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Music Media

Video Scratching Goes Mainstream 180

Posted by simoniker from the wiki-wiki-wiki dept.
Boomzilla writes "Pioneer has released a digital audio and video turntable (the DVJ-X1), which allows you to manipulate and playback synchronized digital audio and video. You can manipulate DVD visuals in the same way as you would music i.e. real-time digital video scratches, loops and instant cues. The video and audio streams will stay in sync, even when they're being reversed and pitched. I guess this is the logical, commercialized version of that which has been done before. It's being shown at CES, and there are several pictures on the official Pioneer site."
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Video Scratching Goes Mainstream More

Video Scratching Goes Mainstream

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  • Hello Smithers (Score:5, Funny)

    by Sarojin ( 446404 ) on Wednesday January 07, 2004 @08:23PM (#7908621)
    You are very good.. at turning me on
    • I forget the Simpsons episode, one of the Malibu Stacey ones, and that's a login prompt?

      Anyhow, video scratching? Audio scratching is bad enough, I wouldn't put up with this sort of thing. I don't think it really passes as anything but a mark showing a lack of talent.
      • Just a sign that you haven't heard a decent scratcher. DJ Kentaro had people crying at his Tokyo New Years show from sheer amazement.

    • 'You are quite good at turning me on.'



      The joke being, of course, that this is the highest praise Smithers has ever received...

  • This THING [pioneerprodj.com] is enough to get any geek laid!!..

    Just imagine walking in to a Club with this. Even if you have hardly an inch on your face with out a pimple, you will still get laid...

  • Buffering? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by SexyKellyOsbourne ( 606860 )
    How big of a buffer does this thing have? If this thing uses DVDs for a turntable, then it must mean it has over 5GB of RAM to get around the lag of spinning the disk to find the part of the video.

    Unless, of course, it only goes over the span of a few seconds, but since video/audio streams take up a ton of data, then it must have something like 512MB of ram built in to do it.

    That, plus they have to find a way to capture the results of the delta frames, or else they're going to have artifacts.

    Pretty amazi

    • That much RAM... (Score:5, Funny)

      by irokitt ( 663593 ) <archimandrites-iaur@@@yahoo...com> on Wednesday January 07, 2004 @08:46PM (#7908816)
      Hmm...

      It has RAM, and a DVD drive. Therefore, it can be made to run Linux!
    • Unless, of course, it only goes over the span of a few seconds, but since video/audio streams take up a ton of data, then it must have something like 512MB of ram built in to do it.

      Well, I think the concept is to mix and scratch like you would LP records in hip hop music. Well, not really mix since you would need another player and the equivilant of a cross-fader, but that would be cool.

      So really, you only need to handle the amount of memory to manipulate a few seconds. But why not do overkill?

      Other t
    • Pioneer's digital mixing equipment generally doesn't come with a cheap price tag. 512 might be a not so generous estimate with the cheap costs of DDR these days. It wouldn't be unreasonable to see the buffer even as high as a gig or two. From Pioneer it isn't unreasonable to purchase a turntable for $2000 or more.
    • Buffer *all* the audio, and use tivo-like functionality for the video. It's ok if the video looses exact synch for a moment.

      The audio going a little off would probably ruin the product, so they *might* have to buffer the whole thing. I'd guess that it's two levels of cache: RAM, HD, and DVD. If the user scratches too far, the video drops a few frames while it reads ahead off the HD and pounds on the DVD to fill the buffer in the new direction.

      I'm sure they could make something at least semi-usable that on
    • Huh? Why couldn't it be read live? The average DVD seek time is 70, with 300 mSec for a worst case scenario. A good drive may be able to lower this seek time further, so it seems that there's little cacheing required for dvd scratching.

      DVD delta frames vary in length -- it's a per DVD choice, right? Maybe they might need cache for that, but there are drives fast enough to compensate for this.

    • I don't think it needs random access to the entire DVD volume at any given time, only a drive with a low seek time and variable speed along with enough RAM for a few seconds ahead and behind. If it's anything like the Pioneer CDJs I used to own you can't randomly "drop the needle" anywhere on the disc like with turntables. You have to fast-forward or rewind with the jog dial (although it can fly through a CD) and then use more fine-grained control and queing in a small area on the disc.

      Also, they don't nee
    • Video's fat, but takes up much less room on a DVD than you might imagine. Your typical 90min movie DVD sometimes has several different versions of the same movie -Spanish, French dubbed versions- each ~1GB apiece. So the whole DVD ain't taken up by just the one movie.

      So storing or generating keyframes as needed, followed by deltas, 512MB is probably way more than enough, I'm guessing that would nicely buffer half an hour of MPEG2 or 4 video!

      "... just like they do with audio tracks." -It needs to be sai

      • Re:Buffering? (Score:2, Interesting)

        by mikis ( 53466 )
        Um, not really. There is only one video stream on DVD, and several audio streams for different languages. And audio stream is at least 8-10 times smaller, so most of space IS occupied by video.

  • Let's see it in action. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ActionPlant ( 721843 ) on Wednesday January 07, 2004 @08:24PM (#7908634) Homepage
    We could already do basically the same kind of thing with iMovie, although with more of a workspace interface, but it was still nice and cheap.

    Still, a scrub machine for the masses. Could make for some interesting deejay team competitions; visuals used to be automated. It's nice to see a more hands-on approach to a technology we've otherwise left to the A/V club geeks.

    Damon,

    • Re:Let's see it in action. (Score:5, Informative)

      by FatalTourist ( 633757 ) on Wednesday January 07, 2004 @08:48PM (#7908830) Homepage
      Live video mixing is nothing new. I've seen several shows with crazy live video, usually smaller name groups in clubs. VJ Central [vjcentral.com] has reviews of many different pieces of software that allow live mixing. Most of them allow routing of MIDI control (keyboard, knobs, sliders) to the software.
      This device is cool because it gives video mixing the same feel as a turntable. Maybe the VJ will take center stage now instead of being hidden in the back

      • Live video mixing is nothing new

        You can say that again. The Emergency Broadcast Network were doing it over ten years ago, and AFAIK were the first to tie a MIDI control to Video. If you've never seen their stuff, I highly recommend it. Way ahead of thier time. I think you can still buy their video on Amazon.

        You can see some of thier earlier clips here. [guerrillanews.com]

        Not as good as their video, but still great for 1991(!)

  • Max Headroom (Score:3, Funny)

    by saramakos ( 693903 ) on Wednesday January 07, 2004 @08:25PM (#7908640)
    Scratching and looping? Sounds exactly like "Max Headroom" from the early 80s!

    • Re:Max Headroom (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      The 80's? Max Headroom was and always will be 20 minutes in the future.

    • Re:Max Headroom (Score:4, Insightful)

      by SharpNose ( 132636 ) on Wednesday January 07, 2004 @11:06PM (#7909848) Journal
      Actually, the first "video scratch" effect I recall seeing was in the video for Herbie Hancock's "Rockit" and also one for a subsequent tune which I think was named "Hardrock." I saw a lot of Max Headroom (not the TV series that had Matt Frewer as a reporter for a TV network in a dystopian "20 minutes into the" future) but the oddball chat show that (IIRC) ran on Showtime (I still have some of that stuff on VHS) and the time-domain video effects there were pretty much entirely freeze-frame or just plain cut in nature, i.e., freeze then alternate the freeze with the live or just throw in odd cuts.

      By the way, I loved this:

      Rutger Hauer: "I wonder...about your soul."
      Max: "I haven't got any feet; how can I have a sole?"

      Guess you had to be there.

  • Oh no...think of what Lucas can do with this!!! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Eberlin ( 570874 ) on Wednesday January 07, 2004 @08:26PM (#7908653) Homepage
    Not only has he already re-edited his own stuff, imagine what he can do with DVD's of other people's movies!!! He'll frickin' P-Diddy his way back into the mainstream with remixes of The Sound of Music, Casablanca, and The Godfather.

    It's not copyright infringement, it's sampling!!! Now a "meesa jar jar binks" is just about the same as an "uh huh yeah!"
    • Well, he wouldn't be the first. I've been following the trend of bootleg music for a while, where people make unauthorised versions of songs. Because they are not releasing commerically, they are "free" to sample pretty much anything. In the last year or so, this has become very popular, especially with the European commercial successes of 2manyDJs [allmusic.com].

      Many of them have also started to produce video. A couple of good ones that come to mind are Eclectic Method [eclecticmethod.net] and Cartel Communique (who's site is down). Well w

    • Re:Final scratch (Score:2, Informative)

      by nv5 ( 697631 )
      I like the FinalScratch approach, too - but it requires a computer. And there are surprisingly many people, who are more comfortable with dedicated hardware, like recording workstations, cd and dvd recorders etc.

      So I think both approaches will be around for a while. By the way, I don't think FinalScratch can do video yet - or did I miss that on their site?
    • Erm ... that's audio
    • I saw a product that was basically final scratch for audio at last years macworld SF. But instead working with sound into the computer, it had a small camera tpye device mounted at the end of the sytlus, and a special record with black and white squares on it. The software they were showing with it had it acting as a controller for quicktime. Unfortunatly i can't remember the name of the company.

  • Revolutionary.... (Score:5, Funny)

    by _Pinky_ ( 75643 ) on Wednesday January 07, 2004 @08:32PM (#7908715)
    At least for my porn collection!

  • yum (Score:3, Interesting)

    by highwaytohell ( 621667 ) on Wednesday January 07, 2004 @08:39PM (#7908762)
    This thing looks awesome, any DJ would be drooling at the mouth over it. It gives them a chance to mix visuals as well as their turntabling. With a huge screen behind you and one of these babies you could mix your viinyl with some visuals. Its great to finally get something that is so hands on with video.

    • Re:yum (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      well, im a dj, and i think i'd be more keen to leave the visuals to the visuals people, in the same way that they leave me to do the music side of things.. its cool, ubt i think its a big call to say "any dj would be drooling" - many will, but not all.

    • Re:yum (Score:3, Insightful)

      by bugbread ( 599172 )
      Except most DJs are probably pretty busy with their decks, and wouldn't have much time for a third video deck. What I can see, however, are DJs who want to try their hand at VJing using this as a smooth gateway (like Final Scratch is used as the gateway between Vinyl DJs and PCDJs).
  • Can someone link a old Pioneer car audio tv commercial? It had some dude rockin' in his car on a shaking bridge Tacoma-Narrows style and after he realizes his stereo is causing the shaking he turns off his stereo and says "uh...sorry"
    • Ummm, that was stock footage of the Tacoma-Narrows, with the exception of some guy tward the end. AKA "galloping girty" circa Nov 1940

      http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/bridge/meetsusp.htm l
      http://www.scheldemond.nl/vakken/exact/na/lesse n/t acomabrug/tacomabrug.html

      Links to the Tacoma Narrows bridge stock footage.

      Not sure of a good solid link to the Pioneer commercial.

  • This wil not be as couls as it sounds (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 07, 2004 @08:53PM (#7908880)
    Although I would love it to be cool video remix is just not that cool looking. People have been doing this for a long time with various systems and I have seen quite a few of them. I used to work for MTV back when they had a techno show (AMP) and they tried to mix video but it just didn't work. There was no way to match rythm and even if you could it just didn't look particularly intereting. It seemded like it would be cool and you wantedted it to be but it ended up have only slightly more novelty than Microsoft's clippy. I have also seen a few groups that tried it with more advance equipment in more recent years and it mad for a nice compliment to a music DJ but these guys used a bunch of short weird and distorted clips mixed with CG. It was cool but no one person could have done it. I am also not so sure scratching would go too well either. Mostly because one of the things about scratching is that music scratching is done by going back and forth over a sound thus creating a NEW rythm and tone. However, picturing someone going back and forth over video clips just conjures silly images that I would imagine could even be a little dizzying to watch. So while they might of solved some techinical hurdles I think the artistic side has a long way to come.

  • what's next? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by iammaxus ( 683241 )
    In the early days (the really early ones), manipulating text easily was a challenge for computers. Then images and sound were the next hurdle. Compression schemes were not standard and memory limitations limited the kind of things that could be done and prevented realtime editing. I have long been wondering when video will reach the stage that sound and image are in now. I didnt think it was any time soon, but apparently DVDs/mpeg2 allow some semblance of this realtime, free-form editing possible for th

  • How will it look.... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Flat Feet Pete ( 87786 ) on Wednesday January 07, 2004 @08:53PM (#7908889) Homepage Journal
    I'm not sure that the points that it makes sense to scratch audio at are appropriate for video wobbling at the same place. Most of the cool (coldcut etc.) previous stuff that people are mentioning, was small bits of video triggered rather than wobbling.

    Woudln't mind a play though ;).

    I'm interested to see if they come out with a mixer to support it.

  • Done before and again... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Sebastopol ( 189276 ) on Wednesday January 07, 2004 @09:01PM (#7908927) Homepage

    A little history for you electronic arts folks who dig this stuff:

    I did this same thing in 1989 using a Roland Alpha portable keyboard and MAX running on a Mac 2. Max was a great program for the Mac that let you graphically build a control system for any peripherals (almost like Labworks for MIDI/Appletalk). The scripte we wrote could queue video sequences by pressing a piano key, and you could scratch using the pitch wheel, turning it into a video jog wheel.

    During the performance, three musicians would jam on midi instruments (drums, roland wind thingy and a guitar synth) and another program on MAX would improvise based on what we were playing. The video artist also stood on stage with the ROland Alpha, jamming with us and using a small monitor rather than facing the projection screen.

    Technologically, it was HOT.

    In practice, the music was a cacophony and the video didn't change fast enough to keep up.

  • How long - (Score:2, Interesting)

    by ir0b0t ( 727703 ) *
    -until the image of an actor could be digitally sampled and then cast in a new movie? Like the commercials that use licensed images of Elvis or Humphrey Bogart to advertise contemporary products but an entire feature using a sampled image of Bogie that cannot be distinguished from images made from the actor. I see a whole new area of licensing and intellectual property battles. Then again, I'd love a chance to redo Star Wars Episode 1. The story just cries out for new casting. At least erase Jar Jar.
  • Yeah but will it make modern music any better? Rus
  • Remember in Batman Returns when Batman used a CD of the Penguin's private conversation against him by repeating one line over and over again by scratching a CD.
  • The pictures indicate its limited to region 2 dvd's. And this isn't likely to be a product we get region free versions of from Asia. This seems limiting since DJing is largely sampling from a wide variety of sources, I would think it would be advantageous to show first release/current stuff from region one or (preferably) all regions.
  • A machine that lets me make my own Purina Cat Chow commercials. Just what I needed.

  • Emergency Broadcast Network! Remember them? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dietz ( 553239 ) on Wednesday January 07, 2004 @09:21PM (#7909061)
    From the wired article:

    Video scratching was pioneered by a U.S. multimedia crew called Emergency Broadcast Network in the late 1980s, and refined by Coldcut and Hex, a pair of U.K. collaborative multimedia producers and musicians.

    Does anyone else remember EBN? They were sorta Negativland-ish music (later Negativland, that is... dispepsi-ish stuff that had a beat and wasn't as abstract as their earlier stuff) and had all these cool videos where they did video sampling.

    Their live show was one of the coolest I've ever seen. They had three huge video screens behind the stage playing sampled video, and this this weird podium thing that had two arms... On the front of the arms were TVs with yet more sampled video, and then later in the show, they arms spun around and had lasers or something on the other side. This was a long time ago, so I don't remember exactly, but it was incredibly impressive. They had re-edited all this footage, so they had Connie Chung, Dan Rather, et al. saying "This is EBN Nightly News!" and stuff. They also had a real gun shooting blanks during "Shoot the Mac 10". I grabbed some of the bullets of the stage, and I think I still have them. Amazingly, they were just the opening act for Banco de Gaia, who I also like, but come on... Toby Marks (BdG) was just sitting at a mixing board. It didn't even compare.

    You can find some of their videos [guerrillanews.com] around the net. We Will Rock You shows them re-working (elder) Bush speeches, similar to the Bushwhacked that's been floating around the net.

    They also had this tricked out station wagon [audiovisualizers.com] with a satellite dish and video monitors all up and down the roof. It looked pretty cool, though I only saw pictures, not the real thing.

    Later I saw them in "concert" opening for someone else, and they just played a video. I don't even think there was anyone from EBN there. It was totally disappointing.

    Coldcut and Hex are cool, too, but I've never seen a show like the EBN one since.

    • Re:Emergency Broadcast Network! Remember them? (Score:4, Informative)

      by YOU LIKEWISE FAIL IT ( 651184 ) on Wednesday January 07, 2004 @09:35PM (#7909160) Homepage Journal
      Their live show was one of the coolest I've ever seen. They had three huge video screens behind the stage playing sampled video, and this this weird podium thing that had two arms... On the front of the arms were TVs with yet more sampled video, and then later in the show, they arms spun around and had lasers or something on the other side.

      Yeah, EBN [wired.com] were an amazing band pioneering all this kind of stuff, and still going sadly unrecognised to this day ( tip: Telecommunications Breakdown is probably one of the best albums of the 90's, and had all this k00l multimedia shit bundled with it too ).

      The swinging apparatus you described was also at some points mounted on the station wagon - it can be seen configured like this in the documentary Sonic Outlaws [imdb.com], which is awesome, and first turned me on to EBN, Negativland and that style of music in general. Anyone with an interest in fair use rights should view this documentary, as it features extensive coverage of the Island Records / Negativland lawsuit.

      YLFI

      P.S. Am very jealous you were lucky enough to see them live.

    • I was bored one night when I was on the road in San Franciso, and I noticed that the Mozilla first anniversary party was happening at the Sound Factory. It was fairly ho-hum, but there I witnessed EBN. It (they?) was awesome. Very cool and innovative.. I'll have to get a DVD of one of their performances...
    • actually one of the dudes from EBN (who were all going to school in providence, RI at the time) still throws monthly events at a place called AS220 [as220.org].

      i wish i had been paying attention to music at the time
  • Personally, I'm not a fan of "video scratching", as it seems too similar to scratching on LPs. (Or is it "bangin' on wax", as the kids call it).

    But if you're interested in video scratching, check out Wave Twisters [wavetwiste...emovie.com] [http://www.wavetwisters-themovie.com/] - it's a "movie", all based on video-scratching to the beat of an album produced by DJ Quik, the scratch artist.

    Pretty interesting to watch when you're stoned, I guess.

    • Re:video scratching (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      ok :))
      its dj Q-bert not Quick, the rooster not the bunny, and he is considered the best DJ in the world which, when you know about is career, is very hard to argue with. ;)
      Wavetwister was entirely made out of skratches, the sounds, soundtracks and dialogues, not the video, it is built like it but isn't. And, well, yeah, probably that being stoned would help endure it but even if I'm a skratch whore I didn't appreciate.

      The fact that you know about this movie is interesting though, it's nice to see a non-skr
      • Wave Twisters isn't all skratching if you want to get technical about it. Quite a few of the beats were produced (i.e. some by Mix Master Mike). Now for a purely skratch album check out: D-Styles Phantazmagoria. Everything was done live. You can check it out here: http://www.djdstyles.com/.

        For other discussions on skratching there are a few message boards floating around, namely the dstyles board, also www.asisphonics.net which is a great site that caters towards skratch djs, as well as http://www.sty

  • DJ + Video Mix example (Score:4, Interesting)

    by szyzyg ( 7313 ) on Wednesday January 07, 2004 @09:25PM (#7909090)
    I've played with more than a few VeeJays in my time, there seems to be a huge range in the effort that the video people put in - some of them try to sync stuff up to the music, others just plug up a DVD player and let whatever they have play - usually hentai porn. Really the audio needs to be syncrhonised to the music activity.

    I've been messing around with video for a long time, but I'm still really a DJ at heart, I figure that a good audio video show needs at least 2 people with one DJ + One Video performer. The DJ needs a mixer which can send MIDI events from it's knobs and faders allwing the videographer to slave effects and synchronise them to what the DJ is doing. Problem is any mixer which sends midi events is just plain lousy for DJ'ing right now.

    Anyway, I figured that most Promoters these days just don't listen to mix CD's for very long, so I've started to work on the video approach to complement my demo packs - here's a little one I'm working on right now.

    http://www.radiodmz.com/radiodmz_trailer.avi
    (n eeds the XviD codec)
    2 minutes of fast mixing and video effects - more of a commercial than a demo, but it's definately a step up from teh average video artist who plays Hentai porn over my DJ sets.....

    • Not a big fan of the video FX... but I must say... it takes some balls to post a video of yourself dancing like that on /. It's like, uber-geeky! Heh.
    • I'm a DJ - I'm used to dancing badly in public!
    • there's a pretty good crew called "eskimo kitchen" that does on-the-fly editing out here.

      we've also tried automated software (eh) and playing snes9x games on a projector
    • I'm just getting into the market for a serious mixer. Currently this is at the top of my list, in the same range as the Pioneer DJM-600. It's probably too cluttered if you're a serious battle DJ, but all I can think if is all the possibilities this opens up.

      6 stereo channels (4 phono or line, 2 mono/mic or stereo return)

      2 auxiliary sends selectable pre/post fader (and crossfader)

      MIDI output from VCF 1+2, crossfader, LFO (MIDI clock), dedicated data control and start/stop button

      New twin-rail VCA channe
      • NIce, but the crossfader on that mixer is too limp to be of any use to me. Maybe they'll make one which is more my style someday (I'm still using a Numark SM-1 mostly because the optical faders feel so nice)
  • Turntables have come a long way since I remember them back in the 80's.
  • This sort of stuff was out years ago and even made a big splash at last year's Macworld Expo San Fransisco (Jan 2003)

    Check out the product here [finalscratch.com]

  • Emergency Broadcast Network (Score:5, Informative)

    by MalachiConstant ( 553800 ) on Wednesday January 07, 2004 @09:33PM (#7909143)
    While I have a generally low tolerance for "experimental" music, there's a band that used this kind of video mixing to make great music.

    A couple of years ago a friend of mine went to a weird multimedia show at a club where they hung sheets up on the wall and did live video/music mixing. He bought their CD which had video mixes on it for about half the songs, I think.

    Anyway they were called Emergency Broadcast Network. The album was Telecommunications Breakdown and it used clips from news broadcasts and infomercials. There's a very small clip from one of the songs one that album here [wired.com]. There also some better resolution clips of some of their other songs here [guerrillanews.com], and a better resolution download of "Rock This Base" here [edinburgh-east-ssp.org]. I don't think any of those sons are as good as the stuff on Telecommunications Breakdown, but check it out, I'm not sure if that album is still available anywhere right now.

    • Re:Emergency Broadcast Network (Score:4, Interesting)

      by netik ( 141046 ) on Thursday January 08, 2004 @12:12AM (#7910529) Homepage
      Around 1991, I spent alot of time with with Greg Deocampo and friends from RISD in the early 90's when they were writing the software (which later became a company called AVX Design).

      Mark Marinello [parsons.edu] wrote the original software, It was used on the U2 Zoo TV Tour which was largely based around what EBM could do with video.

      The software was written for Quadra 950's under OS 8 running video cards (radius videovision, I think) that could barely crank out 320x200. It not for pixeldoubling and on-board zoom, it would have looked far worse.

      Specs [geocities.com] on EBM's live rig are still available.

      If you're still interested in this sort of thing, ArKaos makes a MIDI-able video sampler now, called the Arkaos Visualizer [arkaos.net] which works a bit better than the AVX Video Sampler did.

      I think the pioneer device might be great for real-time video mixing, but nothing quite compares to being able to fill up a midi keyboard with 88 keys or more of whacked out video and sync it to midi.

      Quite a few of us moved to the West coast in the late 90's during the .com craze, and started IFILM, but that's a whole other story.
  • Just kidding. But this sounds like a the results of a late night drinking session with the engineering and marketing departments. Scratching is 'hot'. And visuals are hot. Scatching (um, jog) videos is NOT.

    This [hothardware.com] is still more interesting [wired.com] to me.

  • Design oversight (Score:4, Funny)

    by Comrade Pikachu ( 467844 ) on Wednesday January 07, 2004 @09:36PM (#7909171) Homepage
    Let's see... LP's operate at 33.3 RPM.

    DVD's rotate at 1400+ RPM.

    I can picture earnest, stern-faced VJ's sucking on burnt fingertips. :-)
    • Sure, LPs spin at 33.3 RPM, but CD DJs are spinning discs between 200 - 500 RPM, so it's not such a big gap.

      And, yeah, I know I'm responding seriously to a light-hearted joke post. Bad habit.
  • According to this forum [pioneerprodjforums.com] (contains some specs as well!) "it took 40 engineers 4 years to develop this." Exhaustive testing, i guess :P.

  • um, video art? (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    This is nothing new. Just a commercialization of what video artists have been doing since the 70's. Video mixing/performance is at least as old as the Amiga. Video art goes as far back as the sony porta pack. I certainly would not give any credit to MTV and its vapid brood.
  • This sounds like what the Quicktime codec Pixlet [apple.com] can do. The WWDC keynote [apple.com] by Jobs showed him "scrubbing" back and forth through a full-size Nemo video with, supposedly, no skipping nor visible artifacts.
  • This product is great, but why force the user to use DVD? Why not make it so it can be hooked up to an external hard disc?

    I'd rather go to a club with a laptop. That way, I can just plug in and go, and I have access to all my data easily in one place, no disc changing required.

    Today's VJ/DJ booths are a mess of CDs, DVDs and VHS cassettes that have been battered to the point where they barely work, they go missing, and you have to keep shooing people away from putting down drinks and cigarettes on top of
  • I bought MS Pinky to use with my MOTU 828mkII firewire audio interface instead of Final Scratch. The software was $100 with the vinyl, and I didn't have to waste money on the Scratch Amp thing that is only good for Final Scratch. It is great! 10ms Latency on a G3 iBook, and much better quality than Final Scratch.

    Oh yeah, it came with a program that does video scratching as well.

    Check it out! If you already have a 4 input-channel soundcard, you only need to spend $100!
  • britney spears doing it again and again and again...... :( oh joy :(

  • As a "pro" DJ myself, I have to ask: (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Tokerat ( 150341 ) on Thursday January 08, 2004 @01:01AM (#7911321) Journal

    Why?

    Honestly, I don't think there is a great enough market for this sort of thing. I always imagined a live performing artist with gear sending MIDI->DMX (DMX is a digital light control system) to sync the lights in a club/venue to the music, but it seems to me that taking DVDs (even custom ones) and scratching them wouldn't be all that cool, as least not cool enough that someone is gonna buy this. It feels like a gimmick is all.

    Can anyone point me to a video of someone actually doing something like mixing video clips like this? Besides that VDJ software that Coldcut tried to market back in the day...
  • By a machine called the BiT BOPPER [owonder.com], which was used at clubs and raves. By todays standards the resolution and use of fake colours was crude, but it was highly effective and won several awards. The multi-layer sound animated patterns it generated too were unique, and even today people use the Atari Falcon 030 version launched in 1993. It would seem, Retro is back in...

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