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Forum: General Discussion

Topic: I'ts hard to admit but Virtual DJ works 1000 times better on a PC than on Mac

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I have a core 2 duo desktop PC in the nightclub where I work and VDJ runs very well, (hardly neve crashes and handle well video formats). That PC is 3 years old!. I Just bought a Macbook Pro 13" (2.6ghz, 4gb ram) and VDJ cant play all those video files that my old pc can ! (some of them looks choppy or out of sync), also when accesing the same hard drive (an external one) its faster on my old PC (i don't undertand).

Another bad thing is that not all plug ins are available for mac, and hardware (for example numark dj io) has to config in a very different and confusing way (like even after install it it doesnt show in the config, and you have to select 4 output card, and in the PC you selec ASIO driver and numark dj io).

I think there should be more updates to de Mac version hope some day it gets more close to the pc version

just my toughts
 
Posted Fri 28 Jan 11 @ 7:19 pm
Mmmmmm, you say 1000 times better on a PC? Maybe that's why I use a PC. Plus, if something breaks, I can repair it in the field. To be fair, I have never used a MAC. They must be good, because a lot of people buy them. Me, I just use what works best for me. Have you tried the Mac forum, I am sure you can get some help there?
 
I'm a Mac user and I have to say the opposite has happen for me. When I bought my Rmx and installed it on a brand new Hp laptop that was running windows 7 64bit just the LE keep freezing on me, so I bought a mac book and haven't had a problem with the program except when i'm trying to do multiple things its slows down the communication from controller to software. I do have say the navigation on a mac is 100 times different to get to something just because I was raised on a PC and i'm not familiar with the controls of a mac. I also only use the mac book for my DJing purpose tho. Just my opinion.
 
Just install Windows on your mac and you will be happy.
I have Macbook exactly like yours and everything works perfect including video. BTW I changed hard drive for 1TB.
 
I used the Home (free) version on my macbook but on the windows side I also have windows 7 installed but i had more issues using the windows side of the laptop than I did when using the free version of VDJ on the mac.
 
I used the Mac version of VDJ for several months and found some bugs that caused me problems in day to day use. These were reported to Atomix but most of them still haven't been fixed.

Although the Mac version is stable, I bootcamped with XP 32bit and now run the Windows version of VDJ on my 17" Macbook Pro which is excellent.

I personally just don't think the Mac version is as good as the windows one and doesn't have enough development focus. Although I've never used the Mac version for video it's easy to see from the forums that a lot of people have issues with it, and of course the lack of user developed plugins for the Mac side will always be to it's detriment.

If you install Macdrive in the Windows side, you can then use the Mac partition for your music and move the VDJ home folder there. Benefit of this is that your music and all your VDJ settings will back up to time machine each time you go in to OSx.

Keith
 
See I dont think I will ever use VDJ for videos so that aspect of it doesn't affect me. But u are correct I have read also that there is an issue when doing videos on the mac side of it.....Man I can't wait for my mixtrack pro 2 get here so I can get VDJ pro.
 
My finding too.
 
if you wimps had Macs and Serato THEN you'd be cool , and i might even hang out

with ya ....
 
Hey Chuck .....

Serato is perfect with timecode & Mac

VDJ is perfect for controllers and Windows

No program can ever cover all bases perfectly!

Keith
 
island sjoa wrote :
brand new Hp laptop


That's part of your problem. I've never had an HP laptop that was any good for anything other than surfing the web. The load those suckers with so much bloatware that it has problems running any strong software.

Back when I used to do drafting, using AutoCAD, it was always a problem with HP computers. AutoCAD is a powerful softaware that requires lots of pc power.

People I think for the most part bash PC because PC is for everyone, in the sense that if you don't know anything about computers and just want to surf the web and write emails, you can go to your local walmart and get one for that. The problem comes when you buy one of those and try to use it for something that requires the pc to actually work.

If you compare prices, than you'll know. Don't expect a $300 laptop to handle VDJ or anything for that matter and then blame it on "windows".

Also, you can't say that a Mac is better when you actually paid about $2k for it. If you build your own windows laptop and spend about $1.5K (and actually know what you're doing) then you'll have a kick butt system that's rarely going to fail you, and when it does, it's usually something simple to figure out.

That's just imo
 
I purchased a Mini Mac and loaded VDJ on it and wasn't impressed. Loaded Windows XP on my new Mac Mini and reloaded Windows VDJ. No worries now. I used the bootcamp.
 
Wow, thanks for replies, I play mostly with videos, and have many and in very different formats, from VOBs, to MKV, avi, movs and you know.. its a mess, but one of the greatests fails of VDJ on a Mac is the way it handle videos, I don't know why on a cheaper, old PC can play some video files very smooth and on my brand new macbook pro I can't !!! thats one of the reasons I felt this way :(

I think for playing just mp3 music is very stable, maybe a bit more than on Windows since I never had a crash on a mac (and maybe 10 on Windows in 3 years). I think atomix should recommend something to "normalize" all my vid library and have similar formats that can be handled well on windows and on Mac.

Another thing I found is a little bit more slow on searching files on external drive, I don't know if its because my external HD is NTFS format, but i have it that way because if I go play on another club and use another computer im pretty sure it will be a PC (90% of the times) and they can't read HFS partitions.

But well thats just my 2 cents.

Thanks for recomendations on loading VDJ on bootcamp will try this weekend, hope it works with my interfaces.
 
djfilosoff wrote :
Just install Windows on your mac and you will be happy.
I have Macbook exactly like yours and everything works perfect including video. BTW I changed hard drive for 1TB.



or save 1,000 dollars and just get a well built n tweaked pc :-p

 
upon reading this, i bootcamped and im pretty glad i did. Also noticed that multitasking on Windows is smoother too. if i could get my Grand Theft auto into window view id have a little break from looking at waveforms and rotating platters for a bit ;)
 
Ticoindamix wrote :
island sjoa wrote :
brand new Hp laptop


That's part of your problem. I've never had an HP laptop that was any good for anything other than surfing the web. The load those suckers with so much bloatware that it has problems running any strong software.

Back when I used to do drafting, using AutoCAD, it was always a problem with HP computers. AutoCAD is a powerful softaware that requires lots of pc power.

People I think for the most part bash PC because PC is for everyone, in the sense that if you don't know anything about computers and just want to surf the web and write emails, you can go to your local walmart and get one for that. The problem comes when you buy one of those and try to use it for something that requires the pc to actually work.

If you compare prices, than you'll know. Don't expect a $300 laptop to handle VDJ or anything for that matter and then blame it on "windows".

Also, you can't say that a Mac is better when you actually paid about $2k for it. If you build your own windows laptop and spend about $1.5K (and actually know what you're doing) then you'll have a kick butt system that's rarely going to fail you, and when it does, it's usually something simple to figure out.

That's just imo

I have been trying to tell my fellow djs this for a long time, well put and imo rather true. I have been using VDJ for video for the past 3 years on 3 different pcs and never had a issue related to the operating system, granted tweaks were made and i do not have a pretty apple logo that lights up lol
 


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