well i just realized my graphics card is only 256mb so i need to upgrade

You sure it's a 2010 mbp and core 2 duo.
They stopped putting core 2 duo's in 2009.
2010 should be i7 dual core

also what size is it? I;m not sure but i though only 15inch and larger had dedicated video cards. if you have a 15 you should be ok to play around with for now, but you will want to upgrade when you can. My buddy runs video on a 2008 MBP 15 inch and 4 gb of ram. Its not great but it works for him.

Also serato video (or any video DJ software (ME, Serato Video, Video SL, VDJ)) does not do 4 channel video. Only your main decks get video.

djpuma its from april 'mid 2010' 13" model, it was the last time they still had those. regardless, i realize it only has a 256mb graphics card so it not gonna work for video.

code:e thanks for the confirmation on video only being 2 channels.

256MB will work for video, you just won't get all of the effects.

The early 2011 13" with the Intel 3000 is really the bare minimum you can get reasonable performance out of for video.

But even then, it's not great (I know, I use one). You should definitely look to upgrade to a 15" with a dedicated GPU if you want to do video seriously.

all good, i have accepted that fact. current machine is old anyway now, so its time.

thx again everyone

Maybe I don't understand the question well but I really would like to know why in the living hell somebody would like to "MIX" 4 channels of "visible" video..
The screen would look awful to begin with.
Most "top" deeJays that use 4 channels of audio don't use them all at the same time unless they are playing some type of pre-programmed mix that usually even in that way is a constant "in and out' of different sound textures.
if you really want to "quick-mix" videos (as in the public seeing many videos going on very fast) you should just use a "long" video file (all your "battle tracks videos" edited together in one file and under one name, you could do that in Sony Vegas) then sample the intro and/or edit points (8 samples each side on the pioneer Sx) and that would do the job perfectly...

Boogiefromcur - good question. You are correct, mixing 4 layers of music videos themselves would look like crap. Not what I am trying to do.

Some amount of time I will actually have gigs doing video deejaying. The majority of the time I will be doing visuals for events, complimenting the music that another dj is playing.

Currently using Grand VJ mapped to an APC 40 for this. This gives u 8 channels of video. These could be graphic texture layers, a layer of video, branding and logos, etc. Not mixing all 8 at once but its nice to be able to bring things in and out as needed.

4 channels of video on Serato Vid would allow to do the same thing. I don't need 8 channels realistically, but 4 would be great. With only 2 I have a lot of preproduction work or creating Quartz files to pull off what I am trying to accomplish.

If Serato Video eventually allows for Quartz 'overlays' then I am cool with only having 2 other video channels.

great explanation, solomonic...
basically you still would be restricted by the hardware that controls serato, if you really want to use only the serato "hardware" for example the upcoming pioneer sx controller, I would simply make a couple of "nonstop" videotracks with 8 videos each and sample them beforehand. That would give you 16 videotracks (8 each side) that you could fire off instantly (in theory...). The current pioneer DJJ-S controller would give you 5 samples per track, thats quite a lot already but like you said .. that would mean "preproduction" and lots of thinking ahead...
I think the future is very near that you will get special "battle mixes" remix services = special quick-mix video-edits for purposes like this...what about you start producing them? i'll be one of your first customers...
succes

word up boogie, trust me we got some dope stuff in the works...

been having this in the planning stages for @ 4 years... one of my partners has been doing it for some big gigs for the past 2 using the Grand VJ / APC route... I'm now just bringing the dj aspect to the table and trying to build off serato as the platform so that it can trickle down to our other dj partners and become an automated thing to add some visuals to their sets..

got the ddj-sx preordered so i definitely am super excited to play with the things that will allow me to do...

as for battle mixes etc trust me we got all that in the works... and don't get me wrong, i will be dropping videos themselves... this is the first thing i tried to do a few years ago just using iMovie... credit the artist being so precise on his dub plate version that everything matched up without even trying... not really battle mix vid like u saying, but still dub plate videos is a whole next thing... Watchwww.youtube.com

anyway thanks again everyone for all your input, and i am stacking my loot already to get myself a MBP 15" w 1GB of ram...

it just dawned on me what u are saying... basically put 8 clips together into one vid... set cue points for them... trigger with the velocity pads... now i have 16 instant tracks... dope!

Solomonic. I hope your using a mac cause i have a great idea for you. Do you know anything about Syphon? If not start here syphon.v002.info Now go buy Inklen's Mix Emercgency boot up grand VJ and use syphon to send video from each channel in ME into Grand VJ. do all your Video mixing in grand VJ and bam there you go. Now you have all of the grand VJ efx plus the ability to add up to 6 more layers (2 used for ME) now your water marks can be a layer Use grand VJ's text for messages to the crowd (last call, ect...) I have done this before and it works amazingly well.

Wow Code:e thank you that sounds like the deal. Yes I am using a mbp, first post I explain its only a 2.4 ghz base model with 8gb ram so I am just rocking mostly with quartz files for now and in a month or so when I can upgrade to newer laptop start integrating my video files...

I was going to go for ME but when the support for grabbing artwork from tracks to use as the default broke in 2.1.1 I decided to hold off... then in my wait, the DDJ-SX and Serato DJ got announced...

Been waiting to get it and see how much can be mapped into other apps anyway because using the DDJ-SX with Grand VJ as just a controller was another possible option... but I really want Serato to work, so I started getting deep into QC and Xcode the last month and I have a partner who is a C programmer so we just went in hard on getting some cool visuals going that can run on what I have for now... I think I can pull off the basics with that... but the concept you just gave me is pretty dope. best of both worlds!