Does your MBP have a dedicated graphics card? Not all 15" MBP's do and that can make a huge difference

how do i tell

which serato update should i use

You can tell by clicking on the apple in the top left corner and selecting About This Mac that'll tell you wheter you have the intel only card or an NVidia card (dedicated) ... If you only have an integrated card (intel) Serato Video is not a good idea for you no matter what version you run ... look in to MixEmergency (www.inklen.com) that runs a LOT cleaner than Serato video with both Dedicated and Integrated graphics

What version of SDJ are you using? If your laptop only has intel hd graphics and not a dedicated graphics card then you will have these issues. The red light means your getting dropouts or having CPU issues. So how much CPU are you using in Serato? Not all MacBook pro's can run video smoothly the better the graphics card the better the performance.

It could also be the OS X as El Capitan was not the most compatible operating system for Serato.

What are the full specs of your machine? That will determine if the laptop is good enough.

macbook pro (retina,15 - inch, late 2013)
processor 2 Ghz intel core i7
memory 8 gb 1600 mhz ddr3
graphics inter iris pro 1536 mb

You need at least a 2 gig video card for best performance.

I just down grade it to OS X Yosemite
10.10.5

Can there be a different video card for this system

good question if it's only an itegrated video card it will be difficult to install a high spec video card. You could always try mix Emergency which is less CPU and a better VJ software.

Hopefully someone will chime in with more knowledge on this topic. I'm sure the video card could be switched out but it's pretty costly.

Grab the Mix Emergency demo on www.inklen.com and see if that plays nicer with your setup when it comes to resource.

I have a 2015 13 inch MacBook Pro that I use to run mix emergency3.1 along with serato dj . It works well but I have to set my USB buffer at 10 when doing video. Without video I can drop it down to 2 and it runs fine.

Awesome didn't think a higher USB buffer would make a difference on lower spec machines. Good to know!

I use an integrated graphics card on my mid 2015 MBP 15'.

I use this for my mobile gigs when I have to jump into multiple parties in one day and need to have a quick IN and OUT.

It has the equivalent of 1.5G of VidRam.

Performance wise its great. However, I am getting about 55-58FPS. I have not had time to sit down with the system to see if I can get that to 60+, which I am sure is possible. This is also my backup laptop so its not meant for me to use constantly.

On the 10+ parties I've used it on I have not had a client come up to me and go "HEY BRO THATS 58 FPS AND NOT 60 BRUH". This is based on using it for exclusive video mixing on 14 parties? I would say thats like....50+ hours of mobile gigging on the machine.

This is with video mixing, transitions.. all the stuff.

However, it has a hard time losing 1080 videos that are over 20minutes.

I had one party where I had to use internal quicktime and not Serato for a video montage. It was not the end of the world, but it's worth mentioning.

I use 720p videos with some 480p if the video is much older (2000 or earlier and did not get an HD revise)

Not going to see bitching about 57fps outside of gamers :D

So in everyone's opinion, are integrated graphics good if you are not doing video mixing? Just normal serato MP3 DJing?

Audio only mixing on an integrated GPU is perfectly acceptable. I don't see any potential bottlenecks for audio only.

Thank you