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.

[TONYTIGER]

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.

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.

[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.

[Twinspin]

Matty. I know what your saying about the Mac and personally they arent cheap but they do the job well. I had a friend of mine down during the week who has the Macbook Pro he came round put my VDJ software on the mac and attempted to run video through it with the apple video adapter and a seperate splitter with the 2 screens and no crashing at alll. So that was good. Because i was going to buy a Macbook Pro. But i wont be running videos after christmas so. I can keep the laptops ive got

Last night. I put the Sony laptop on video. But connected it into the Soundcraft desk through the ESI Maya 44. The videos worked all night on it. But i didnt run the effects just video and the Visuals for songs i didnt have on video.

Last night everything was working well. Until 10 minutes before the end. I cant hear the subwoofer so it was just the tops running. My roadie Alan is very good at electronics. So he looked at the back of the sub and he found the pot is dodgy and in need of replacement. When you push it ever so slightly the sub bass comes back on. So the sub is going in for repair.

Over christmas in the room im working in 1 sub is more than enough and will be more than enough for every christmas gig ive got remaining. Im going to get the other RCF sub and take that tonight.

The Soundcraft Mixer I bought. I like that it sounded good. There isnt anything wrong with the MC6000. But im thinking about selling it and using the Soundcraft instead.

[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.

[SoundONE]

Lots of bugs in SBDJ scrolltext, lots of people talking about various crashes etc, strange boxes appearing and all wierd stuff.

[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