Equipment problems over the last week.

[Twinspin]

Over the last week. I have been having some issues with my equipment. Last friday night i did a christmas party and i had to resort to backup kit. When my Denon MC6000 started making some horrible noises on the Midi Channels. I bought last year a Sony Vaio laptop with a good enough spec to run music videos and the laptop isn't doing the job. The computer has been optimised and all the settings were checked. I even consulted the guys at PCDJ UK (Valeway Technology) and got them to have a look at it. On a deep inspection of the computer on optimisation and also settings. The laptop was found to be spot on.

Its still unknown what is actually wrong with it. Other than internal hardware. It plays music without any problems. Its when you ask it to run videos and effects the machine seems to crash and needs rebooting.

On Wednesday night I run the machine in question on the MC6000 and didnt have any problems with it. I have just bought myself a PA Mixer to use between the MC6000 and my PA System. I went for a Soundcraft EPM12. Got it out tonight and on sound check it sounds very good.

Ive decided now that the music Video side of the business isnt viable for me. So ive decided to drop that side of the business.

[mattydinx]

You need to ascertain where the performance issue lies. VDJ isn't heavy on system resources. What spec is your laptop?

When running music videos open the Task Manager and see what your CPU, RAM and hard disk utilization are. You should also use a GPU monitoring tool to see how much of your GPU is being utilized if VDJ is decoding through that.

If any of these are excessive (which they shouldn't be really) then I'd take it from there.

Running VDJ on my MacBook Pro with a 2.4GHz C2D CPU, 4GB RAM outputting video via HDMI sees my CPU usage at 40% RAM at 1.78GB (VDJ only using 213MB) while playing two tracks with effects...oh, and I'm pulling the videos from my PC over WiFi and changing songs frequently to try and stress it...not a hic!

When your machine crashes, reboot and check the Windows event viewer to help pinpoint what specific aspect could have lead to the crash, drive failure, codec error, system resource issue.

As I've said to you before John, I'm not a fan of Sony laptops, You pay an inflated price for a sub-standard bit of kit. And before you say "this coming from an Apple owner" - I just need to point out that I've not had a single issue in 4 years with my Mac.

[mattred]

Again not wanting to return to the mac / pc discussion if you look at the serato forums (I know your not using serato but they are with mix emergency the top video mixing software) over 90% of those having problems with video are PC related.

Mix emergency who make the best video mixing software and was used by all the top 3 finalist at the wmc video comp dont even make a windows version as they state it will be to hard to make it flawless on every different combination used by windows computers.

For audio you will get away with a PC, if using video I really do stress a mac is your best bet. Im running a 13" macbook pro and have been DJing with it 3 years now. no need to optimise it just turn off wifi and bluetooth and play away. never had a problem.

If you can get your PC working then its great but it seems more of a risk to me and I like to know im running the best kit I can (you will never eliminate the chance something will go wrong but its worth reducing it)

Matt

[Solitaire Events Ltd]

My laptop is much lower spec than yours John and runs video without a problem.

[Excalibur]

My laptop is much lower spec than yours John and runs video without a problem.

And if John's not running video, his runs just fine also. I know he's had issues with the graphics card drivers, and suspect that this is where the problem lies. A machine of this spec ought to run everything John wants with no problem at all.

[Twinspin]

There wasnt even any problems with the graphics drivers. I had those checked. I run the computer last night and it played videos all night without issues. But i didnt use SBDJ Scrolltext when i start playing the videos. At the beginning of the night. I had the SBDJ scrolltext running for the first couple of hours welcoming everyone to the hotel and acknowledging the companies in the room with the clipbank on with a christmas visual on the screen when people were eating.

[mattred]

My laptop is much lower spec than yours John and runs video without a problem.

I always find that's the problem with PCs tho. It's not so much the spec its the combination of parts. Serato list a minimum processor speed so you would think as long as you meet that your fine. Unfortunately AMD processors don't work as well as intel so even if you buy a pc with the right spec you may still have problems. Windows has to work with so many combinations where as apples operating system doesn't.

Matt

[DazzyD]

I know how you feel ,i started to use video in my show and services had nothing but hassle and i was using a Mac Book Pro i am no expert on computer matters so i asked my son who does a lot of big video productions,he suggested to get a decent laptop that was up to the job and he acquired me a top of the range Alien ware machine been faultless for over a year and cant recommend it enough.

Alienware make gaming machines for resource-hungry 3D gaming applications. They've won many accolades for their systems and quite rightly, too. I can't help but feel, though, that they might be a bit of overkill for much simpler 2D video/audio applications such as VDJ.

My laptop is much lower spec than yours John and runs video without a problem.

Mine too. The only problem I have running video is that the laptop was getting quite hot. Within it's safe limits but hotter than I'd have liked. This was an easy fix, though, when I bought a Belkin laptop cooling stand from Amazon. My laptop keeps itself a lot cooler now and I am much happier about this.

I always find that's the problem with PCs tho. It's not so much the spec its the combination of parts. Serato list a minimum processor speed so you would think as long as you meet that your fine. Unfortunately AMD processors don't work as well as intel so even if you buy a pc with the right spec you may still have problems. Windows has to work with so many combinations where as apples operating system doesn't.

Matt

I'm sorry but I really feel that the "my Mac is better than your PC" debate is not really warranted here as it does absolutely nothing to help John with his technical issues. That's kind of like a Citroen owner posting a plea for help as his engine isn't firing correctly and getting the reply "You should buy a BMW, mate". It's really not helpful at all.

As for the AMD comment, I use a sub £350 Compaq Presario with 3Gb RAM and a mobile AMD chip running Windows7 and my machine can handle video within VDJ with relative ease. In fact, the only issue I had was actually a problem that lay with the Aero system. Once I was advised of the solution by a forum member here, I turned off Aero and everything's been fine since.

John, I also understand that there's issues with the SBDJ Scrolltext. I haven't used the plugin much as I've always just used Pangolin's Essential Visuals as this does everything (and more!) that I need it to do. I use it with videos all the time and, like I've already said, no problems.

[TONYTIGER]

Thanks for the heads up Dazzy, really knew nothing about Alienware but it does seem to handle anything i throw at it,i don't use virtual dj for video i have a Arkaos NuVj system to run my video loops because i like all the effects and as my screen is 3m x 2.5m the picture has to be spot on i would guess its down to the graphics card and processing power but as i said not my field and if it works that's fine with me.

[ckpr2]

One problem with laptops is the heat generated.
This worst when the laptop is being worked hard.
You can buy coolers that the laptop sits on.

On my home desktop pc recently it started resetting itself.
Windows told me it was a power surge.
As time went on it happened more often.
As Windows said it was a power problem I bought a new well specced power supply.
I opened up my pc to replace the power supply and the old power supply was so full of dust it was amazing it was running at all.
The grill over the fan was 95% blocked.

I replaced the power supply anyway as it has served a few years and I haven't had a problem since.