Create Digital Music » Turntablism Reaches the VJ: Serato’s VIDEO-SL Reviewed on CDMotion

Jan 25 2008

Turntablism Reaches the VJ: Serato’s VIDEO-SL Reviewed on CDMotion

The convergence of visuals and sound on virtual vinyl has been a long time coming, but it’s awaited the perfect tool for controlling both. Serato’s VIDEO-SL promised to be that tool. We’ve gotten the crossfader in the capable hands of dj rndm and Robotkid to find out for Create Digital Motion. Here’s what the results look like, mixing:

… and scratching:

The review isn’t without the odd caveat: for one, you’ll need to pluck down a couple grand to get the complete setup because the Rane mixer employed is required, though rndm ultimately says that’s worth it for the integration payoff. And available transitions and effects are limited in range and prefer to run on dedicated GPUs (think MacBook Pro, or a PC laptop with a dedicated NVIDIA or ATI card). But as you can see, the results are incredibly slick, and there’s no question video on vinyl now has a tool to beat. Check out the complete review and technical details on our visualist sister site:

Hands-on Review: Serato’s VIDEO-SL for Visual Vinyl Turntablism

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6 Comments

arcaneparadox

in the first video with the video scratching what is the video that isn’t the dizzee rascal, or public enemy. You know the one with the pictures zooming around and going form one scene to the other, it starts and sounds like a talking heads video but i can find it! HELP I NEED TO SHOW IT TO MY PRFESSOR!!

January 25, 2008 @ 11:52 pm

mltv

Royksopp – Eple. Their videos are always works of art.

January 26, 2008 @ 12:20 am

flip

Holy crap, I almost had a seizure from that scratching! That aside, I’d like to see how it would react to some REAL crazy cutting, a-la-Qbert.

January 27, 2008 @ 5:07 am

ray9x

hoy rndm! nice to see you @ one of the other sites that i frequent… :)

-9x

January 29, 2008 @ 7:03 pm

Zoot

Finally, they get the vid sorted… like the way the fader cuts the vid to black, so you can do strobe like effects with crabs.

Id like a room with one of these set ups, a projector – but man its gonna take some work to come up with sets that work on two levels, sourcing video and generating visual effects to map over your tunes and then having it all go together.. if your getting fresh tunes every week it’ll start to take your life!

Btw that DJ’s scratching was lame, I want to see how the video reacts when you give it some tight scratching.

Is there increased latency with the video version?

January 30, 2008 @ 11:34 pm

Mr. Peabody

I don’t get the big deal. Virtual Dj software has been doing this for a while, and quite nicely. VDJ doesn’t have the money that Serato has for marketing, perhaps that’s why it gets no love. You can basically do video mixing and scratching with the Numark Cue.