Driving GrandVJ from a CDJ-2000NXS2 using ShowKontrol and TrackDJ

By ArKaos Team

on 29 Jan 2019 4:30 PM

TrackDJ

One of the new exciting features of GrandVJ 2.6 is TrackDJ.

ShowKontrol integrates with the Pioneer ProLink ecosystem and allows Rekordbox track data to be sent directly from the DJ booth, over ProLink, to VJs, lighting directors, and show technicians.

ShowKontrol can send the TrackDJ timecode message to GrandVJ. In this blog post, we describe a basic setup with one Pioneer CDJ-2000NXS2. Of course, a typical DJ setup will feature at least two CDJ-2000NXS2 and a Pioneer mixer.

This is the minimal setup we are using here:

showkontrol CDJ-2000NXS2 GrandVJ network

You must do the network setup in ShowKontrol to start sending the TrackDJ timecode message to GrandVJ.

You must enable TrackDJ from the Art-Net tab / “Art Timecode”:

showkontrol enabling GrandVJ trackdj

And enable timecode itself from the Art-Net tab / “Art Mode”:

showkontrol enabling artnet

Depending on your version of ShowKontrol you may have to do that each time you start ShowKontrol.

In GrandVJ you only need to select TrackDJ from the preferences:

grandvj trackdj Art-Net timecode preferences

“Art-Net Timecode (including TrackDJ)” must be selected as Synchronization source and “Auto-detect and synchronize with TrackDJ” will send the BPM information automatically to the beat matching engine of GrandVJ.

TrackDJ is more than smart timecode and becoming a video DJ, it’s also about BPM, so this video shows the 3 ideas:
The selection of preferences in ShowKontrol and GrandVJ
The Pioneer CDJ-2000NXS2 is driving videos automatically through timecode
The VJ Software uses the BPM engine to synchronize short videos with the DJ