DVJ – Hydraulic Couplings Manufacturer – CNC Machining Parts Manufacturer
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DVJ, derived from the term “DJ” and its sister “VJ”, is a term used to describe a combination of the twon other words, a DJ who performs live using an audio-visual music player instead of an audio-only setup consisting of CD turntable players or vinyl-record turntables. This is not to be confused with a VJ, which usually refers to a host of a music video TV channel, or a visual-only performer separate from the DJ in a live environment. As the term DJ usually also applies to composers of music played by DJs (whether they themselves are performing DJs or not), DVJ has a similar meaning with composers in the audio-visual format. Although we may say “DVJ” to describe a “video jockey” artist, the term comes from the industry-standard Pioneer DVD-turntable, called the DVJ. A more common name is simply DVDJ (DVD jockey) or VJ (video jockey); however, the latter, as mentioned previously, is sometimes confused with TV music video channel hosts.
History
Visuals in one form or another have always been a part of live DJ performances, but until the advent of this form of performance, the visual aspect was largely limited to computerized strobes and spotlights, laser projectors, and/or pyrotechnics. With the advent of DVD technology (especially once it became cheap enough for the average individual to create his or her own discs), a push was made for a device that would give a performer the same flexibility in accessing the music and video on the disc as the turntable-style CD players commonly available for DJs. Pioneer Corporation became the first (and as of this writing, still the only) manufacturer of DJ equipment to produce such a device, the Pioneer DVJ-X1, first released in 2004. That design has been refined into the DVJ1000, released in 2006, generally regarded as the “gold standard” DVJ turntable today.
Operation
DVJ discs, as noted above, are DVDs containing one or more music videos the performer wishes to play. The music and video contained on the disc can be anything the performer desires, but as with standard DJs, the most popular genres are the various forms of electronica. In addition to the audio, which is sent to a sound system like other player systems, the video component is output to a video projector or other visual display. The audio and video for the disc are then always in synch regardless of any scratching, mixing, and other transformations the performer does on the media. This was a huge improvement over any previously possible method of performing with audio and video together, as the performance often had to be very meticulously planned so that the video being displayed matched the audio. This sometimes required a second performer to handle video playback, leaving little room for improvisation by the DJ.
In addition to the DVJ turntable players (virtually all DJs have two players for their “native” media of vinyl, CD, or DVD; some have additional players to accommodate other media, or they mix multiple sources at once), “DVJing” requires the use of an audio-visual mixing console, which allows the DVJ to select sources for audio and video and to blend or mix them. Many mixers also give the DVJ the ability to perform simple transformations on the video. Just as an audio mixing console allows for changes in equalizer levels, dynamics, and balance, an A/V mixer allows variations in hue, color saturation, brightness, sharpness, and other “TV-type” settings. They also allow for various types of transitions between video clips, such as fades, blends, and wipes. A/V mixers are nothing new to the recording and performance industry, but they are more often found in production rooms of television stations or editing suites of movie studios and are a new feature of live turntablist performances.
The relative simplicity of the performance using the DVJ turntable, along with the added dimension of video for the DVJ artist to expand into while composing, has resulted in a move up to these media by some former DJs and recording artists, where they are in high demand by nightclubs and rave party organizers. However, because the technology is still very new and the players and projectors very expensive, “DVJing” is, as of this writing, still only a small part of the DJ and nightclub scene as a whole and largely restricted to professional DVJs. Of course, as the technology becomes more widely accepted and established, the price of the central piece of equipment (the DVJ turntable) will become cheaper and should eventually be within the reach of amateur performers. Future advances in video processing may allow the DVJ to perform real-time advanced transformations on the video, such as polarization, color negative, digital color grading, and other digital filters.
Hardware
The most common setup for a DVJ includes two DVD turntables, an audio mixer, and a video mixer. The “gold standard” DVD turntable is the aforementioned Pioneer DVJ-1000; it is, at its core, a DVD player with a much higher read speed than the average home theater player, and a memory buffer that allows for quick jumps or backtracks in playback. This is coupled with a controller that emulates a vinyl-record turntable. By rotating a control wheel, the performer can quickly search through a video; slow or speed up playback to match the playing track; and, with a “scrubbing” motion, quickly stutter forward and backward, producing the well-known “scratching” effect. Other controls that take advantage of the digital media include A-B looping, freeze frame, slow motion, and instantaneous pause/play (a traditional vinyl-record turntable requires a small amount of “spinup” time).
Common brands for commercial video mixers are Edirol and Videonics. These pieces of hardware simply accept multiple video sources and combine them in various ways such as fades, wipes, and a number of other transitions. Another common piece of equipment in the DVJ arsenal is called a switcher. Most digital turntables, whether CD or DVD, have a fader-start capability, in which the cross-fader of the audio or video mixer can tell a player to pause or play. By using these types of switchers (the Pioneer A/V switcher is a very common example), scratching video effects can show the typical back-and-forth motion heard on audio. More-advanced video mixers also have a chroma-key capability, known by most as “green screen” compositing. Currently, Videonics makes a number of mixers that will allow for this effect. VJ artists may play DVD tracks with a certain color that is set as the chroma-key color on the mixer. The mixer will then locate this color on the track and replace it with whatever the VJ has chosen. Many times, he or she will use a camera and camera operator to take live video feeds of the dancing crowd and superimpose them on a video of something else to give a novel effect. The elite option in mixers is the Pioneer SVM-1000. This mixer consists of preview screens, switchers, video FX, and audio FX, in a four-channel mixer. The Pioneer DJM-800, the industry standard, sets the table for any video jock, with a VSW-1 Switch and a three-screen monitor.
These various components are used by professional DJs and venues to provide a rich audio-visual experience for patrons. However, an up-and-coming alternative to component-based DVD players and mixers is gaining popularity among newer and less-wealthy performers. Although considered to be less professional by many DVJ pros, computer solutions such as OtisAV DJ, PCDJ, VirtualDJ, and Serato Scratch Live all deliver (or plan to deliver) video capabilities as well as audio. In this way, video mixing is done within the computer, which can then be plugged into a projector or TV, eliminating the need for an external mixer in many cases. The software, in fact, uses the computer as an all-in-one unit: player, A/V mixer, and monitor. Some software suites allow the use of external controllers that emulate turntables, allowing a similar look and feel to component systems without the added cost of the electronics of the player. To take advantage of this solution, many DVJs are simply ripping their DVD tracks to external hard drives, thus lightening their load when carrying equipment to gigs. This solution is not only more compact, it’s less expensive; the software and related external turntable controls can be purchased for a few hundred U.S. dollars and used on any laptop with sufficient computing power and memory, while the Pioneer DVJ players retail for around US$2500. Even a basic component-based setup can cost far more than a top-of-the-line laptop, software, and storagespecially if a sufficient computer already exists and thus doesn’t have to be bought new. The major sacrifice of becoming a computer video DJ is the lack of quality. In comparison to a DVJ vs. Serato Video, the quality of the video and the sound output of Serato does not come close to the actual DVD being played through a DVJ-1000. It’s a cheap shortcut that many DVJs are taking, but as a consequence, they’re falling short of being real DVD DJs.
However, it is important to note that these systems are often far less reliable, as huge DVD files on older, less-powerful computers can lead to skips, lagging, and even crashesll potentially fatal to the performance. Very powerful systems are needed to run these types of video shows. A computer can also be limiting in the number of outputs available; an audio DJ traditionally has a pair of headphones through which the DJ can hear the unmixed output of the turntables, one in each ear. A DVJ needs similar capabilities with video, which requires multiple screens. This is relatively simple with component-based systems; a small flat-panel monitor or TV can be set up for each player and given the raw video feed of the player through a Y-splitter cable. A computer, on the other hand, must have the ability to produce at least two separate video outputs: one to be shown to the DVJ containing the raw images (in miniature) and any graphical software controls; the other containing the mixed video to be sent to the house (and generally also shown to the performer). This ability is uncommon, but becoming less so. The ability to view raw video in full-screen most often requires up to three outputs for the DJ, plus the house feed; up to four video outputs in all, which is an exceedingly rare feature especially on laptops. On top of that, the extra processing capability required to render multiple video outputs can tax slower computers. Again, a very powerful computer is required for a software-based solution.
Categories: DJingHidden categories: Articles lacking sources from January 2007 | All articles lacking sources | Orphaned articles from November 2009 | All orphaned articles
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