VJ DVDs

My VJ rig's evolution has been greatly assisted by the availability of low-cost dvd burning and players. I now play on portable DVD players using custom DVDs. The players each have their own monitor screen, so I can see exactly what a source is before I put it in the mix.

The key features of the custom DVDs are:

• Auto-play: no menu is ever presented, when inserted the DVD plays it's first track.
• Auto-repeat: When a track ends it auto-restarts. This way one can leave a source onscreen with total confidence that it will keep going.
• The next and previous chapter keys are used to change tracks. This way I can quickly skip through a dvd looking for the track I want. If next is hit on the "last" track of the DVD the player goes to the first, likewise if I press the previous-chapter button on the player when playing the first track on the DVD, it will go to the last chapter.
  
• I have several copies of each DVD so that I can play 2 tracks on the same DVD against each other in different players.
• Each DVD contains many different kinds of tracks. This is because it takes almost no time to change tracks on a DVD, but a long time to change disks in the player. With a variety of content types on one DVD I can quickly change the mood of a mix.
• Tracks of the same content are available at a variety of speeds. This way the visuals can be tempo-matched to the music. (Only the Poineer DVJ1000 can do a good speed shift....)
  
• DVDs are labeled with large black letters on a white or silver background to make reading the titles in dim lighting easier.
• Every DVD has a track or three that will play with no mixing just fine. This way I have something to transition to while I load other players with new content.
  

This creates a situation where I can drop in a disc, press next until I see what I want, then cut-to it, all without fiddling with a remote control, or worrying about some track coming to an end.

The V4

In March of 2003 I purchased an Edirol (AKA Roland) V4 video mixer. The V4 is quite a machine, mostly because it has BOTH luma key on white and luma key on black. No other VJ type mixer has this (even the panasonic MX50 .. What's up with that?). In order to get Key-on-black out of my old videonics MX-1 rig I had to use 2 units! (Using the chroma key is unacceptable because it operates at much lower resolution). The pint of all this being I love the V4, but I HATE the V4.

I Love the V4 because:

• Monitor Bus is fully independent of mixer.
• You can reconfigure the mixer while it is running. (Often while one VJ VJ's the other can be deep in the menu structure tweaking something or other)
• Luma-key on anything, any-which-way (Yes!)
• Low(ish) noise in video.

I HATE the V4 because:

• Mirror modes only will mirror the top/left corner of the video frame. (This is super annoying if you want to mirror-effect video with the action on the right or bottom side)
• The auto-fader strobe effect does not read the fader potentiometer the first time it is run. This causes the mixer to "go black" if the memory wheel passes through an auto-fade mode. It took a long time for me to realize that I didn't have to reboot the mixer, and that I need to just lightly tweak the fader to get things normal again! (This is just plain sloppy on Roland's part)
• There is no left-right or top-bottom flip feature! Arg .. how else will I get that face to look left instead of right?
• Only 2 svideo inputs instead of 4. This makes doing a high quality show with 2 V4s chained very difficult. Cost of the 2 extra Svideo inputs is _low_... argh!!!!
• The channel controls Hue, Saturation, Brightness are available deep in a utility menu, but not on the handy effects panels. Also, channel controls should optionally be able to follow inputs (1-4) instead of glued to the A or B bus.
• Changing the input (1-4) on a bus causes a glitch! ARGH!!!! This sucks! AND it is fixable in software!!!! The frame buffer-read code needs to be coupled to the switcher buttons for each bus. A bus-input change needs to cause the read code to stall (ie use the old frame) until the Vertical refresh comes around on the now-new source. I don't think this is very hard to do in the mixer's control software. This would allow a VJ to quickly select 1 of 4 inputs like on a keyboard! .
• Mixer does not have "sticky" effects across memory modes. ie if mirror is on A bus in memory mode 2, and it is available in memory mode 3, when I switch modes, mirror will be turned off. This is another easy software fix.
  

I will gladly fix the V4's code if given the opportunity.

Opening Day

VJ instead of DJ. Visuals instead of music. The moving wallpaper in your venue of choice. When things go well the video engages in coherent interactions with the music. As VJScience I specialize in the VJ-follows-DJ style of VJ, providing moving images which complement the sounds in a space. Since 1999 I have been projecting images in the San Francisco Bay area, mostly in the underground DJ/dance music scene.