As some of you might know, I’m a resident DJ at a club. We use Virtual DJ with a Denon X1850 mixer and two SC6000M players—so, in computer mode. We use Engine OS mode as a backup in case of computer issues.
Our club has several video screens used to project shaders; that’s why we use VDJ, and it works really well.
I’d like to set up a system to scroll customer messages along the bottom of the screen—like a TV news ticker—overlaying our graphic shaders.
The goal is to host nights where customers can send shout-outs or short notes to friends—for instance, by scanning a QR code and filling in a message field. The message would be sent directly to VDJ for approval before being displayed, helping us prevent hate speech or inappropriate content.
Currently, we use a single machine to handle both the audio mixing and the shader output in VDJ:
Ryzen 7 5800X
Asus TUF Gaming B450-Plus II
32 GB Kingston Fury Beast DDR4 3200 MHz
MSI GTX 1080 Gaming X 8GB (for stem separation and shader output)
Note that all screens display the exact same image (Extended Desktop mode).
Is there a VDJ plugin or a third-party tool that could handle this?
The idea is to avoid using a second PC with OBS for video mixing. Even though the hardware is solid, running OBS on the same PC while VDJ is active seems a bit risky to me.
If there isn’t a plugin, what do you think would be the best way to handle this using external tools or applications?
Not sure why you’re asking here about VDJ but I’d suggest using “ask the DJ”, which is really for requesting, but basically sends a message to the VDJ software, which could undoubtedly be routed to display on a videoskin.
That is why I used the forum’s DJ lounge area; while this doesn’t directly concern Denon DJ or Engine OS, I still need the expertise and advice of other DJs who might have set up this kind of system and perhaps use VDJ or another application for it.
“DJ Ask” wasn’t really designed for that purpose; it’s primarily meant for song requests. I had considered it, but it doesn’t solve the issue of the “news ticker” style overlay at the bottom of the screen—which could scroll regardless.
But thanks for the suggestion.
I’m pretty sure @djliquidice might have an idea about this.
If you ask on the VDJ forum you’ll probably get the same reply - and they’ll provide more detail on how to do it.
You asked for advise and I’m giving you mine.
“Ask The DJ” gets the messages from the customers phones to VDJ and allows you to vet them. A little behind the scenes scripting gets the messages displayed via a videoskin (which can be just blank apart from the scrolling text).
I’ve not used Virtual DJ for a few years but you used to be able to do things like this using the video effects which were under the central screen when using the video skin. If you click on the setting icon within that dropdown tab you can do all sorts. Plenty of other effects and utilities within the download section of the VDJ forum which may work well for you.
Yes there is the TEXT effect, which can be set to scroll - but by default everything has to be typed in manually, or come from stored presets.
There probably is a way of feeding the TEXT plugin from received and approved messages, as the VDJScript is extremely versatile - but again, the experts like locodog are on the VDJ forum.
I remember there were plugins/apps/utilities that were on their website so I’m sure they will still be there but unsure how useable they will be in this time.
I used to use Resolume a lot too. Going back to 2005 I had 1 PC using VDJ for videos and had another running Resolume for backgrounds and loops. I had a video mixer which let me overlay whatever I wanted really. Resolume was also handy for text. It may be worth looking at Resolume as the built in link integration might give the venue more options as they also work with Engine.
Yes, Resolume was an option, but we already held a VDJ Pro Infinity license that handled music-synced shaders perfectly. Furthermore, VDJ can now generate shaders directly using AI and a descriptive prompt.
Opting for Resolume would have required investing in new software—and likely a second computer, since running it on the same PC alongside VDJ might not be the most stable approach.
That represents a significant investment just to display text messages from our clients—with no guarantee the system would work exactly as we wanted. While Resolume handles text display easily, I’m not sure it can handle receiving that text via a dedicated URL (using a QR code and message field) while also including an approval step before broadcast.
It’s what I do every weekend for my Twitch streams.
I’ve got a Canon camera going in via an Elgato Cam Link, using Resolume to chromakey the background (something VDJ is terrible at), then layers of background video loops, audio reactive graphics, logo, camera effects - feeding into VDJ via Spout.
In VDJ I then play music, add further text, drop sampled video clips, use live stem separation and stream.
I’ve also got a web browser open to display the Twitch chat and for looking up stuff live on air (topics in chat etc).
I’m not familiar with the VDJ ecosystem, and would suggest OBS with an HTML (Chrome) overlay. OBS is GPU accelerated for compositing IIRC.
If your machine is beast enough, it should not have any issues at all.
I say this because my OBS driver is a machine I built in 2017 and it handles dealing with 4 concurrent cameras, multiple Twitch overlays + MeowPlaying (my HTML overlay) perfectly.