How about video?

Undoubtedly there is interest in this, that Job was advertised last summer so its certainly no shocker but if , as you say, the job is still unfilled it means we are no nearer to video than we were last summer.
Hoorah !

I could be talking rubbish and they may have already started on the project . Who knows or dares to dream.

Im sure it will happen one day.

 

I didn't realise it was on the site for that long! I guess that has answered both ours and NI's questions regarding the feature, the only people I can see applying for Traktor Development jobs are current Traktor Users, and if nobody has applied for the job then that says to me that it's not something us users are too keen on...

 

I don't want to bash on some peoples' purist sensibilities, but the video argument is starting to resemble the old and tired argument of vinyl vs cds vs mp3s. It's a new technology that is being appropriated by forward thinking djs. It will not change the way people listen to music, and it will not change the way people party at clubs or the reason why people come out to see "You" on the weekends. What it does, is the ability to provide a full sensory experience. The music will always be the one and foremost main element. No degree of video will make up for a bad song a bad dj set, but great music, great dj sets with great visuals are definitely something to experience. Most djs collaborate with VJs to achieve the desire look and feel of their shows, but some other djs want a higher level of control over their visuals. For those of us with the desire of creative control over our performance, to be able to control certain aspects the video while we play music, is a huge benefit.
All major djs have seem the benefits really good visuals incorporated into their dj sets ( Tiesto, Armand Van Buren, Sander Kleinenberg, Richie Hawthing, etc, ) and other djs have been exploring the audio visual realm and pioneering the merging of this two worlds since the 80s ( Colcut, Hexstatic ).
It's not about having a 10 feet screen " in front of you " ( by the way, most likely, it will be in back of you, or to the side... sorry ), it is about providing a full multi-sensory experience. One in which everything is in synch with the music, let it be lights and video.
Video is just another aspect for us to enjoy the music and a new creative venue for forward thinking djs!

 

+1! (Ups the total to -26?)

I'm opening for the Ninja Tune Solid Steel Night this friday with Dj Food + DK & Cheeba. They will be mixing everything with their TTM57's on the big screen. It shure would've been great if I could step up with Traktor being capable of video.

Still I'm sure indeed a lot of guys are asking for video but wouldn't actually use it if they got it. It takes a lot of time and preparation to come up with something interesting.

However some others, like myself, are getting busy with video and would love to be able to take our mixing/scratching skils to a visual level (without having to spend 1500€ on a new mixer).

Oh well, I guess it will happen one day... Most important, Lethal Pizzle made a good point: "Get the audio elements right first."

A preview of the Solid Steel stuff:
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9FoOSgC32o"]YouTube - DJ Food & DK @ Videocrash, Koko, London - 13/10/08[/ame]

Greetz,
NLS

 

@ Carl , From a month or so back:
http://www.native-instruments.com/forum/showpost.php?p=487457&postcount=20

I dont disagree with what your saying dude i just think im ok with not having video. I certainly dont disregard it as a valid part of entertainment.

 

My biggest fear of adding Video support to consumer level software is that it may "water down" what the Big Boys are doing, I can imagine most people who are starting off doing this kind of thing at Bedroom Level would just hit YouTube and lift poor quality video and just use that.

I think the key to making this work, as someone has pointed out already, is that the whole experience needs to be top-notch, the music, the DJ who's playing it, the visual ideas and its overall presentation.

My 2 cents anyways, I'm all about quality

 

Woah, just minute there... Your opening for DJ Food. I still got all my Jazz Breaks albums in special place. Im huge Ninja Tune lover.
My friend sent me the Stussy 'You Dont Know Nijna Tune' t-shirt up last year after the event. He managed to get hold of the Ninja Jeans the lucky git .

That will be a great event. Im jealous.

 

I'll send you a postcard
---
By the way, I wonder what kind of movies the "bedroom" dj's would mix

Wouldn't want to be their neighbour...

 

The mind boggles.

 

We have a person in our group that is focused on VJing, incorporating live cgi production(don't ask me what), and incorporating movies, clips, and video footage into our show. If it was up to me to do everything I would never leave the computer! I focus on the tracks and our sound, and getting a few clips to our VJ...making me a traditionalist with an open mind(oxymoron).

I would've loved it if vinyl was still THE way to go, but cds made sense. Having done so much work on my cds, I would've preferred if they were still as useful and convenient as they were before. Now I'm going to software, and I don't want to have to switch over right away or spend a load of $$$ to incorporate visuals and work more closely with our VJ. I tend to wait and see where things go but I am gripped by the urge to work the visuals into every show, big or small. The smaller, cheaper, and easiest to use format will lead the way.

I want to use Traktor but I don't want to wait and see any longer on whether they will incorporate visuals in some way. It's a hard lesson to learn to find yourself left in the dust by change. Think about it, how many top DJs PREFER to carry vinyl? In 15 or even 10 years how many top DJs will PREFER to perform without visuals? We VJ for many top acts and >30% have visuals of some sort prepared. There are still guys playing vinyl(dubstep?) and there always will be, there will always be people mixing in visuals, get on board.

That said, be different no matter the cost!

 

Amen! Get your Visuals On! The Revolution will projected, screened and streamed! You heard it here! Listen to your music and start visualizing your beats, your melodies and every single sound you can think of. We live in a world full with sound and color... build your world of sound!... build your world of color!

 

It would be cool if other programs could read Traktors settings like volume faders, loop settings etc etc. Then it would be easy for people to develop controlling plugins for 3rd party VJ software.

 

Well VDJ has been doing videos for years now way before Serato/Rane. So here's what I do since my Audio 8 works well with VDJ, when I want to mix or play videos I use VDJ, for anything and everything else I use Traktor

 

+1 a plugin like MixEmergency for Scratchlive
http://www.inklen.com/mixemergency/

 

hey

+1

First of all I think it would be a very worthwhile feature to add to the program. It would be like all of the other features: Traktor can record your set, but if you dont wanna do it then don't. It can broadcast on the internet live, but of you dont wanna use it then don't (and how many people actually broadcast a live set on the internet? I bet far fewer than would VJ, but its still a nice feature to have for the one time you do wanna use it ). A lot of dj's don't even use effects, and thats their choice but its still nice to have the option for those that want to. And video is the same.


Also, I think it really depends on what your point of view is in terms of how you'd be using it.

On one hand you have the commercial dance DJ's, Hiphop DJ's or top-40 DJ's, and almost all of their songs would have a video to play so in effect you would just select the track like you would normally but it'd be a video file such as mpg or divx, and mix it as you normally would with audio and the visuals would just follow you. Very much like VirtualDJ's implementation it wouldn't take any more effort or concentration than with just audio, apart from the tiny step of maybe selecting what transition to use when you crossfade or mix.

Then for the few tracks you have that don't have a video, or if you play less commercial music that doesnt have its own video for most of your set, you could have the choice of either have a small playlist with a couple of automatic videos of which one gets selected that just get put on the screen to fill it up for that track, or you could take control manually and select specific video clips yourself for each deck, and they could either be chained to the audio so they would follow any mix/fading or juggle/scratching you do, or be unlinked so that once you had mixed the audio you could manually fade, crossfade and bounce the video about as needed either with the same crossfader and a shift button or layer/or with a controller with a second fader especially for the video.

For these ones it'd be more like you would see at a live DJ show (chem bros, tiesto, fatboy slim or really everyone now a days). You could prepare custom stuff what ever you want, be it just big random abstract colour things (which would really be as much a part of the lighting show as anything else), or your own recorded video, or movie or TV clips or whatever, graphics created for name drops or even graphics created to advertise nights and events at the club. As long as they were a video file traktor wouldn't know the difference and would just play them all the same.



For me personally it's something that has really been in my head the last few weeks, and something i really wanna get into for the commercial and top 40 nights i do, not many people round here doing it and would defo be an edge to get a bit extra work, i'm actually half considering going to VDJ for it, although i'm really not wanting to switch from traktor now that I have it all set up and working awesome and i've invested so much time and money into it, and just generally really like the way it works.

And while you say most clubs aren't set up for it I would disagree, many clubs now have plasma screens or projectors dotted about the place and as a former sound system designer and sound/lighting installer into bars and clubs it is really pennies to just run a cable to the DJ box to link into that system from your laptops second display output, and even only a few 100's to get a decent projector or something mounted in the lighting rig to shine against a wall next top the dancefloor.

k

 

-10

There's a club near me that forked out thousands for a state of the art VJ rig because their resident jock insisted it was the next big thing. He's good at the VJ thing too (I've seen him at play), but to be quite frank nobody in the club cares because all they want to do is drink, dance and play tonsil hockey with the opposite sex.

Most DJ's aren't lucky enough to play in the sort of venues and to the sort of crowds that would appreciate VDJ'ing. Besides, all it'll end up being is an excuse for DJ's to link their set to a custom visual they've made from their porn folder

 

Or same Sex. Its all Love and its all beautiful..!

Karlos

 

Hey Kevin, if it's really in your head, well get your money together and go buy yourself a Rane TTM57 and the VSL plugin. Or if you happen to own a Pioneer DJM800, just get a Serato box. If you're really into mixing videos this is the hardware you will need to do it right. Don't think that changing to another program will be a hassle. Basically they all do the same thing... And your playlists... well you can simply drag them from one program to another!
I was one of the few asking for video in Traktor untill I thought about the fact that one would never be able to mix audio & video at the same time with one crossfader (except if you have the djm800 which has a midi assignable crossfader). I ended up getting the TTM57 and don't regret a bit of it. What's more, I still use and love Traktor as much as before ;-) As long as I'm not doing video.

One thing you do have to think about: video is really REALLY a lot of work to get it right. Video content is not so easy to find, can be quite expensive and takes A LOT of work, time and preparation. If you don't know how to use editing software like Final Cut, Premiere or Vegas and if you know nothing from video codecs, well you'll have a really hard time getting your content right.
Also I would advise you to have multiple macs to do all your video conversion on. Getting a 3/4 minutes video in the right codec takes about 20-30 minutes. For 1 clip! And this is not counting the ripping/editing that comes before that...

It is great fun however ;-)

Greetz,
NLS

 

Hey, somethings is moving good for mixing video ... for Serato Itch.
but nothing for Traktor
Denon said:
Originally Posted by VJ Justin Allen View Post
As video is gaining more and more prominence in the mobile industry, and Itch does not do video....
Thanks, Video is expected shortly.
Denon confirms video VSL for Itch coming soon.

So, what are you doing with a video plugin for traktor, Native-intruments?
We are waiting since a long time now...

 

Don't need it