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Topic: Automix advice

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I hope someone can help me on this, I have a family wedding coming up and it was my intention to load VDJ up in advance with BGM I feel is suitable while the bride & groom are having photographs done and that usual period of catch up and chit chat. I'll be busy with stuff other than manning the console. After selecting much of the music I have gone through and set Automix points in and out for the songs, but when I test the fades I find that VDJ seems to override my mixpoints according to the setting I have selected.(Fade remove intro/outro etc.) How do you guys get VDJ to obey your manually set in and out points in Automix?
 
Posted Sun 15 Sep 13 @ 12:52 am
Try smart.
 
Fraid not, my in and out points are overridden.
 
Standy by for V8....there will be a very elegant way to solve this....
 
Or play some prerecoded sets. But that would take some time to make.
 
Bring on version 8 then. I hope V8 also has the ability to remember the song order in the playlist, I know this has been spoken about many times before, but it's a much needed feature (imho).
I'm going to use Swift Elite 4 for the BGM. You can save your playlists in the order you would like on the day, but you can change the order any time by dragging songs, (and save again or save as). You use 2 decks with a fader and deck A automatically starts when deck B has ended etc, with a preset fade time, 2 or 4 seconds or whatever. Problem with that is, the songs go all the way to the end, and start at the very beginning, so I'm going to edit all the songs I intend to use in Adobe Audition, start them where I want, and give them very short fades where I want them to end. A lot of work, but once it's done.............. It's better than prerecording as it's flexible.

Thanks for the suggestions.

BTW, can someone explain why VDJ has the ability to set in and out Automix points if they can't be effectively used??
 
You can save your playlists in VDJ and also save changes to them aswell. In the upper left corner is the icon to turn on and off automix, then right under it is playlist management, right click that then save and name it whatever you want. To change order, open the playlist, drag it over then make changes, click save and type the same name it will then ask you if you want to overwrite it, say yes.
 
Yes that is true, and I could bring those edited songs into that playlist and choose Fade (remove silence) and that would do what I want, (except for songs that I have purposely edited with a 1 second silence at the start), but the fact remains: if at any time I click the sort bar for track or artist, (any column), my custom sort is gone, you can't get it back AFAIK.
 
This is my observation, you are making this way to hard. First, I know you said this is family, but you are still working as the DJ. I do family gigs, and the only difference is, I know everyone. Which makes it all the better, because they know not to mess with me, while I am working. There are a lot of important moments, that have to be addressed, and it should be the same as if you are getting paid. You seem to look at this as a family thing, and that's OK, this is just the way I look at it. Second, why would you spend all that time, editing tracks, to use with another software? VDJ is not perfect for you, so you use another program, that is not perfect for you? As stated in the previous post, you can save the playlist, and even change it and save again. Although, I don't understand all these changes. For all that work, why not just man the decks, and play the songs? How much time are we talking about? What, you want to mingle and be a guest? You already know these people, and this is a reception. It's all about the happy couple. When I do have to use a play list on auto, I never have this much trouble. Granted I never set end points, I let VDJ do that. I'm trying to understand, why this is so much work for you. I am going to set up a list to see if I have the same issues you have.
 
Ok, I tried this, and I think your problem is, you have selected remove intro/outro. So, you put in intros and outros, and then tell VDJ to remove them. If you want to keep your set points, then try remove nothing.
 
Thanks for the posts and advice.
With respect to the family wedding aspect, there are just things that I want to do, filming etc. that mean, bottom line, I don't want to man the decks for that particular period of time. I want to have it planned out in advance,then set and forget.

Making it way too hard? Maybe, but I edit pretty quickly, and once these are done they can be reused any time in the future. I'll probably do about 35/40 songs at this stage. Yes, I'm a bit fussy about fades and most people won't even notice, but as a musician, that's just how I am. It matters to me. Pride in my work is a philosophy, even if I'm not actually, technically working lol.

You're right that I would be using two programs, neither of which is perfect for me, but I repeat the question from my earlier post,
'BTW, can someone explain why VDJ has the ability to set in and out Automix points if they can't be effectively used??'

'Remove nothing' setting doesn't do it, no setting honours the points that I set, and the fact that the song order is lost whenever you re-sort by track or title is a deal breaker.

When time comes for me to man the decks VDJ is my preferred program for many reasons, the accuracy of cueing by waveform, the ability to modify speed for beat mixing etc., but for this set and forget exercise it doesn't quite do it.
 
You must use SMART as the mixing mode.
Also you HAVE to disable on each track any other possible mixing way than FADE.
If you set mix in/out points for fade but you have BEAT mix enabled too then there's a chance Vdj will decide to beatmix and will use those mix points instead
 
If you use Smart then you are not using Fade, even if you use the individual track adjustments, (right click on BPM button/Edit Automix tab select Mix Fade and set your entry and exit points), you can now see when you right click the Automix options down in the Playlist Window that the option for setting your fade length is no longer available. Furthermore, VDJ has automatically reset entry and exit points.
 
As stated before, if you resort all you have to do is save that resort. Wait a minute, I just reread your post. Are you saying that you make a play list, at some point you resort, but want to go back to the original order?
 
I think what he's saying is, he's creating a playlist and then setting cue points for each song, saving the playlist. He wants the playlist to use automix to play with the cue points he's set, but when you hit the automix button the cue points he set up for the playlist are gone and it reverts back to the default settings in VDJ, "smart" "fade ( remove into/outro)". etc.... Looks like the only option at this point is danielsr2006's suggestion of pre-recording mixes.
 
I get that part, I'm talking about the resort issue.
 
I've modified a number of songs, the mixes work well, nice and tight. Most of the songs didn't require a lot, remove nebulous intros, reduce the length of fade outs. I tried them in VDJ with 'Fade, Remove Nothing', worked well. I think it's better than a prerecord as it's more flexible and can be used in different future circumstances.

Yes, I would like to be able to return to the original sort order, but I guess you're right with respect to saving playlist, regular saves could keep track of song order changes so that if there's a mess up I can always go back to the last save. I'm thinking more of DJing here than BGM, I use the playlist for planning a possible order for upcoming sets.

I really appreciate you guys chiming in to help. If anyone figures out how to make Entry and Exit Points work in Edit Automix, I'd love to know.
Would be a great feature if it worked.
 
Is there a shortcut to an immediate mix of the next song, other than double clicking the next song?
 
Try setting a keyboard shortcut or spare button on your controller for automix_skip. This will mix directly to the next song in the list dependant on your automix settings.

keith
 


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