TrackDJ - Mixxx integration

TrackDJ - Mixxx integration

By ArKaos Team

on 16 Nov 2018 11:12 AM

TrackDJ

With GrandVJ 2.6 ArKaos has introduced TrackDJ, an efficient way to synchronize a DJ and a VJ or light designer.

Here is a list of some exciting new possibilities in GrandVJ:

Visuals are following the music automatically the DJ is playing.
Visuals are precisely in-sync with the music (lip-sync, subtitles, etc.).
Visuals can automatically and precisely pulse on the beat of the music.
DJ has immediate control on the visual performance by changing track, BPM and executing loops.

The Art-Net timecode is used to generate the TrackDJ message. Art-Net itself works over ethernet. It’s best to use it over wired cables, but it should work over Wi-Fi knowing that it introduces some delays and possibilities of packet loss.

Because a popular DJ application called Mixxx is open source, ArKaos took advantage of this to extend it to send the TrackDJ messages.

You can download it here for Mac and PC:

	File size: 48MB Language: English Date added: 15 Nov. 2018	Download
	File size: 28MB Language: English Date added: 15 Nov. 2018	Download

Here are some important things to know about the behavior of TrackDJ in Mixxx.

The GrandVJ synchronization preference needs to be set to "Art-Net Timecode (including TrackDJ)".
This short tutorial shows where to find it:

Mixxx is only sending the TrackDJ messages once you are playing something. As soon as you stop all the decks, TrackDJ ceases.

TrackDJ transports only the master channel, so as you move the master slider between the 2 decks TrackDJ is automatically switching to follow it.

TrackDJ is a network protocol so you can have TrackDJ and GrandVJ running on 2 separate systems. In that case, you must make sure that the 2 systems are using the same standard IP range. If you are running GrandVJ on 192.168.1.5 Mixxx should be on 192.168.1.6 by example. All popular range should work such as 192.168.1.x for local home/office configuration but also 2.x.x.x and 10.x.x.x that are the Art-Net ranges.

You can run Mixxx and GrandVJ on the same system, in that case, you must make sure you launch GrandVJ first and Mixxx second.

If you run Mixxx and GrandVJ on the same system, you may need to have a working network connection to allow the messages to travel between the applications.

Only one instance of Mixx can run on a network, if there are more than one, GrandVJ is processing the 2 messages together, and the result is going to look erratic.

Here is a short demo of Mixxx and GrandVJ running on the same system