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Forum: General Discussion

Topic: My struggles with Video quality and Video recording
Man I have to say it has been about 5 or 6 years since I have been struggling with this issue. So this is my follow up and current status. I hope my experiences will help someone out there.

About 6 years ago I started messing with video mixing and recording. I was using VDJ 6 or 7 at the time (I think). I always had issues, whether it was the video freezing, jumping, skipping or not loading at all. Recording made it even worse. It just took too much of a toll on the system and the computer would either freeze yet you can still hear the sound or VDJ would crash all together.

Now mind you when I bought my laptops they were PC and usually high end HPs no less than $1000 and I would upgrade them on top of that. Adding more ram or an additional hard drive. Always buying a laptop with a discrete video card (not intergrated to the motherboard). I only used my laptops strictly for Djing. This way it was clean and no viruses. No other programs running in the back ground to weigh the system down. I went from using a AMD card to a Nvidia card. It made no difference.

I did post on the forum but never received definitive help to fix it. I read all the other post to see if someone else found a fix. I downloaded the PC optimizer and I believe there was some kind of video card down load in tools to assist with some kind of issue with specific video cards. None of these things 100% fixed my issues.

When VDJ 8 came out it did fix some things. The video didn't skip as much or lock up. Sometimes the video would lock up but the music would still play and VDJ was still responsive. Recording was still an issue. Not just the quality but also i didn't run smoothly. The video showing while recording was fine but the actual recording itself was horrible.

So I just gave up and stopped for a while. A little less than a year ago I bought a high end laptop and installed a 2tb SSD hard drive. So I was like let me try djing with videos again. The videos played fine didn't freeze and I could project them or show them with no issues. Once again video recording was still an issue. I messed with all the settings trying to find the right settings. It remains unresolved to this day (on my laptop). The good news is that I can at least confidently video mix at an event or club.

So I also recently purchased an extremely high end desktop. Once again I was like let me try to record a video mix. The video was smooth while recording. No issues with freezing or anything else. When I went to view the recording it was smooth but once again the quality was still horrible. So I started all over, messing with all the video card settings and VDJ video settings. I finally came up with some satisfactory results in recording on my desktop and here is how.

1st, I always tried to record in MP4 format since it is universal format and a smaller file. The quality was horrible. I am using HD 720 or 1080 videos so I know the quality of the videos I was using was not the issue. When I switched it to the default recording format WEBM it did much better. The file is larger and a lot of times I have to convert that video file for other uses.

2nd, I put my video settings on my computer to favor quality over performance.

3rd, I change the max amount of memory the videos can use to the amount that is on my card. I believe the default was like 4 gbs.

4th, In VDJ video settings I changed the recording quality to high.

5th, In VDJ video settings I upped the FPS to 120.

6th, In VDJ video settings for VideoMicroFrames I selected never

7th, In VDJ video settings for Video resampler quality I selected high

8th, In VDJ Video settings for UsevideoDXVA I selected Yes

Here is a link to my Vimeo page so you can see the results https://vimeo.com/user22693972

Here are the model numbers and specs to my laptop and desktop

Desktop
Ibuypower Snow Blind 942
Key Specs

Hard Drive Capacity
2000 gigabytes
Hard Drive Type
SATA
Operating System
Windows 10
Processor Speed (Base)
3.7 gigahertz
Processor Model
Intel Core i7
System Memory (RAM)
16 gigabytes
Graphics
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti
Processor Model Number
8700K
Storage Type
2tb SSD
Solid State Drive Capacity
120 gigabytes

Laptop
Asus Strix ROG GL702VS
Key Specs

Hard Drive Capacity
2000 gigabytes
Hard Drive Type
SSD
Operating System
Windows 10
Processor Speed (Base)
2.8 gigahertz
Processor Model
Intel 7th Generation Core i7
System Memory (RAM)
16 gigabytes
Graphics
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070
Processor Model Number
i7-7700HQ
Screen Size
17.3 inches
Touch Screen
No
Battery Life
4 hours
Storage Type
SSD

 

geposted Sat 06 Jan 18 @ 6:34 am
One more thing, do not project or extend the display while recording.
 

geposted Sat 06 Jan 18 @ 5:23 pm
Nice write up bro!!

My laptop isn’t anywhere near the horsepower you have but I’ll definitely setup the Windows machine tomorrow and give your settings a go.
 

geposted Sun 07 Jan 18 @ 12:45 am
Your video FPS should be set to the monitor refresh rate which is typically 60. Going over 60 won't make the VDJ frame rate go higher than the monitor refresh and probably just a waste. Also higher than refresh rate FPS does not improve recording as far as I can tell. The skin FPS should also match the monitor refresh rate to get best smoothness but with video you don't see it easily. Having one or the other different can cause choppy behavior on skin or video if you know how to see it. Easy to see under some circumstances. e.g. you should get smoother wave scrolling on skin and smoother video scrolling when that applies when both skin and video FPS are set to the monitor refresh rate when you have an adequate machine to begin with.

If you have slow machine ignore the above. High skin FPS can burden a slow machine which still needs fixing.
 

geposted Mon 08 Jan 18 @ 11:38 pm
Wow, Thanks for your persistence to a problem many of us (me) had lol I tried your settings and can now record MP4 smooth without a glitch!
 

geposted Sat 14 Apr 18 @ 6:54 am
Hi, I'm glad this helped someone :)
 

geposted Sat 14 Apr 18 @ 2:40 pm
I have one question. How do you control the video quality in VDJ8? In the old ones there was a way to control some settings. Which leads to really a bug report and feature request (perhaps) if there is no backdoor way to do this.

1.) How to set the fps/bitrate as constant instead of variable (this leads to problems using professional video editing software like Adobe Premiere as it doesn't like the variable and gives instant sync issues when using mp4. Premiere doesn't support webm so you would have to convert webm with ffmpeg first).

2.) How to control the quality of the mp4 (or webm) being recorded. Sometimes you may want 640x480, 740p or 1080p or even 4k. I haven't gotten anything 1080p out of VDJ even using great settings in Premiere (meaning I start with a nice 4k even pulled from youtube or a record pool, and by the time i'm done it isn't as good a quality). Perhaps there is a backdoor or registry hack for VDJ (or ffmpeg or likes) to control the quality outside of VDJ but FOR VDJ.

Currently the best work around is using Handbrake to properly encode the "raw" video spit out from VDJ prior to any other programs touching it.
 

geposted Thu 14 Jun 18 @ 5:31 am
AdionPRO InfinityCTOMember since 2006
Search for record in options.
There's a setting for recordQuality to set quality and resolution to set the resolution
 

geposted Thu 14 Jun 18 @ 5:58 am
Thanks @Adion. Mine was in medium and 8xx x xxx ... This seems to be exactly what I was missing.
 

geposted Thu 14 Jun 18 @ 6:48 am
am mixing with virtual dj but my video mixes are not clear
 

geposted Wed 15 Jul 20 @ 3:34 pm
Go into your settings and make sure your video record quality it set to a good resolution like 720 or 1080. Also if the quality of the videos are crap then the recording will be too.
 

geposted Wed 15 Jul 20 @ 4:42 pm
Yes, recording video of shades in Virtual DJ is a complete disaster.
But for colleagues who run into this problem because of too low specifications.
There is another possibility that demands a lot less from your computer.
Since the preview usually looks good. and the problem is in the crappy recordings.
Use your Virtual DJ to broadcast footage to a specific HDMI port.

plug a good video grabber into a free HDMI port. (are quite affordable)
The other side has a USB 3 connection (at least if you have a good video grabber.)
And you plug it into a USB 3.0 or higher connection of another person
system or laptop with VLC installed.

If you put the video, shades or whatever with VJD to the right
HDMI port sends. (where video grabber is connected to.)
Can you record it in full HD in VLC player. itself in 60 FPS

skip
 

geposted Fri 29 Oct 21 @ 5:05 am
 

geposted Sat 06 Nov 21 @ 1:01 pm