After a fairly long beta period, the team at Serato is debuting a brand new version of their Serato DJ software, 1.7.4. We’ve been excited to see it released because it officially is the launch of the Serato DJ Club Kit add-on, which opens up support for Pioneer and Allen and Heath mixers. But as it turns out, the New Zealand developers have had even more great new stuff up their sleeves – read on for the full details.
Beat Jump – Finally!
Easily one of the most-requested features (especially from long time Traktor and Virtual DJ users like myself) is the ability to quickly and easily jump forward and backward in time with the playing track at set intervals, just like a loop. This comes in handy when you need more time to perform a mix, or you want to play around with phrasing without dropping a beat.
Want to see how this comes in handy? Check out this Traktor tutorial (although the concepts still apply) on how loop / beatjump move macros are extremely powerful.
International Language Support
This is a pretty basic one, but having an interface that is translated to a global audience is great. If you speak German, Spanish, French, Chinese, Japanese or Portuguese, you’re in luck. The entire preferences and interface of Serato DJ will now automatically switch to your system language.
Master Video FX + Karaoke File Support
Video has long been somewhat ignored or poorly implemented by other DJ platforms, so Serato is positively crushing it in terms of video mixing features. They’ve added two highly requested features in this new version, the ability to apply video FX on the master output (they look really slick, to be honest), and the ability to play back MP3+G files – also known as Karaoke files! Sure, these are more fringe use cases than for most DJs, but Serato’s commitment to all sections of the market will only mean good things for them in the future.
Serato Club Kit
We wrote about this extensively at NAMM and how excited we were that Serato is doing their best to bridge perceived gaps in the industry – and making their software work with some of the most popular DJ hardware on the market. It’s here, it works, and we’re really, really hoping that other manufacturers and developers follow suit.
The new version of Serato DJ is available for download here – and Serato has announced that they’ve reset the trial period for all users, so even if you’ve tried Serato in the past and run out of free use, you can give it another shot.
