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Forum: Wishes and new features

Topic: Mixmeister type mix previewing

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As a mobile DJ I sometimes have to have VDJ in automix mode (especially when busy doing other things). Some of the transitions that VDJ has produced have been awful and it would be nice to be able to preview and adjust each transition in the same sort of way as Mixmeister does. I have used Mixmeister but it's library functions are pitiful and I'm not sure it is still being supported (no updates or bug fixes for ages).

Cheers, Rick.
 
Posted Wed 22 Jun 11 @ 3:13 am
One of the closest things you can do to make things sound good and reliable every time is after you set you playlist for the night add the bpm catagory in the playlist section. Then use smart. It will sound tons better. If you want things to sound like your actually mixing while your doing other things. Choose fade. Then choose anywhere from 8 to 16 for the fade time. Only available after you choose fade in the same window. Thenthis is the trick to sounding stellar with auto mix. Look at your list if you find songs in the same bpm great. But if you fi.d songs double or close to double the bpm of the song your setting up to play check the key of the songs if they match line them up for the list in that order. What will happn in essence is say a song in the key of A is playing at 80 bpm and the next song you lined up is in the key of A and its 160 as they are fading into each other the beat of the new song twice as fast will pick up the tempo and sound as if it is part of the song playing. Now if your mixi.g genres it will not always sound great but it works awesome. But for really easy great sounding auto mixes try my advice and just hit bpm sort then save your list. You'll find that its all good in the hood. Or where ever you play lol.
 
I have seen a few posts requesting that automix give an option to use hot cues that we set. This may help as automix never really does what I want. Don't get me wrong it works well and is no replacement for live talent. It just never made sense to me why it never gave an option to utalize all of our hard work setting cue points.

On the other hand, I only use it to start the night myself. With most people just comming in and getting settled, most customers never even notice. Unless of course I call attention to it in conversation, if I am mingling to meet and read the crowd. Sometimes I ask just to see what most people do notice. So it is probably a non issue when you think about all the other great features that Atomix can spend time on to improve our live sets.

For example, when I think of last night's actual live mixed set, I really thought I was having an off night. Really bad and choppy mixes, if I do say so myself. Turns out everyone loved it, tons of compliments AND.... a $$ tip from the owner?? Sometimes DJs just tear themselves (and other DJs) appart with the negative details. The details are important, but coversation and good times are everything, and that is what DJs facilitate. It is not so pass fail unless it is a wedding with a bridezilla or a MAJOR club/concert.

That being said, I think that using hotcues in automix mode could add some "polish" to the start of the night.
 
 
I deffinetly like the hot cue idea but I thi k a fall back would be people who have 7 hot cues in a song what would the program choose? We do have smart cue for an option but I never really use it. It does work nicely though. And great point about mingling. I have had shows where the owner wants more mingling which would keep the automox on all night! Why hire me at all them? Save money and buy vdj for your club. And I havr had some that complain if your not spinning the whole 4 hours. My solution has been to take a pretty girl with me at all times. In this case my wife. She mingles gives me a heads up of the types of people in the bar then I adjust my set. I sometime usi g the method I described before will mix and flavor my sets while its in automix making my day easier. Especially when I am having an off day and hellen keller would out mix me!
 
Whilst I have the utmost respect for DJs that take care over every mix, I have found that most punters at weddings don't care about the mixes but do care about what music is playing. For me, a good DJ is someone who plays the right music at the right time and involves everyone in the room (granny wants to hear music she likes as much as anyone). Therefore I don't get hungup on the nuts and bolts of mixing but rather concentrate on finding the right music and sometimes (not always but sometimes) I'd prefer the software to do the mixing whilst I just drop songs onto the playlist. Unfortunately, as there is no way to preview how good any mix is going to be, you are in the hands of the programmers - and that has proven to be adequate at best.

Mixmeister has a completely different approach which works really well for my situation, however, the software doesn't seem to still be in development and doesn't have very good library functions. The ability to preview a mix is a massive advantage and I was hoping, that by posting my wish in this forum, one of the developers would see it as a good idea and implement it. I imagine that there is a gap in the market now that Mixmeister has died and I for one would like to see it's functionality added to VDJ. All software developers are looking for the little bit of 'added value' that puts their product ahead of all of the others.

Rick
 
Scrinson wrote :
I have found that most punters at weddings don't care about the mixes but do care about what music is playing.
[snip]
Unfortunately, as there is no way to preview how good any mix is going to be, you are in the hands of the programmers - and that has proven to be adequate at best.

VDJ is a two deck mixing program.. Most people who purchased VDJ did so because of that exact reason.. IE: those of us who like to mix 'live'..
as too "most punters at weddings dont care" I would heavily argue that point.. As I have found the COMPLETE OPPOSITE.. they do notice.. and they do care..

To be honest I can't see VDJ ever being really good at single deckmixing like OTS AV or Mixmeister.. (and the mix preview like you might see in those programs)
for the simple reason, VDJ was built to be a two deck mixing program.. the "autoplaylist" is more of an 'added' funtionality rather then its primary function.. (same reason why OTSAV and Mixmeister was never really great at 'live' beatmixing.. they just were not built for it)

having said that..
If you put the time into your music catalog, (same as most users of OTS and Mixmeister did) and "tweak" the automix cue points and mixtype, you CAN actually end up with an automix that is 95% as good as a live mix..
I only use the automix for my pre-dancing music (dinner/cocktail), but i have experimented with it enough to say that if setup correctly automix can actually do a phenomenal job...
but first, you need to wrap your head around that it is a two deck mixing program.. and set your automix cue points accordingly..
 
 
Hippy you said it in. Agreea much briefer way and I totally
 
how about something like "automix_skip & goto_cue 1" or mix_now & goto_cue 1" its not really auto as you would need to hit a button, but just a thought

or actually this would difinately work for that joey... you would need to set your effects to always stay on and preprogram 2 cuepoints (one at the start of the track to skip to the second cue) to work with cues events, turn it on, set it to automix and your set
 
@synthet1c
The skip cue feature is also very desirable because as you well know there are dead (No Beat) movie scenes in the middle of alot of videos today and there is no way to address those other then editing them out first..

The current cue point feature for the beginning of a video will work fine and do the job if your manually mixing, but in automix it doesn't work well, if an option to overrid to a cue point while in automix mode then at least the start would be good..., then only a skip feature would be a challenge....
 
in cues events you can skip to a cue, from a cue, what I was suggesting was to have the cues events cue milliseconds after the start to skip to the right section, if timing is an issue you could set a sync cue after it has skipped to get it back on time, its a workaround though, so not exactly what you want, but it will do what you want now, there was a big long post in the general forum about it http://www.virtualdj.com/forums/128960/General_Discussion/how_to_cut_parts_out_of_tracks_.html
 
Yeah, thanks synthet1c I remember participating on that thread also, well lets hope they will make this feature possible soon...
 


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