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Forum: General Discussion

Topic: Clip Banks...

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I posted this in another thread, but I thought I'd post it here as its own topic...

Regarding the clip banks, I've spent some time playing with it this past weekend. I see that there are definite advantages of using the clip banks over loading it to a player. I love that when you "hover" over the clip, it plays in the small box so you can get a preview. I love that you can loop it indefinitely. And it's very easy to switch clips by just tapping into a different clip box. I can set up several assorted clip banks as suggested earlier for all my different themes and styles (baseball, sports, earth, chroma-key, billboards, ocean, universe, etc, etc.....).

However, I think the main problem that exists with the clip banks is that it's very cumbersome to get there. I have to first select EFFECTS, then sub menu of VIDEO EFFECTS, then CLIPBANK, then ACTIVATE, and only then can I start browsing them. And all of this must be done using a traditional mouse that is very difficult to place over these tiny menus. I could not find any other method (either keyboard shortcuts, or Hercules button) to get there.

I have a suggestion:
I would love to see the entire Clipbank function taken out of VIDEO EFFECTS, and incorporated as an entire new category next to BROWSER, SAMPLER, EFFECTS, and RECORD. When selected, it could take up the entire lower half of the screen, enabling you to have a much larger inventory of clips available, with numerous banks to select from. I think that CLIPBANKS is certainly at least as important as SAMPLER, EFFECTS, and RECORD, and deserves to have its own menu with an appropriate keyboard shortcut. Also, why not eliminate the ACTIVATE button for clips? Just make clips present on main output whenever selected. Besides, why would anybody want clips on the non-active ouput?

I think the immediate availability of clips is especially important for mobile DJ use where dance music is not necessarily continuous, and you need material to fill in. I think this would be an awesome, powerful addition, and I hope the development team will consider incorporating this change.

Thank you.
 
Posted Mon 22 Oct 07 @ 10:25 pm
Anybody have any thoughts / feedback on this? Am I the only person who thinks this would a good idea? I'd love to hear some opinions...
 
I agree... it sooo needs to be in a spot for immediate access.
 
Sounds like a great idea to me.
 
There is...

Set a shortcut key for each of the clips (check the shortcuts) Doesn't get more direct that that.
 
I haven't seen anything under CONFIG/KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS that assigns anything to a displaying a clipbank, or even an individual clip. Am I missing something?
 
Eric Sands wrote :
I haven't seen anything under CONFIG/KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS that assigns anything to a displaying a clipbank, or even an individual clip. Am I missing something?

video_fx_button(value) with value€[0,11]
 
I totally agree..... I am a moble DJ not a club DJ and I think that clip banks should be available without going through several layers of menu's.
Infact, I don't even use it because it is too much of a pain to get to.
 
DJCEL... I'm not sure I follow. I went to SHORTCUTS, and selected ADD. Then I selected video_fx_button, and checked off VALUE, set it to 0,11 and hit OK. Now what? What keyboard shortcut do I type if I'm in the normal BROWSER mode, when I want to access the clip bank?
 
nybeatdjs wrote :
I totally agree..... I am a moble DJ not a club DJ and I think that clip banks should be available without going through several layers of menu's.
Infact, I don't even use it because it is too much of a pain to get to.


I respect your decision on why you don't use it... But come on man... It takes 3 seconds to activate. It would take you longer to load a CD in a CD player back in the day. Or place a vinyl and cue it up. Hell I hate having to go inside DOCUMENTS / PICTURES when I want to change picture folders. It only takes about 10 seconds to load but it's a price for convient production. Give Atomix time to develop a way to make DJing with your mind, hence, "VIRTUALDJ". As for now you do have to due some of the work.
 
I tentatively tried clipbank during a gig last week (low video memory), and it worked great - what a relief! What I think might be really neat is to cycle through the clips like a slideshow ;)
 
discjockeydoc wrote :
I tentatively tried clipbank during a gig last week (low video memory), and it worked great - what a relief! What I think might be really neat is to cycle through the clips like a slideshow ;)



I am using the clipbank now, and came here to suggest this. I am running four Halloween clips, and have to keep changing. I'm not gonna slit my wrist because it's manual, but it would be nice. If it was in it's own category, The possibilities would be endless.
 
AMAHM: I agree - well put... I like that orange demonlike clip. It's perfect for puting 2d text underneath it scrolling.
 
djcel wrote :
value€[0,11]

Sorry if I wasn't clear but mathematically speaking it means to select a value between/in/among {0,1,2,3,....,10,11}
 
fatkatzdj wrote :
AMAHM: I agree - well put... I like that orange demonlike clip. It's perfect for puting 2d text underneath it scrolling.


I have these green "Happy Halloween" loops going, and "Welcome To Cheeques" scrolling underneath. Just got the idea from your post, to change the color of the font, to orange. Now, what demon-like clip are you talking about?
 
 
Yes - the possibilities WOULD be endless. I can't stress how powerful the immediate availability of numerous clip banks can be. For example, I have several hundred clips divided into themes, including:

Chromakeys - when I want to overlay a "Party Cam" (for example) on top of a live camera feed via my Edirol mixer

Billboards - When I want the audience to respond by having them do something, like applaud or scream, for example

Abstracts - like all the Promo Only ambients, which are great when there's no music playing

Themes - like Baseball, Ocean, Surfing, Tropical, Racecars, Skiing, etc... which I use frequently during Bar Mitzvahs, which always have a theme.


This makes your show SO professional when you can play these so quickly as the situation demands. That simply is not possible if you are in the browser, and you need a clip buried 4 layers deep in a single bank of 16 available clips using a shaky mouse on small buttons.

Of course, compared to cueing up DVD's, even the current version of VDJ is far superior. You can always say "...CD's and DVD's took much longer to load". BUT that's NOT the point!!! We should be trying to optimize the software to make our jobs easier, with more professional results. If not, let's just bring back VHS tapes.

My point is.... I am suggesting a powerful addition to this phenomenal VDJ software that DOES NOT SACRIFICE ANYTHING by adding this.
PLEASE... bring CLIPBANK to the top level, expand it to fill the lower half of the screen (~36 clips), and allow for multiple banks that we can individually load with our own themes.

Thank you.
 
You can kind of do this now, you are not limited to a single bank, you can simply copy the .dll to the desktop rename it and put it back. I just tried this I copied the clipbank.dll to the desktop and renamed it to Brian.dll and put it back and it works, so now I can rename it to whatever I want and poof its there. I was runnin like 7 different clipbanks so in essencse it works, but havin more than 12 in there would be cool too.
 
Yes - that seems to be true, and definitely helps. I'm still trying to figure out the keyboard shortcut thing...

As an example, if I want my Chromakey clipbank to pop up and activate when I hit the F9 key, what would I need to do to make that happen? Everything I try under CONFIG/KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS doesn't seem to work...
 


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