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Forum: old old beta forum

Topic: what's new topic

This topic is old and might contain outdated or incorrect information.

OK here is a small explanation of the new features:

- automatic mixing: a completly new automatic mixing engine has been set up. Now vdj will recognize the style of the music (techno, hip hop, lounge) and adapt its mix in consequence.
In case of a techno over techno mix, it will try to figure out where to start and where to end in order to have the vocals of both songs not overlapping. In case one of the mixed song does not have enough beat, it will do a quick crossfade. If the songs are still hip hop or r'n'b, it will try to match the first beat and last beat of the songs. Else it will just fade from one to another.

- vinyl scratch: now you can scratch on the vinyl like on a real vinyl, and you can also use it to rewind/fast forward a song to the point you want. You can also use the mouse wheel over the disc to scratch.

- CBG (Computed Beat Grid): Under the classical rhythm waveform, you have small marks that represents the beats position on the whole song, even where there are no beat present (like in a break or an intro). By using the mousewheel in the rhythm zone, you can zoom in or out the curves (you can even go far enough to see the whole song).

- Beatlock: When you activate the beatlock, the both songs will remain synchro whatever happen. You can change the pitch, move into another point in the song, and even scratch, the songs will stay together (in case of a scratch, the song will catch up the other as soon as you stop scratching).
There are two mode for the beatlock: rigid is the default, and elastic will distort the music to force each beat in the song to be aligned on a internal clock (usefull on old disco songs for example where the beats are not exactly equally spaced)
Be aware that the beatlock does not work well when vdj is loading a song for the first time. We are working on this.

- song view: in the window showing the position of the song, one can see the color changing with the intensity of the music, as you would see on a real vinyl. This way you can easily know where the breaks are.
The window also shows where the cues are, and if the tooltip is enable you can have the name of the cue by going over it.
A leftclick will rewind to that cue, and a rightclick will let you delete or rename a cue point.
And at last, the window shows the progression of the loading when you load a song. Still, you can jump in a point of the song that is not loaded yet without any problem.
By the way, all the songs are completely loaded in memory in vdj, so you can load a track from an audio CD, change the CD in the drive, and load another track on the other desk.

- improved sound quality: I hope there won't be any pop or click left now :)

- customisable shortcuts: the shortcut definition is now unified with the skin definition. So all that can be done in a skin can be done with a shortcut. The shortcuts are also now saved in a .XML file so it can be easily edited by hand.
Actually, if you change the shortcuts from the software the changes won't be saved. This should be corrected real soon.

- zip skins: the .bmp and .xml files for a skin can now be left in a single .zip file in the skin directory. vdj will open the .zip by its own.

- new effects: the effects can now have buttons, plus the effect interface has been redone and simplified a lot. Plugin SDK will be available soon.
The graphical layout of the plugin page is still to be changed, so do not worry about bugs in the effect page.

- virtual scratch (still confidential, please do not speak about that): one can now use a webcam to scratch in vdj with just his bare hand. For that you need of course a webcam to be connected to the computer. Then launch the calibration process, and move your hand slowly over a straight line, in the field of the camera.
Now when you activate the virtual scratch, juste bring your hand again over the imaginary line, and the music will stop. Move your hand on the line, and it will scratch. Remove your hand, and the disc will start again.
This is still in an early stage of development, so don't be surprised if it's not working well.

- vinyl control (still confidential too): this is a mix between final scratch and virtual scratch (see above). As in virtual scratch, you need a webcam plugged in. Then put a vinyl desk in the field of the camera, and put any vinyl on it (do not use white labels, since the camera need to catch the movement of the vinyl from the label sticker rotation).
Put your disc at 44T, and hit the calibration button. The calibration process should stop automatically.
Then activate, and you can scratch with your vinyl, the movement will be passed back to vdj (try to put your webcam in such way that your hand won't pass between the central sticker and the camera).
The closer the camera is from the central sticker, the better.

- song list: the song list now displays the length of the songs, and a star beside the bpm for those songs which are recognized as beat-mixable by the automix engine.

- crash recover: when atomix crashed, instead of giving an error message, it propose either to automatically send an anonymous report on the internet (this should decrease the number of incoming messages in the lab :), or to automatically recover from the error. In case one choose to recover, vdj will close itself completely, and load again, and then load the same song, put the crossfader, pitch, volumes, gain, etc... in the same position, and play the song again. This way, people in the audience will just hear a small blank of one or two seconds, and then the music will continue as if nothing happened.

Well, I'm sure I still forgot some things, but they will come latter :)

Stef.
 

Posted Thu 08 May 03 @ 3:45 am
DJ CocoPRO InfinityMember since 2003
Thanks !
 

Posted Thu 08 May 03 @ 5:20 pm
HomeboyPRO InfinitySupport ManagerMember since 2003
I figured out the mousewheel scratch ! Pretty nice. Can someone explain to me more what the v-scratch and v-control are?
 

Posted Thu 08 May 03 @ 8:18 pm
DJ RickPRO InfinityMember since 2003
Home, I put the curser over the spinning vinyl, and clicked the wheel, once I did that, scrolling the wheel worked.
the v-scratch and v-control have to do with using a digital camera, or a web cam to scratch. Oh yeah... you pass your hand in front of the camera, and it scratches... Now personally I never scratched a lot even when I was using vinyl, and I'm probably not going to start doing it now... but just knowing that I have this feature makes me feel superior to all the other PC Disc Jockeys :-)
 

Posted Thu 08 May 03 @ 8:28 pm
HomeboyPRO InfinitySupport ManagerMember since 2003
Thanks....Guess I should pay attention when I am reading stef's posts.......
 

Posted Thu 08 May 03 @ 8:51 pm
OyyoDamsPRO InfinityHonorary memberMember since 2003
If you have a webcam, place it in a position where it can see the vinyl disc. Like that:

Then click on "v-vontrol", click on "calibrate", wait until the end and the calibration, click on "activate" and enjoy your new scratch system :)
 

Posted Sat 10 May 03 @ 7:11 pm
OyyoDamsPRO InfinityHonorary memberMember since 2003
Note for VIPs:
This feature is strictly confidential, so please don't speak about it to anyone. Also it's an experimental feature, it's still bugged :)
 

Posted Wed 28 May 03 @ 10:27 am
The virtual-scratch has been changed, now you just have to pass your hand over the red-line, no calibration needed
 

Posted Wed 28 May 03 @ 3:20 pm
DJ CocoPRO InfinityMember since 2003
great !
 

Posted Wed 28 May 03 @ 10:58 pm


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