Holding before i see it interacting with serato

i want a prime 4, but right now im holding on to my money (my seller have them, i tried them, beside no jog tension ajust they seems like wonderfull hardware) …but i need some things to make it work for me and my workflow, .

  • when will serato be supporting the prime 4 ?
  • will it use the prime 4 screen ? or just disable it
  • if the screen is used, will it replicate the computer display?
  • will i be able to have the serato video preview (3 little video windows) on the prime screen
  • from current firmware : can’t search comments … been using this to facilitate my search for years. cant go back :stuck_out_tongue:

thanks for anyone at denon giving me a better answer than ‘no timeframe’ to this.

The Prime 4 is an amazing piece of equipment. It’s overkill however for simply being a sort of “USB keyboard” for Serato play.

It’d be like buying a fighter jet and just sitting in it on the ground to play Microsoft flight simulator.

It’s a massive ask to get three video feeds down a usb cable, so I doubt you’ll find anything controller-wise that’ll mimic video previews and playback in the foreseeable future.

If you’re going to hang onto serato and laptop DJing then you might be better looking at the 7000 for simplicity and cost benefits, or the 8000 that has dramatically improved via firmware recently as a little baby brother to the Prime 4

Nah the 8000 have a “mirror” layout …tried my friend’s unit and i hated it for that …plus so many weird bugs (wich might have been corrected now via firmware) … But the hardwarw was really not “prime” level quality

It really dont agree on the fighter jet thing because i like working with a laptop and having the capacity to download for request (yeah no i dont trust the streaming thing …and the price while i can have it free on my pools) … serato gives me so much visual info and freaky fast search …lot faster than prime 4s touch screen …and i can search using my comments.

I don’t think in HID mode the software sends video to the decks, but rather the waveform when the track is loaded, and then the current index in the song as this is being played.

I’m aware that the main focus of the Prime is standalone, but I’d think it’s also interesting the ability to control software with them. Why? Because there is no other controller in the market with such a big display and built quality able to control Serato or Traktor with waveforms in the displays and a traditional jog-like approach instead of the sync-based Native Instruments controllers.

I indeed bought by SC5000 and X1800 interested not by their standalone capabilities, but because I thought they were the BEST Serato controllers in the market (the most Premium, the ones with the best build quality and screens, dual layer, jog wheels and form factor I want). Unfortunately a not so great implementation of Serato HID (no big waveforms, not selectable channel colours, each deck controls 4 channels instead of 2 channels) is forcing me to use them standalone, but believe it or not I’d prefer them as Serato (or Traktor) controllers. I’ve even considered getting rid of them and buy two pioneers NXS2 as they are the only Traktor controllers with that form factor that get Traktor HID right (big waveforms) and only reason stopping me from doing so is the dual-layer feature of the SC5000 (I mix with 3 decks but don’t have real state space for a third deck) . Yes, I know it’s overkill, but I really want CDJ-like units controlling either Traktor or Serato with big HID waveforms, and those are the only alternative in the market as for today.

I would not be surprised if there are users looking at the PRIME 4 as a premium, greatly built controller for Serato or Traktor if the workflow is tied to Serato or because they don’t need standalone capabilities (or because Engine Prime is not good enough.)

Let the users express what they would use their gear for, and Denon decide what to do based on data and user feedback. Everyone has different needs…

Fine words spoken.

I disagree with you on this point for a couple of reasons and am only mentioning it in case another user didn’t see it this way…

Based on the prices of controllers out there, the Prime 4 is the winner PLUS it gives the user who wishes to use the unit as a controller, a backup to have with them at a gig. If one’s laptop fried at a gig, he has a standalone unit he could use to carry on. This would not be true with just a controller. I too am trying to put the laptop aside but still see the benefit of having a Prime 4 for the laptop guys who want Serato/Traktor integration.

Just my thoughts.

Cheers

It’s that level of integration that brings me to my conclusions above.

There have been some interesting and quite good developments for integrating stand alone gear with laptop software, but so far, making a standalone integrate with laptop software hasn’t gone all that well. Some would have thought that with both the laptop doing some processing and the controller having some processing too that the result would have been amazing. However there were quite a lot of discussions about how little info the sc5000 screens showed when in serato mode.

But this has always been for different of conflicting interests between companies… it’s not a technical issue at all. The decks don’t need to process anything at all, just to send interaction events to the computer and render in the screen what the computers send to them.

Implementing this, however, needs collaboration between the two companies and that’s where the issue is… Denon may not want to promote or help Serato and same in the other direction. Native Instruments refuse to implemet HID to Pionneers DJ-1000Mk2 becuse they wanted to promote their own hardware (it was successfully implememented for the Mk1 without big waveforms, and perfectly implemented to the Nexus2 with big waveforms).

It’s just about companies vision and roadmap, nothing to do with hardware limitations… which I understand…

USB has a bandwidth more than capable to do this…

This “stand alone gear” is not anything magical or distinct - it’s just a computer with USB ports talking to to other computers.

Yes, however with many laptops being thrashed down to single digit millisecond latency settings, some laptops just won’t cope easily or well if asked to also push three high-refresh rate video outputs out to a controller at the same time as maintaining low latency audio… often a challenge in itself.

Even those numsrk triple screen rackmount boxes - had serato “templates “ built-in so that they had less data to extract from the laptop during use.

The laptop does not need to send 3 full video outputs. The laptop only needs to send the full contents of the screen(s) in the controller. Can your laptop handle a second monitor? Then it can also handle driving an extra screen through USB.

Sending video to a second monitor does not cost CPU effort to a laptop because the laptop has nothing to compute - it’s just data transmission done by the GPU.

But in our case it would be even lighter, as in HDI the laptop does not stream video, it only streams super light data such as in which millisecond the song is currently at, whether it’s paused or playing, etc. The controller renders that data on its own in the screen. It’s very similar to MIDI.

Also, audio latency has nothing to do with this, because the audio is not transported from the laptop to the controller - the audio is rendered in the controller, which is the sound card.

Whether or not we will see HID implemented in Prime4 will be up to Denon, Serato, and Native Instruments roadmaps and business decisions. It has anything at all to do with latencies, USB bandwidths or any other technical concern.

What is being forgotten here is that the additional video outputs wouldn’t be VGA/Video out leaving the laptop, which is where the simple GPU would get involved.

If you’ve try adding a video monitor via USB port you’ll know that they give bad bad slow slow results even on low demand video applications. Trying to send three video outputs over usb I top of all the audio and midi/HID data would be as laggy as a piano falling down a stairs. This is probably why it’s never been done by anyone before.

Maybe the OP would be best to run the video mixing from his laptop, and send the two audio feeds into a Prime 4 and do the gig that way

As said before, you don’t send video from the computer to the controller, you send minimum data (offset of the waveform, etc) and the controller paints the waveform accordingly.

When you play World of Warcraft or any of those games, the server is NOT streaming video to the player’s computers. The server simply streams light data such as the coordinates of the players, they action they are performing, etc. Then the user’s computer renders the video.

It’s same with HID - the communication is not based on video, but light data.

And it’s been done before (Rane 72 and CDJ Nexus2, or even Ableton Push, which looks different but essentially works the same).

Going back to the OP post, it is more than doable to implement Serato HID showing big waveforms without any lag or bandwidth issues. If Denon or Serato decide not do it the reason may be that they want to focus on standalone capabilities, they do want to compete against each other or whatever, but has nothing to do with Video stream or VGA, because there is no video stream at all.

Furthermore, the Serato HID in the SC5000 is substandard in ways other than not showing big wafeforms, such as channel colours not being configurable, not being able to limit the layers a deck controls to two instead of four (really, really annoying), and no text input from the units when browsing for songs (you need to use the keyboard).

Hi @Fatdjsin, thank you for your post. Firstly, I’m afraid you are going to get ‘no timeframe’ for some of these answers as they may have not been started or are in progress and the build and test phase is ongoing.

So onto your points…

*** when will serato be supporting the prime 4 ?**

We’re currently working with Serato on this and it’s down to their workload for completion.

*** will it use the prime 4 screen ? or just disable it**

I cannot answer this accurately yet as it’s in progress, but I should imagine it will be a similar experience currently with the SC5000s

*** if the screen is used, will it replicate the computer display?** & *** will i be able to have the serato video preview (3 little video windows) on the prime screen**

Both great suggestions and ones I’d recommend you putting in our feature request section: https://community.enginedj.com/c/feature-requests/prime-4

*** from current firmware : can’t search comments … been using this to facilitate my search for years. cant go back**

You can currently do this.

Regards Jay

i tried searching for keywords i use a lot and nothing came out on demo unit, do they need to be put in crates to be able to do that?

Not in crates, but they need to be in the library (not just in the drive).

Also, make sure that you have selected “comment” in the contextual menu that gets opened when you click into the small arrow from the search screen.

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Yes, you need to make sure your tracks are indexed into Engine Primes collection as that’s where the search takes place.