halo_djk
I've been using Virtual DJ for about a month, and love it!! Alas over the first few weeks I had many CrashGuard appearances, now I have very few. Here is a list of the bugs I have found, some I'm sure have been mentioned before.
1:
Video Crossfader not smooth when automixing and linked to audio crossfader.
2:
No keyboard shortcut, or Dac shortcut for video swap.
This is a bit of a pain as it must be done with the mouse, or trackpad in my case. Transitions are useless in this case as you cannot "Smoothly" drag the fader across. A keyboard shortcut and Controller (IE DAC-2, DAC3, X10) Shortcuts should be provided for a "Slam fader" IE no transition, and Swap with transition, This should include a smooth video fader transition, and a setting in "Video" for fader speed.
3:
Built in video codec squeezes entire video image into top half of screen on PAL DVD quality.
For full Pal DVD (720x480) quality you must "Use Windows Media Codec" for the video to show full screen, but in using this codec loading time is far longer. This issue may also appear on other formats and screen sizes.
4:
Satellite Transition, windows only spin sometimes.
I'm unsure of exactly what causes the windows to spin, but a few times I have had the windows not spin at all, or stop as the video fader is dragged across halfway.
5:
1+2 on default skin is confusing and should read "MAS" or "OUT"
6:
Time dots on DAC-2 missing between minutes and seconds.
This may also be the case on other controllers.
7:
After playing a few hours of "Videos only", switching to MP3 causes CrashGuard.
This was found when visualisations were active, on one occasion the crash happened after the MP3 was started, right at the point the Video crossfader was switched to the MP3 side, Crashguard failed to restart the new song as both players were still playing at the point the "Restart" button was pressed, resulting in silence.
8:
No way of locking to a Cuepoint while using Dac-2
I.e. select GoTo Cue 3, but on pressing play, then Cue on Dac-2 VDJ always goes back to CUE 1, you must use mouse to quickly go back to cue 3. I have stopped adding more than one cue on all songs due to this, it can be embarrassing.
9:
Text option for video output needs second line option.
The more you type into the window, the smaller the text gets. Even on the text wrapping down onto the next line, the outputted text stays on one line. Perhaps the option of pressing ENTER in the window will cause the outputted text to wrap to the next line. Also an outline is needed around the text as white text cannot be seen on light music videos, and dark text colours cannot be seen on dark videos. An outline is standard on all text shown on commercial TV, even if very fine outline.
10:
LOW, MID, and HIGH Kills distort on first use.
11:
MP3 Load after videos far too slow.
After changing Speedload option, load too fast for videos (No audio problems, just video stutters) and great speed for MP3's after video. Without speedload change MP3 load without prior use of videos files is fine, I don't understand why it is slowed so much for MP3's AFTER using video files. Either slow down the Video load time AFTER changing Speedload, or leave the MP3 load times the same after video file use, (for those with unchanged speedload setting).
12:
Video sometimes only plays on one deck at a time.
(Hardware acc turned on) This usually happens only once per shift, on first load of players! load player A, press Play, audio, and video start normal. Load player B, Press play, audio plays, video frozen. Reload player A, Video starts playing on player B! Press play on player A, Audio plays, video frozen, pattern continues! If you drag the video fader from the frozen player to the good one, good one appears fine, frozen one stays frozen, until other player is reloaded. By applying "Flatcube" transition, moving video fader halfway, then going into Video window under settings, turning off video, switching to widow option instead of second monitor, turning video back on, then switching back to second monitor, you can see when both players are playing video properly. This can be done, at least on my system, while the music is playing to customers, without any problems with audio. After video is fixed
13:
On screen video uses far too much processor power.
Depending on what skin you use, I have tried a few skins that have a video window for both players, plus one for the master out. Just using the main centre video preview will use about 35% processor power, just using the two player video windows cause the whole video system to start stuttering, audio fine, but processor at 80%. The same result when all three windows are opened, Processor at 100% and unwatchable video. These are tiny windows, and proberly use software rendering, but they chew one heck of a lot of processor time. Perhaps the framerates could be lowered a bit for the preview windows on the DJ screen a little to prevent issues appearing on the Main Out for the customers.
Obviously a bit late for corrections to 3.4, but hoping this may help prevent the same bugs appearing in Virtual DJ Version 4.0. I am aware My video specs are a little low, but the video issues I have prove that after the fix is applied the software will run for hours without any video problems. This system runs R4 flawlessly for hours at 40 to 60 frames per second also.
System Specs;
Inspiron 5150
3.02 GHz CPU
1 GB Ram
80 GB 5400rpm HDD
GeForce FX GO 32 MB Video
DJK
1:
Video Crossfader not smooth when automixing and linked to audio crossfader.
2:
No keyboard shortcut, or Dac shortcut for video swap.
This is a bit of a pain as it must be done with the mouse, or trackpad in my case. Transitions are useless in this case as you cannot "Smoothly" drag the fader across. A keyboard shortcut and Controller (IE DAC-2, DAC3, X10) Shortcuts should be provided for a "Slam fader" IE no transition, and Swap with transition, This should include a smooth video fader transition, and a setting in "Video" for fader speed.
3:
Built in video codec squeezes entire video image into top half of screen on PAL DVD quality.
For full Pal DVD (720x480) quality you must "Use Windows Media Codec" for the video to show full screen, but in using this codec loading time is far longer. This issue may also appear on other formats and screen sizes.
4:
Satellite Transition, windows only spin sometimes.
I'm unsure of exactly what causes the windows to spin, but a few times I have had the windows not spin at all, or stop as the video fader is dragged across halfway.
5:
1+2 on default skin is confusing and should read "MAS" or "OUT"
6:
Time dots on DAC-2 missing between minutes and seconds.
This may also be the case on other controllers.
7:
After playing a few hours of "Videos only", switching to MP3 causes CrashGuard.
This was found when visualisations were active, on one occasion the crash happened after the MP3 was started, right at the point the Video crossfader was switched to the MP3 side, Crashguard failed to restart the new song as both players were still playing at the point the "Restart" button was pressed, resulting in silence.
8:
No way of locking to a Cuepoint while using Dac-2
I.e. select GoTo Cue 3, but on pressing play, then Cue on Dac-2 VDJ always goes back to CUE 1, you must use mouse to quickly go back to cue 3. I have stopped adding more than one cue on all songs due to this, it can be embarrassing.
9:
Text option for video output needs second line option.
The more you type into the window, the smaller the text gets. Even on the text wrapping down onto the next line, the outputted text stays on one line. Perhaps the option of pressing ENTER in the window will cause the outputted text to wrap to the next line. Also an outline is needed around the text as white text cannot be seen on light music videos, and dark text colours cannot be seen on dark videos. An outline is standard on all text shown on commercial TV, even if very fine outline.
10:
LOW, MID, and HIGH Kills distort on first use.
11:
MP3 Load after videos far too slow.
After changing Speedload option, load too fast for videos (No audio problems, just video stutters) and great speed for MP3's after video. Without speedload change MP3 load without prior use of videos files is fine, I don't understand why it is slowed so much for MP3's AFTER using video files. Either slow down the Video load time AFTER changing Speedload, or leave the MP3 load times the same after video file use, (for those with unchanged speedload setting).
12:
Video sometimes only plays on one deck at a time.
(Hardware acc turned on) This usually happens only once per shift, on first load of players! load player A, press Play, audio, and video start normal. Load player B, Press play, audio plays, video frozen. Reload player A, Video starts playing on player B! Press play on player A, Audio plays, video frozen, pattern continues! If you drag the video fader from the frozen player to the good one, good one appears fine, frozen one stays frozen, until other player is reloaded. By applying "Flatcube" transition, moving video fader halfway, then going into Video window under settings, turning off video, switching to widow option instead of second monitor, turning video back on, then switching back to second monitor, you can see when both players are playing video properly. This can be done, at least on my system, while the music is playing to customers, without any problems with audio. After video is fixed
13:
On screen video uses far too much processor power.
Depending on what skin you use, I have tried a few skins that have a video window for both players, plus one for the master out. Just using the main centre video preview will use about 35% processor power, just using the two player video windows cause the whole video system to start stuttering, audio fine, but processor at 80%. The same result when all three windows are opened, Processor at 100% and unwatchable video. These are tiny windows, and proberly use software rendering, but they chew one heck of a lot of processor time. Perhaps the framerates could be lowered a bit for the preview windows on the DJ screen a little to prevent issues appearing on the Main Out for the customers.
Obviously a bit late for corrections to 3.4, but hoping this may help prevent the same bugs appearing in Virtual DJ Version 4.0. I am aware My video specs are a little low, but the video issues I have prove that after the fix is applied the software will run for hours without any video problems. This system runs R4 flawlessly for hours at 40 to 60 frames per second also.
System Specs;
Inspiron 5150
3.02 GHz CPU
1 GB Ram
80 GB 5400rpm HDD
GeForce FX GO 32 MB Video
DJK
Mensajes Mon 29 May 06 @ 3:21 pm
JeremK
Thanks for the bug report. It's true that your video hardware components are unsufficient for VDJ.
Some of the bugs you reported aren't bugs and have a fix:
2: use shortcut: video_fade or video_crossfade. I don't have VDJ on this computer but you should find the shortcut easily.
4: this could be from your video hardware.
5: isn't a bug, just change the text in the skin .bmp file.
9: to go to line when typing the text for video use: ctrl+enter to go back to next line.
10: known bug. It was alot worse on previous versions of VDJ.
12: this could be from your video hardware.
13: having a cheap graphics card will make the computer use far lot more processor.
Some of the bugs you reported aren't bugs and have a fix:
2: use shortcut: video_fade or video_crossfade. I don't have VDJ on this computer but you should find the shortcut easily.
4: this could be from your video hardware.
5: isn't a bug, just change the text in the skin .bmp file.
9: to go to line when typing the text for video use: ctrl+enter to go back to next line.
10: known bug. It was alot worse on previous versions of VDJ.
12: this could be from your video hardware.
13: having a cheap graphics card will make the computer use far lot more processor.
Mensajes Mon 29 May 06 @ 4:50 pm
halo_djk
Cheers for the quick response...
I Thought I may have missed something!! =)
Video Card does not rotate the windows, it is somehow connected to the player that the video crossfader is closest too. Its controlled by VDJ
If this was video hardware It would do it every time, and I would not be able to correct it by restarting the video section of VDJ. Sometimes the problem never happens and I play for 6 hours without a problem. I have found that loading the first track and pressing play before the track has loaded completly, or loading first two video files that use different codecs will help cause the problem happen. If it doesnt happen after playing the first TWO tracks, you can go nuts for hours and the problem will not occur.
This isn't exactly a cheap video card, 32MB is still a fair size. Remember this is a 3.02 GHz system, and running three small video windows maxes out the CPU, thats a massive amout of prosessing power compared with closing all three windows and getting 3% processor usage on a video file, with full screen video still displaying on the second monitor.
JeremK wrote :
2: use shortcut: video_fade or video_crossfade. I don't have VDJ on this computer but you should find the shortcut easily.
I Thought I may have missed something!! =)
JeremK wrote :
4: this could be from your video hardware.
Video Card does not rotate the windows, it is somehow connected to the player that the video crossfader is closest too. Its controlled by VDJ
JeremK wrote :
12: this could be from your video hardware.
If this was video hardware It would do it every time, and I would not be able to correct it by restarting the video section of VDJ. Sometimes the problem never happens and I play for 6 hours without a problem. I have found that loading the first track and pressing play before the track has loaded completly, or loading first two video files that use different codecs will help cause the problem happen. If it doesnt happen after playing the first TWO tracks, you can go nuts for hours and the problem will not occur.
JeremK wrote :
13: having a cheap graphics card will make the computer use far lot more processor.
This isn't exactly a cheap video card, 32MB is still a fair size. Remember this is a 3.02 GHz system, and running three small video windows maxes out the CPU, thats a massive amout of prosessing power compared with closing all three windows and getting 3% processor usage on a video file, with full screen video still displaying on the second monitor.
Mensajes Mon 29 May 06 @ 5:21 pm
halo_djk
Quote :
2: use shortcut: video_fade or video_crossfade. I don't have VDJ on this computer but you should find the shortcut easily.
Any ideas on where to look, I can't find this in the keyboard shortcuts or the Skin developer pages at all.
Mensajes Mon 29 May 06 @ 5:41 pm
low-fat-al
"This isn't exactly a cheap video card, 32MB is still a fair size."
That is soooo not enough to run video smoothly.
I use a 128 meg nVidia 6600gt card and with my scratch mixing with vinyl it still kind of studders the video due to the amount of memory needed to smoothly scratch the video. I am waiting on a nVidia 6800gt card that has 256 megs of memory onboard to help with this matter.
That is soooo not enough to run video smoothly.
I use a 128 meg nVidia 6600gt card and with my scratch mixing with vinyl it still kind of studders the video due to the amount of memory needed to smoothly scratch the video. I am waiting on a nVidia 6800gt card that has 256 megs of memory onboard to help with this matter.
Mensajes Mon 29 May 06 @ 9:06 pm
JeremK
I wrote :
2: use shortcut: video_fade or video_crossfade. I don't have VDJ on this computer but you should find the shortcut easily.
If something is in the skin, it can be done by shortcuts. (Except for text displaying, etc)
I'm not sure the function is video_crossfade, but go to VDJ config, then click on Keyboard Shortcuts and then Add.
click on video in the list at the left and i'm sure you will find Video_crossfade or something meaning the same.
Mensajes Mon 29 May 06 @ 10:14 pm
halo_djk
low-fat-al wrote :
"This isn't exactly a cheap video card, 32MB is still a fair size."
That is soooo not enough to run video smoothly.
I use a 128 meg nVidia 6600gt card and with my scratch mixing with vinyl it still kind of studders the video due to the amount of memory needed to smoothly scratch the video. I am waiting on a nVidia 6800gt card that has 256 megs of memory onboard to help with this matter.
That is soooo not enough to run video smoothly.
I use a 128 meg nVidia 6600gt card and with my scratch mixing with vinyl it still kind of studders the video due to the amount of memory needed to smoothly scratch the video. I am waiting on a nVidia 6800gt card that has 256 megs of memory onboard to help with this matter.
Actually it does, strangly, smooth as silk, transitions and all, the only problem I have is the small preview windows on my screen, and the video frozen on deck problem.
Mensajes Tue 30 May 06 @ 1:12 pm
halo_djk
@ JeremK
Thanks mate, I found it, sorta half expected it to already be active! It was VIDEO_CROSSFADE and I set it for curser left -100, and curser right +100, works well!
Thanks mate, I found it, sorta half expected it to already be active! It was VIDEO_CROSSFADE and I set it for curser left -100, and curser right +100, works well!
Mensajes Tue 30 May 06 @ 1:30 pm