Traktor, Serato DJ Pro, rekordbox… it’s easy for us to focus on these established players and report on their progress, or indeed lack thereof. But beavering away in the background and often putting the popular choices to shame is VirtualDJ. Version 8 came and saw Atomix raise their game significantly, routinely mapping and supporting controllers and mixers usually thought unmappable in the big three. And off the back of that comes an all new version — VirtualDJ 2018 delivers a wealth of new features, with a focus on video and lighting.
There’s no PR as such, but there is a beta page where you can download the latest version. But bullet-pointing:
VIDEO SKINS
Imagine pointing a camera at your setup… boring right? Now imagine if you could add an overlay showing things like waveforms, jog wheels, and track names. Suddenly your dull visual performance takes on a new dimension
This experience is editable too. It’s basically a PNG and an XML file, that with a little dabbling can be tailored to suit you and your DJ brand. There’s not an editor as such, but anyone with a modicum of experience should be able to make enough changes to make it their own. And I expect that the VDJ community will be publishing more skins than you can handle in due course.
SHADERS FOR AUDIO ONLY PERFORMANCES
Creating BPM synced visuals comes to VirtualDJ. Using WebGL, you can use things called shaders to add a visual element to your audio only set. ShaderToy has almost 23 thousand such things ready for download. So prepare to lose hours as you dig into the weird and wonderful effects that have been made by the ShaderToy community.
And just like the video skins (albeit needing a little more coding skills), shaders can be edited too. I’d suggest loading up a very simple shader on the website and changing settings in the code as a starting point.
VIDEO BROADCASTING
Apparently it’s all the rage right now, and the assorted social channels all have their own flavours. And VirtualDJ 2018 taps right into the popular ones including Facebook, Youtube, Vimeo, Twitch, Periscope, and Musically. You can also use your own method, provided you enter the URL and stream key supplied by your provider. And you can incorporate your own video skins too.
Obviously, you’re entirely at the mercy of the provider as to whether you get taken down for copyright infringement or not. But at least VirtualDJ 2018 has the tools to get you into world of live broadcasting.
ScratchDNA
While some of our core audience will wince at the thought of automated scratching, it’s a talking point all over again thanks to Jazzy Jeff’s scratch pads on the recently released Pioneer DJ DDJ-SB3. But it’s not a new idea by any means — Stanton’s Deckdance has the rather terribly named Grossbeat feature that allows for scratch macros.
But now it’s a feature in VirtualDJ 2018, and is reasonably easy to create and edit scratches yourself. It works via a text notation that generates the intensity and volume. It can also be made to quantise or slip as you wish. It’s definitely fun, but should be considered as a cool effect rather than a way to win DMC.
Lighting
As the concept of making a DJ performance stimulate more senses than just hearing alone, thus lighting is becoming a hot topic for DJs. All the majors are embracing DMX right from within their assorted software offerings, and VirtualDJ 2018 is no exception.
As the mobile DJ’s favourite, it’s not new to them you understand, but VirtualDj 2018 works with OS2L, an open protocol that makes working with DMX a little less complicated, and aims to make beat to light syncing an automated task.
So I had a dabble with VirtualDJ 2018…
…and it was a lot of fun, and quite the eye opener too, especially the speed that it opens. It’s easy to look down upon VDJ from your professional ivory tower, but as we’ve been saying for years there’s some serious power just below the surface. For example — the almost insignificant pad window is laden with more power and edibility than anything out there.
The new version brings even more goodies to the table too, adding a heap of more visual and performance based features to an already extensive repertoire. At some point, we’ll have to dig into a review, but there’s just so much of it to look at… well certainly in the level of detail that we go to.
Getting back to his version — a Mac and Windows beta is available to play with. But please remember, VirtualDJ 2018 is still beta, so using it could be fraught with danger in a live situation.
Damn. I feel like with a rebrand and a modernised UI overhaul, this could start making waves in the club scene, especially with youngsters that have ambitions for club DJing and want to stream their mixes. Brand matters, and a messy interface with a name like ‘VirtualDJ’ really does no favours.
Hearts and minds, people!
To add, there’s never a shortage of decent ideas in VDJ. It’s just a huge perception issue with the ‘cool’ side of DJing.
It’s not just the consumers. IMO it’s the DJ based websites too (like this one!) that don’t help – by tending to favour Serato, Traktor & Rekordbox when doing reviews of kit etc.
For example, a mixer comes out that maybe doesn’t have Serato or Traktor certification. Rarely is there a mention that it will of course work just fine with VDJ without the need for any certification nonsense.
Or one of the s/w competitors will add a feature that has been there for years in VDJ but that fact won’t get mentioned.
Just for clarity, I have licenses for Serato DJ Pro, Traktor and Rekordbox DJ too, but they just can’t do what VDJ can.
If by favour you mean reviewing with the software that comes with it for free and that it was designed to work with then guilty as charged. We review based on what’s in the box, not what can be achieved if they use a third party product at extra cost. And that’s exactly how it should be. Should we check every product with every available app?
We reflect what is supported by the manufacturer at purchase. “Work just fine” is a matter of perspective, but try calling up Pioneer with a VDJ support issue on a rekordbox controller and see what response you get.
I’m not sure if I agree with the previous statement that DJWorx has a bias (the current article at this page seems both fair and rightful and balanced) and of course DJWorx should review the box as is, with whats included. Makes perfect sense.
But I dont think Pioneer has any bias towards one or the other either, and partner with VirtualDJ on some controllers even. I’m a frequent visitor at Pioneer support forums, they seem more than happy to help, guide and give support for VirtualDJ, even those made for RecordBox… like for example :
https://forums.pioneerdj.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/206113616-pioneer-ddj-rx-mapper-please-for-virtual-dj-8 or https://forums.pioneerdj.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/115019235803-RX2-VDJ-8-2
Even when user are bashing Recordbox for its crashes, lags, and issues, and saying they are going back to VirtualDJ the Pioneer representatives seems understanding and supportive of that:
https://forums.pioneerdj.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/115020441143-I-ve-given-up-and-gone-back-to-Virtual-DJ- https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e2ea23db93c79e7d6a7d5c92d5651d8272cb1990ac2d1e471297f641f2e64e51.png
It all sounds very nice (Pioneer’s comment quoted above) but what Pioneer fail to mention is that Atomix are left to figure out the inner workings themselves – basically reverse engineer – in order to add support.
Apparently they get no help whatsoever from Pioneer (or others), which is why it often takes Atomix a while to offer native support.
No I don’t mean that. I mean Serato, Traktor and Rekordbox tend to be the only ones mentioned (not just here BTW) in articles. Before Rekordbox it was just Serato and Traktor, but (I suppose because Pioneer is such a ‘big name’ to DJs) it didn’t take much effort for Rekordbox to join the club.
I’m not certain but i suspect VDJ was around before any of them.
I understand that it would take substantially more effort to do a full review with every 3rd party software. But you could at least mention what 3rd party software supports (or claims to support) the product and leave it to readers to determine how well that support works.
Early on, VDJ adopted the philosophy that the “Computer” should work for the DJ (and not vice-versa), and tried to automate as much as possible. Those tied to the Old Ways continue to admonish much of what it’s
Features do with the negative connotation “it’s VDJ’ish”. It is disingenuous to ignore this.
We tend to review when gear is fresh to market. At this point, only official support is announced. Even for VirtualDJ, it can take some time to add their own mappings and support. So we’re in a situation where the only software proven to work is what comes in the box.
The nature of our work is that we review what’s new and move on. We haven’t got the resource to constantly monitor and revisit every piece of hardware and software to update old articles.
Name ain’t changing and you can pick/make your own interface, if anything needs to change ’tis the chip on thou shoulder.
I look at traktor & serato’s interface and thing “wow this is all incredibly fixed and stagnant”
As much as you can change VDJs skins, I just had a look through all the currently available ‘top rated’ ‘most popular’ and ‘editors picks’ and they still all look terrible.
Boom. This guy brands.
Sorry, what does this mean?
You understand branding! It’s all well and good having user skins, but if they’re all amateur looking, it affects perception of the product.
Ah ok,
I do remember a time with the older versions of VDJ, it seemed like everyone I saw using it was basically running an SSL clone skin (with obvious giveaways like red/blue waveforms)
To me, by having those kind of things freely available on their own website hurts them, because it comes across as “here’s a way you can pretend you’re not using our software!”
I know they were user created skins, but they were still hosted on their own website.
“still all look terrible” by which I suppose you mean “not like Traktor or Serato”?
Well they can’t. Legally they’re not allowed to.
There are a huge number of variations though, plenty to choose from, including ones which do look _similar_ to the above, and ones which offer many “looks” all within the same skin (i.e. V8 but by FRUiT).
At least you CAN change them, which is the major flaw with the other s/w – you’re stuck with how it looks.
You can also design your own unique skin, either manually (not really that hard) or using the Skin Builder.
Nope, in no way do I want all software to look the same. Interesting that you jumped straight to that assumption though,
Well OK, what _do_ you mean then? There’s a huge variation in skin designs, some by extremely talented graphics guys. I don’t see how such a large cross section of designs can ALL look terrible.
Or maybe let’s approach this from a different angle – what DJ software do you think DOESN’T look terrible?
Nice one on the DNB choices Mark.
Woah Woah I’m just a junglist soldier. Don’t tell anyone.
Lol.
NI? Where you at?
first time i came across an automated scratching tool it was in the early to mid 2000s and the tool was called wave traveller. it is a factory plugin from flstudio. a lot of fun
Out of all the businesses I’ve analyzed.. I’ve never, NEVER seen a marketing/branding team as bad as Virtual DJ. For years they’ve proved that their software is indeed better, but have consistently FAILED to rid themselves of the stigma of using VDJ in professional environments.
Classic example of a business refusing to embrace change because “we’ve always done it this way.”
FYI VirtualDJ 2018 a.k.a. 8.3 is no longer “early access”. It’s now the standard downloadable version.
Look out social media! VirtualDJ is about to flood timelines across the globe. But seriously, this is a huge update and anyone who passes up on giving it a go is missing out!