 2017
This was their initial response 3 days later:

Kane D (Serato)
Jan 23, 14:05 NZDT

Hi James,

Thanks for your message, sorry to hear you've been having issues recording with Serato Video on multiple computers.

When you say "if choosing 1080p I can record 8 seconds of video, if choosing 720p can record 30 seconds of video" etc what happens after the aforementioned time elapses?

Please ensure you've followed the optimization guides below;

For Mac;

Mac Optimization Guide for OS X
support.serato.com

How-to: Adjust graphics performance for the MacBook Pro

support.serato.com

If these steps don't help, please reply with;

Your computers full specs and a list of all USB devices that you have connected.

If you are having trouble finding them check out this article:

support.serato.com

A screenshot of SETUP --> EXPANSION PACKS --> SERATO VIDEO --> OUTPUT

We'll work through getting one computer set up and working first then the other, so let's start with the mid 2015 computer.

Kind Regards,
Kane Donaldson
Product Specialist

Serato INC LP
Private Bag 92015, AMSC
Auckland 1142, New Zealand
T: +64 9 304 0899
popnwave 6:35 PM - 27 January, 2017
Quote:
This was their initial response 3 days later:



So does this mean you'll just use ME and give us a break?
DJ Tecniq 7:40 PM - 27 January, 2017
Quote:
Quote:
This was their initial response 3 days later:
So does this mean you'll just use ME and give us a break?
Lol yeah he kinda put Kane on blast😂