Cue Mode

[Sedge]

Here's another crazy idea from me -

Borrowing from other dj software, could we have a cue mode? This would basically allow us to play a track *while the rotation is playing live* and re-direct it to a second audio output (headphones). The video would either appear in the Artwork window or in a second separate video window.

The thinking is that sometimes you have a singer that comes up and wants to actually *hear* a clip from the song they are going to be singing, so make sure it's a decent version, on key, etc - or just that they know the song well enough to proceed. Or, sometimes you have several versions of a song, and want to be able to preview a couple of them to make sure you are giving the singer the best version. Meanwhile, you don't want audio forced out through the board, or video interfering with the nice rotation screen or custom screen that is up, or heaven forbid, the song that is currently being sung.

I've noticed that the Artwork window is *not* a direct analog to what it being displayed on the main video window (examples of differences are the scrolling messages and lyric overlays on video capture) so I assume it could be hijacked fairly easily for this process. The rest of it would probably mean making a parallel spooler (or whatever it is called now) and have a separate set of controls built into the GUI for it (at least on a context menu).

This would definitely be a Pro feature - and may be also nice to roll out along with iTunes support whenever we get to that point.

Absolutely just a brainstorm idea, no hurry expected for implementation.

>>Sedge

[Karanight]

Sounds like a great idea. It's one of the things I miss from my disc days because I could always play a track through the headphones whilst another track was playing, I believe it's possible but how would it work with only one music output on a computer, is there a way to send the second sound through a USB

[Sedge]

Yeah, that's the idea - I already use USB sound for kJams, and the headphone output (default Mac sound) for music. Some USB and firewire sound appliances offer two or more outputs on their own also. I could easily move to running firewire sound for kJams, USB sound for music, and the headphone output for cue mode (my dj software also has this, and could share the headphone output with kJams).

[dave]

this has been the plan all along.

I have been silently working on enabling kjams to play multiple songs at the same time thru separate audio outputs (so eg: the KJ could cue it up using USB headphones while the main song is playing thru the speakers or regular audio out)

under the hood there is a full audio / video mixer, with the ability to send video to multiple screens, or have multiple video streams on multiple screens and/or crossfaded on the same screen, with audio too. there is just no user interface on it yet.

it will be there eventually (probably as i get into alpha).