Technical set up help please

Hey folks
So i am needing some help, coming out of retirement in December for 2 charity nights we are running (80's) nights where I want to play quite a few video's and try a bit of video mixing also.

So the equipment I have

Laptop with latest VDJ software ( I have NEVER used VDJ with any controller, only ever with laptop touchpad)
Denon Prime Go
Yamaha mixer with plenty of channels

So the way I normally set up is to take my HDMI feed out of my laptop, into an audio splitter, send the picture to my TV's and the sound goes into 1 channel of my laptop. This makes it difficult to mix as its too fiddly to use volume controls on the decks of VDJ on the laptop touchpad so really have to wait on 1 track fading out before hitting play on the opposite deck. I use my Denon Prime Go seperately as a stand alone player as I have had issues with latest VDJ freezing so good to have an alternative player on standby.

I would like to set up to be able to independently control the volume on each VDJ deck via a controller if possible but not sure if I can do that with the prime go whilst leaving it as a stand alone player I can go back to immediately if the laptop freezes. Would this be easy to set up to work with VDJ but as a stand alone at the same time or would you suggest buying a cheap controller that works well with VDJ and split the laptop decks into 2 separate channels on the mixer.

Or is there an easier way yo do this please? I only use the basic features of VDJ (I have no idea what a stem is or how to designate functions to controllers) so it has to be idiot proof. Any help appreciated and sorry for the long post