Authoring for Pioneer DVJ

[complexvisuals]

Working on a project using pionner DVJ decks, anything I got to keep in mind when im creating DVDs for use on it?

Cheers

[VisionsUnleashed]

Buy good quality DVD recordables. They will last longer and be more durable.

[Kriel]

Top dozen or so tips, in no particular order:

1. Buy a standalone DVD recorder with a hard drive (saves a ton of time, money and headaches)

2. One DVD, one track (saves nightmares in the club)

3. If you follow step 2, you'll be tempted to not make backups (and you'll end up erasing the original from your hard-drive for more space -- I've made 100s of tracks in the last few months and have erased it several times). Resist that devil.

4. If you don't use a standalone recorder, then don't author with motion menus or multi-layer menus (it'll throw the DVJ out of DJ mode)

5. Keep menuing as simple as possible. It takes up to 30 seconds for the DVD to register in the DVJ. That's 30 seconds less beatmatching time you have. Navigating complex menus eats up even more.

6. Make your discs autoplay

7. When you cut the video, you also have the opportunity to change the music, so take it (like, adjust your BPMs, key, pitch, etc.)

8. Less effects on the DVDs means more opportunities to twiddle in the club

9. DVD-Rs over DVD-RWs

10. Give a lot of consideration to where the discs will be played -- zone & PAL/NTSC issues are still grey areas, to a degree

11. Be as careful with your audio quality as you always are with your video quality (set the recorder to PCM audio, watch levels, etc.)

12. Use those memory cards -- it's the difference between night and day

krielx

[Anyone]

the DVDs that DVJs officially support (MixMash)
don't have any menus,
so when you load these on the units
they jump strait into the first track
but they load much much faster,
say 5 seconds instead of up to 30 seconds for DVDs with menus

[brain]

30 seconds to load a dvd ?!!?
trouble with menus???
this really sucks.

man, i thought this was pro equipment with top performance...

i use dated portable pioneers and the (animated) menu is up in max. 5 secs!

how long to unmount/eject?

[sleepytom]

there isn't any trouble with menus on the DVJ-x1 (all disks will play in it fine eventually)

there are techniques to help you author disks that load quickly (don't use a menu / don't have any extra crap like multiple angles / subtitles etc )

also there are 2 approaches to all of this - the Kriel method where you have one auto playing track per disk and do a lot of disk swapping
or
the hiphop style approach where you go for 2 disks for your whole set with the relevant tracks in the order you'll play them (allowing max creative use of the hot cues and stuff)

whatever way you choose to work the dvj is a very professional solution - sure it requires a bit of adapting of style of performance but that is true of any piece of kit.

[syzygy]

Also bear in mind that, unlike standard DVD players, the DVDJ has a lot of buffering to do in order to enable its scratching, reverse, seamless looping and instant cueing abilities.

I'd take those features with some extra seconds on the disk read time ahead of a standard DVD player any day of the week.

Dan.