How I Use VDJ Studio

[Hanginon]

I posted on another forum how I use an older version (V6.9), strictly for Ballroom DJ'ing. It's about 2/3 down the page -

http://ourdjtalk.com/threads/your-main-dj-software-likes-and-dislikes.46286/page-2

[Justin]

Awesome! I'm going to bookmark that site for reference and ideas down the road as well... thanks for the post!

[Hanginon]

Thanks. I realize I'm probably in the minority - exclusively using VDJ Studio for straight DJ'ing, not Karaoke. Non the less, for some types of DJ'ing, it is uniquely suited.

[Justin]

For the record, VDJ was originally created for Radio DJ use back in about 1997. I've evolved it with the times over the last ~20 years, both with newer hardware and changes in Windows, and with customer demand. Karaoke started out as an "add-on" hack but has evolved to be quite a good Karaoke program.

But it's still great for DJing. I use it personally all the time at weddings, graduation parties, etc. Then there are the bar gigs, where everyone is an American Idol star lol... so it's versatile enough to do any kind of DJing (except for scratch/mixing, that's not my area and probably never will be)...

[mydjkj.com]

I use it also for weddings. I use the karaoke players to load up specialty dances in order. For example I place my grand entrance song in line 1, cake cutting in line 2, first dance line 3 and so on. Makes it easy to cue up songs. I save playlist for cocktail hour, dinner music, reception and so on as well where I want the music to fade continuous.

I also find it very helpful and useful in DJing MMA fights. I place the fighters walkout music in the karaoke Que tab in order as they are called out. I place them in the karaoke players when their name is called. Such as I use player 1 for the blue corner and player 2 for the red corner. Once again I have a playlist made for in between rounds just for the fights.

[Hanginon]

The one piece missing from Virtual DJ Studio was/is a way to track songs played. I do it by manually dragging the played song into the "Karaoke Que" area (as suggested by Fabio).

If anyone has come up with an easier way, or a way Windows Explorer can track it, I'm all ears.

[Justin]

I am working on a "last played" field in the music database... currently it is only used for "shuffle" playback in the Playlist, eg, it will lean toward picking a "random" song that hasn't been played in a while vs one that has been played recently. Adding new songs to the playlist will automatically have a higher chance of being chosen by "shuffle", regardless of the order of the list itself (internally I sort by "last played", then pick a weighted random number favoring a lower number (older timestamp, or zero if never played))...

...so I suppose I could extend this a little further and keep a "last played" field in the music database itself. Then you could (perhaps) right-click or click a button and display the last 'x' songs played, or all the songs played in the last 'x' hours/days/weeks/etc... with an option to reset times (perhaps at the start of a gig).

Let me ponder on that for a while. The LCD is starting to go out on my development laptop (the backlight I should say), it's flickering quite a bit and it's rather dim, only on the left side of the screen ... I might have to do a HDD swap with another machine as the flickering gives me a headache lol. Luckily was just given a 17" Acer Aspire laptop that was dropped, "for parts", and with a little soldering, I have a new machine with roughly the same specs as this one...

On a totally off-topic note: Even though an LCD screen is not affected by magnets, I am finding out the hard way that the BACK LIGHT is, if it's an older one using fluorescent backlighting (as opposed to LED). Stupid Sony 30-watt Bluetooth speaker... when I have time I've got a bin full of spare laptops, hopefully can find a backlight (or inverter board?) and get this one back to its former glory.

(LOL I just reviewed and fixed a typo... I sure hope my LCD screen isn't affected by magets... ya I know, but it reads like maggots)