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Forum: General Discussion

Topic: Video quality in VDJ8 - Page: 1

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I've been "trying" VDJ 8 on my home computer since it was released and upgraded to the latest version every time a later version became available, in the hope that all the issues I experience with VDJ 8 gets resolved, but unfortunately they are not resolved. I don't want to upgrade my gig laptops before VDJ 8's issues are resolved and I've not been able to find workarounds / solutions for the issues in the forum yet, so I decided to post and ask.
I've got VDJ 7 and VDJ 8 installed on the same PC (Windows 7 Ultimate) using the same video card (and driver) and displays on the same 1080p monitor (secondary monitor). I experience the following video-related issues:
1.) The video quality of videos in VDJ 8 is terrible compared to VDJ 7. Full HD videos are not playing smooth and lower resolution videos are not upscaled to 1920 x 1080 as good as it is done in VDJ 7. In VDJ 7 videos even as low as 360p upscaled to 1920 x 1080 looks fine, but not in VDJ 8 they are extremely pixelated.
2.) In VDJ 8 videos on the secondary monitor will freeze at random times, sometimes for a few frames and sometimes for a few seconds. Sometimes the VDJ interface will also freeze for a second or so. In VDJ 7 I've never had any video freezes - on rare occasions the interface might freeze for a few milliseconds, but the video on the secondary display will never freeze, not even for a frame or 2.
3.) If I use the Titler plug-in in VDJ 8 it will cause VDJ 8 to start acting weird and then it will freeze after about 5 to 10 tracks. VDJ 7 never did this before.
4.) After a few hours of running VDJ 8 other windows on the PC will become semi-transparent and unresponsive if you for example use alt-tab to toggle between windows. When VDJ 8 is then closed everything else on the PC works fine again. What also works temporarily is to press ctrl-alt-delete and to then hit cancel - it then looks as if the VDJ 8 interface resets and the videos output on the secondary screen also goes black for a few seconds and then returns to normal. Everything then works fine for a while.

System: Intel i3 3220 with 4GB RAM and Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit running AVG (anti)virus
Video card: NVIDIA GeForce GT 630 4GB with latest driver
What I've done so far:
Windows is up to date - latest MS patches installed.
DPC Latency Checker reports no issues with max latency @ 132us average latency @ 70us
Tried to adjust the following in VDJ 8: Video FPS, videomicroframes, videoresamplequality,videousedxva,videomaxmemory in various combinations / values.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks!
 

Posted Wed 20 Jul 16 @ 8:32 am
hi,

i use an i3 intel, 4 Gb memory , and the integrated HD Graphics, my max resolution is 720p, and everything goes very good for and 6 hours or more, even with my effects activated and a external 40 inch tv, are you shure you are using your n vidia gt as the secondary video card, ??

GK
 

Posted Wed 20 Jul 16 @ 9:05 am
might try and disable AVG and see how things go

an i3 processor might get over worked at times by the avg and vdj running.

 

Posted Wed 20 Jul 16 @ 9:22 am
appollo69 wrote :
...and lower resolution videos are not upscaled to 1920 x 1080 as good as it is done in VDJ 7. In VDJ 7 videos even as low as 360p upscaled to 1920 x 1080 looks fine,


Try checking zoom for the letterbox setting under video... bars is the default which preservers the aspect ratio of the video... VDJ 7 always stretched the video (zoom)

appollo69 wrote :
In VDJ 8 videos on the secondary monitor will freeze at random times, sometimes for a few frames and sometimes for a few seconds. Sometimes the VDJ interface will also freeze for a second or so. In VDJ 7 I've never had any video freezes - on rare occasions the interface might freeze for a few milliseconds, but the video on the secondary display will never freeze, not even for a frame or 2.


With VDJ8, the skin is constantly drawing itself which can be a problem especially on slower machines... reduce the skinFPS to help reduce the impact... still will have a negative impact though... For testing this out, minimize the VDJ user interface and see if it helps with the video... Just for a test cause I know you don't normally want to minimize VDJ UI. Maybe they will optimize skin drawing some day. When the skin is minimized, VDJ does not draw it so a good test to isolate that.

appollo69 wrote :
What also works temporarily is to press ctrl-alt-delete and to then hit cancel - it then looks as if the VDJ 8 interface resets and the videos output on the secondary screen also goes black for a few seconds and then returns to normal. Everything then works fine for a while.


For me, using ctrl-alt-delete it is pretty easy to make the VDJ UI go entirely black and stays black and is non-functional... I have not refined the steps for it exactly yet... since maybe you have task manager up now you can close VDJ.

Your machine is on the low end side... what is your CPU looking like when running VDJ8? Show CPU with no video and just VDJ UI up... Show CPU with VDJ UI minimized... Show CPU with video running...
 

Posted Wed 20 Jul 16 @ 11:49 am
GKAudiO DJ wrote :
hi,

i use an i3 intel, 4 Gb memory , and the integrated HD Graphics, my max resolution is 720p, and everything goes very good for and 6 hours or more, even with my effects activated and a external 40 inch tv, are you shure you are using your n vidia gt as the secondary video card, ??

GK


Hi GKAudiO DJ, Thank for your reply. The HDMI connection to the secondary monitor is plugged into the NVIDIA card. I've actually disabled the onboard Intel card in the BIOS and it is not visible under the Device Manager.
 

Posted Thu 21 Jul 16 @ 6:37 am
wickedmix wrote :
might try and disable AVG and see how things go

an i3 processor might get over worked at times by the avg and vdj running.



Thanks for your reply wickedmix. The CPU runs at between 1% and 11% while I'm playing videos and AVG running in the background, but I'll disable it and see what happens.
 

Posted Thu 21 Jul 16 @ 6:39 am
Hi Don Moir, thanks for al the comments.

Don Moir wrote :
appollo69 wrote :
...and lower resolution videos are not upscaled to 1920 x 1080 as good as it is done in VDJ 7. In VDJ 7 videos even as low as 360p upscaled to 1920 x 1080 looks fine,


Try checking zoom for the letterbox setting under video... bars is the default which preservers the aspect ratio of the video... VDJ 7 always stretched the video (zoom)


I cannot stand videos played at wrong aspect ratios - in VDJ 7 "Keep Ratio (Crop)" is enabled and in VDJ 8 the options are rather limited, but I've set "letterboxing" to "crop".

The problem is not aspect-ratio related though. VDJ 7 upscales the video much smoother than VDJ 8. I have about 5000 SD videos which looks way better when played using VDJ 7 than when using VDJ 8 via the same PC.

Don Moir wrote :
appollo69 wrote :
In VDJ 8 videos on the secondary monitor will freeze at random times, sometimes for a few frames and sometimes for a few seconds. Sometimes the VDJ interface will also freeze for a second or so. In VDJ 7 I've never had any video freezes - on rare occasions the interface might freeze for a few milliseconds, but the video on the secondary display will never freeze, not even for a frame or 2.


With VDJ8, the skin is constantly drawing itself which can be a problem especially on slower machines... reduce the skinFPS to help reduce the impact... still will have a negative impact though... For testing this out, minimize the VDJ user interface and see if it helps with the video... Just for a test cause I know you don't normally want to minimize VDJ UI. Maybe they will optimize skin drawing some day. When the skin is minimized, VDJ does not draw it so a good test to isolate that.


OK tested this. skinFPS was set to 60. CPU indicator in VDJ never lights up more than 1 of the 6 bars. Using task manager CPU usage jumps between 4 % and 11% when not minimized and between 1% and 8% when VDJ 8 interface is minimized - that is while videos are played in VDJ. I've changed skinFPS to 30 to see what will happen.

Don Moir wrote :
appollo69 wrote :
What also works temporarily is to press ctrl-alt-delete and to then hit cancel - it then looks as if the VDJ 8 interface resets and the videos output on the secondary screen also goes black for a few seconds and then returns to normal. Everything then works fine for a while.


For me, using ctrl-alt-delete it is pretty easy to make the VDJ UI go entirely black and stays black and is non-functional... I have not refined the steps for it exactly yet... since maybe you have task manager up now you can close VDJ.

Your machine is on the low end side... what is your CPU looking like when running VDJ8? Show CPU with no video and just VDJ UI up... Show CPU with VDJ UI minimized... Show CPU with video running...


CPU no video playing UI up: Jumps between 1% and 8%
CPU video playing UI up: Jumps between 4% and 11%
CPU video playing UI minimized: Jumps between 1% and 8%

 

Posted Thu 21 Jul 16 @ 7:05 am
AdionPRO InfinityCTOMember since 2006
Can you post screenshots of vdj 7 and vdj 8 to compare?
 

Posted Thu 21 Jul 16 @ 7:16 am
Yeah would be good to show some screen shots of the distortion difference you see between 7 and 8. Don't do a large screen shot of each and post them here like that though because they will resize the images for display here and that will ruin the comparison. Show small corner sections of each large enough to see a difference.
 

Posted Fri 22 Jul 16 @ 1:57 am
OK, here they are, paused the video at approximately the same time on both VDJ 7 and VDJ 8. Screen capture in VDJ 8 gave a grey secondary screen, so I've set up my camera on a tripod and used manual settings ISO100, F22 & 6 second exposure and delayed trigger to avoid camera shake. Then I cropped a section out of each image and resized it.
First image = VDJ 7

Second image = VDJ 8


Heavy pixilation is clearly visible in the VDJ 8 image. While playing even HD videos in VDJ 8 it plays more jittery and with much more blocking than in VDJ 7.
 

Posted Fri 22 Jul 16 @ 7:56 am
djcelPRO InfinityModeratorMember since 2004
Which video format/codec ? H.264 ? Bitrate of the video?
 

Posted Fri 22 Jul 16 @ 1:36 pm
I would try increasing the physical memory to 8 gigs and disable any programs running in the background. I'm using amd a8 with 8gigs of ram on win 10 and i'm mixing videos and recording on the same laptop without any problems.
 

Posted Fri 22 Jul 16 @ 8:25 pm
mackbolan1 wrote :
I would try increasing the physical memory to 8 gigs and disable any programs running in the background. I'm using amd a8 with 8gigs of ram on win 10 and i'm mixing videos and recording on the same laptop without any problems.


And what exactly does that have to do with the output quality of his videos???

Focus bro, focus........
 

Posted Fri 22 Jul 16 @ 8:43 pm
virtualdj 8 use more system resource than vd7 the glitches he is experiencing is from low memory 4gig of memory is just enough to rum the laptop.

focus bro focus
 

Posted Fri 22 Jul 16 @ 9:02 pm
And what exactly does that have to do with the output quality of his videos???
to answer your question everything
 

Posted Fri 22 Jul 16 @ 9:03 pm
Just my 2 cents, VDJ 8.2 open, video running on both decks, milkdrop running on both deck, all together pulling 2.7G of memory. Videos clear. W8, Intel 4700HQ, 4600 graphics.
 

Posted Fri 22 Jul 16 @ 9:39 pm
mackbolan1 wrote :
And what exactly does that have to do with the output quality of his videos???
to answer your question everything


Doubt it has anything to do with that..... I to have said the same thing multiple times and my systems are over specs...... And memory has nothing to do with the overall output quality!!

Its either the way his videos are encoded or VDJ itself.

 

Posted Sat 23 Jul 16 @ 1:33 am
freppaPRO InfinityMember since 2002
like djcel asks..
djcel wrote :
Which video format/codec ? H.264 ? Bitrate of the video?


 

Posted Sun 24 Jul 16 @ 6:59 am
djcel wrote :
Which video format/codec ? H.264 ? Bitrate of the video?


As I've mentioned before, it is a 360p video displayed @ full HD (1920 x 1080) resolution. I know the quality will not be good because of the up-scaling, but my issue is with the terrible quality when it is played via VDJ 8 compared to the much better quality played via VDJ 7 on the same system.

 

Posted Mon 25 Jul 16 @ 4:59 pm
the SOUND INSURGENT wrote :
mackbolan1 wrote :
And what exactly does that have to do with the output quality of his videos???
to answer your question everything


Doubt it has anything to do with that..... I to have said the same thing multiple times and my systems are over specs...... And memory has nothing to do with the overall output quality!!

Its either the way his videos are encoded or VDJ itself.



The total memory usage is 1.7GB (42%) while 2 videos are played simultaneously in VDJ 8 and as mentioned before CPU is running at between 4% and 11%.

 

Posted Mon 25 Jul 16 @ 5:07 pm
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