DJ Mode
Overview
Section titled “Overview”DJ Mode launches a gapless, hardware-decoded MPV session that mixes clips from your library to a music track in real-time. Clips are selected based on musical energy, driver scoring, and your live input — creating a VJ-style performance you can record or stream.
Requirements
Section titled “Requirements”- MPV with
libmpv-2.dll(bundled with the installer) - 50+ clips in your library (the DJ button activates progressively)
- A music track (MP3, WAV, FLAC, or OGG)
Launching
Section titled “Launching”Click the DJ MODE button in the application header bar to open the DJ Wizard. From the setup screen, choose your music, driver, and collection before entering the live session.
Keybinds
Section titled “Keybinds”All keybinds are active when the MPV window has focus:
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
→ (Right) | Skip to next clip on the next beat |
← (Left) | Force immediate transition |
↑ (Up) | Increase energy bias (+0.2, more intense clips) |
↓ (Down) | Decrease energy bias (−0.2, calmer clips) |
SPACE | Style lock — locks to current clip’s embedding (20s → 40s → 60s → unlock) |
b | Block current clip (adds to bad_clips, skips immediately) |
h | Hype mode — first press enters buildup, second press triggers the drop |
f | Toggle beat-reactive FX (brightness pulses, pan shifts) |
s | Save current session to JSON |
g | Gold star — rate current clip 5★ |
/ | Open CLIP text query — type a description, engine finds matching clips |
? | Show help overlay with all keybinds |
1–4 | Force a specific driver tier (1 = LOW, 4 = MAX) |
0 | Return to automatic tier selection |
ESC / q | Exit DJ Mode |
How Clip Selection Works
Section titled “How Clip Selection Works”- The audio engine tracks the current beat position and energy level (0.0–1.0)
- Energy is quantized to a driver tier (1_LOW, 2_MED, 3_HIGH, 4_MAX)
- Your energy bias (↑/↓ keys) shifts the raw energy value
- The driver computes contrastive similarity scores for eligible clips
- Diversity filtering prevents repeating the same clip within the dedupe window
- The selected clip is queued for gapless playback via MPV’s playlist
Style Lock
Section titled “Style Lock”Press SPACE to lock the selection to clips visually similar to the current one:
- First press: locks for 20 seconds
- Second press: extends to 40 seconds
- Third press: extends to 60 seconds
- Fourth press: unlocks
The lock captures the current clip’s 768-dim CLIP embedding and uses cosine similarity to find matching clips. This is useful for keeping a consistent visual theme during a section of the mix.
Hype Mode
Section titled “Hype Mode”Press h to enter hype mode — a two-phase buildup/drop mechanic:
- Buildup phase: Energy gradually ramps up, clip selection increasingly favors high-intensity footage
- Drop phase: Press
hagain during buildup to trigger the drop — maximum energy, fastest cuts, most intense clips
Session Recording
Section titled “Session Recording”Press s during a session to save a JSON log of all clips played, with timestamps and tier assignments. This can be used to reconstruct the mix as a rendered video later via session_renderer.py.
Collections
Section titled “Collections”DJ Mode respects Source Collections. If you select a collection in the DJ Wizard setup screen, only clips from that collection will be used during the session.