Virtual dj help

[Kevin glenville]

Hi everyone
Hope someone can help, I was running vdj on Saturday night when the cpu indicator bar started running high. Everytime the next song loaded it showed full cpu usage and the current song slowed down until the next song had loaded. I have been using the laptop and Vdj for a couple of years now with no problems. The laptop is easily powerful enough with 1gb memory and 250 gb hard drive. The only thing that is different is that the battery indicator says I should consider replacing the battery although I use it with charger connected and it reads 100% charged.
Awaiting your advice thanks
Kevin

[Excalibur]

Well firstly, do consider changing the battery. It will show charged, but if it's truly shot, it will generate excess heat, as it tries to charge. For this reason, I've actually removed the battery from one of mine. Heat is bad news, and this one used to cut out because of it.

Secondly, what are you controlling the laptop with? If the answer is " a mouse ", then carry on. If you're using a full controller, then 1Gb is pushing it. My old one has two, and the staff at the DJ shop I took it to were horrified at that! It refused to run with a Denon MC2000, but performed faultlessly with every soundcard I've given it, and many older controllers.
The reasoning behind this was that modern controllers place heavy demands on the laptop, whereas older ones don't. Perceived wisdom was that it was wise to have a machine with oodles of RAM, and solid state hard drives, to ensure troublefree operation. Not a view I subscribe to, but hey, what do I know?

[DazzyD]

Well firstly, do consider changing the battery. It will show charged, but if it's truly shot, it will generate excess heat, as it tries to charge. For this reason, I've actually removed the battery from one of mine. Heat is bad news, and this one used to cut out because of it.

Secondly, what are you controlling the laptop with? If the answer is " a mouse ", then carry on. If you're using a full controller, then 1Gb is pushing it. My old one has two, and the staff at the DJ shop I took it to were horrified at that! It refused to run with a Denon MC2000, but performed faultlessly with every soundcard I've given it, and many older controllers.
The reasoning behind this was that modern controllers place heavy demands on the laptop, whereas older ones don't. Perceived wisdom was that it was wise to have a machine with oodles of RAM, and solid state hard drives, to ensure troublefree operation. Not a view I subscribe to, but hey, what do I know?

I'd remove the battery totally if replacing the battery is not an immediate option. As Peter says, batteries on their way out create more heat when charging and this has a knock-on effect for the whole system - CPU included. The hotter it gets the harder the fan tries to work and puts more strain on the system. My battery is the same (it's my third in 5 years) but I've gotten round this by using a fan-cooled laptop stand.

I've ran VDJ with 1Gb RAM before and it's worked fine. Dedicated graphics memory, as opposed to share memory, is a good idea, too, as is optimising your system for running VDJ. I've found it's not VDJ running that causes high CPU usage but rather other background processes starting that, when added to VDJ, cause the problem. When I first got my current laptop this happened on a couple of occasions but it was 12.30am each time. This wasn't too noticeable as I was often finished before midnight. It turned out it was my anti-virus software that had created a scheduled process to update itself at this time every day. VDJ was happy to continue playing music through this without much hassle but, if I was playing video then the video would stutter quite badly. My current machine is 3Gb of RAM, is optimised for VDJ, there are no problematic scheduled processes to be run and all is fine! Touch wood!

[Excalibur]

I'd remove the battery totally if replacing the battery is not an immediate option.

Snap.

but I've gotten round this by using a fan-cooled laptop stand.

Snap.

I've ran VDJ with 1Gb RAM before and it's worked fine.

Snap

My current machine is 3Gb of RAM, is optimised for VDJ, there are no problematic scheduled processes to be run and all is fine! Touch wood!

And again, snap.


The only point my learned colleague hasn't addressed ( nor has the OP yet ) is the influence of the controller. Here I'm going to abandon knowledge, and rely on personal experiences.

My poor, aged, battle scarred Acer has so far coped flawlessly at different times with three UDJ/Maya soundcards, a DJ2GO, a Numark mixdeck Mk1, an ADJ VMS 4.1, and presently an ADJ VMS2.

It baulked at a Denon MC2000. I'm not drawing any conclusions, because I'm not qualified.

[DJ Jules]

My poor, aged, battle scarred Acer has so far coped flawlessly at different times with three UDJ/Maya soundcards, a DJ2GO, a Numark mixdeck Mk1, an ADJ VMS 4.1, and presently an ADJ VMS2.

It baulked at a Denon MC2000. I'm not drawing any conclusions, because I'm not qualified.

I've had a similar issue, HP 6930p laptop that has happily run a Numark Mixtrack, a Numark Mixdeck Express and a couple of other controllers with VDJ. Add a Pioneer DDJ SX and it stutters and can't cope despite Latency checker saying it's fine and the CPU never maxing out. Disabling the VU meters, and all the other funky lights in the MIDI mapper means it more or less works so it appeared the problem was down to the sheer volume of MIDI data being thrown around by the system.

Ultimately fixed by buying a new laptop

Funny things computers

Julian