User's Guide

The BPM Engine analyzes the audio to determine the tempo of the track. Analyzing a track can be

performed 2 ways – Load the track to a deck or right-click on the track in the Brower panel and select

BPM -> Re-Analyze. You can also analyze a group of tracks contained in a folder from the left

Navigation panel, right-click on the folder and select Scan for BPMs.

If the tracks have been analyzed by an external application prior to being loaded into VirtualDJ and that

value is stored in the BPM tag, the BPM Engine will use the stored value as a reference when

analyzing the track. VirtualDJ will calculate a more precise value to a 0.05 BPM precision not more than

+/- 1 beat per minute away from the value of the tag.

Part of the BPM Engine is also a Key Detection Engine. Determining the ‗musical key‘ of a track

provides the ability to harmonically mix tracks. The Key Detection Engine strongly favors minor keys,

as most studio production songs are in minor key. But if the key is strongly major, it will be reported as

a major key.

If you wish to manually ‗tap-out‘ the beats per minute of a song, you can left-click to the beat on the

BPM button of the appropriate deck playing your track. If you would like to assign a keyboard shortcut

or assign a button on a controller, the mapping action beat_tap action can be assigned.

Last, if the BPM (or the Key) is manually entered using the File Info dialog, then VirtualDJ will use the

entered value and will not analyze the BPM or Key. If forced by selecting the BPM -> Re-Analyze

function the track is re-analyzed without regard to existing data or how the data was entered.

Part of VirtualDJ‘s BPM Engine is to calculate the Computer Beat Grid (CBG) of the track. The

computer beat grid is a 4/4 beat measure indicator for identifying the timing gap of the track. This

becomes helpful when manually beat mixing a track or using VirtualDJ‘s synchronized play (SYNC),

Beat Lock, or Automix Tempo Mix features.

In rare cases, when the BPM and the CBG is not correctly calculated, you can easily correct manually

by right-clicking on the appropriate deck‘s BPM button for the track.

With the ‗Adjust BPM Values‘ dialog you are provided several options to make the adjustments.

EDIT BPM tab

BPM – manually move the value up or down in .1 increments

with the arrow buttons. Or, quickly half or double the shown

value with the /2 and x2 buttons.

Phase – used to adjust the CBG markers. The left and right

arrows makes very fine adjustments, where the ¼ +/- buttons

provide ¼ beat adjustments.

Re-Analyze – forces the re-analysis of the track disregarding any

manual adjustments or settings.

Copy from other deck – copy the BPM of the track on the

opposing deck to be use for the track being modified.

BPM ANALYSIS AND KEY DETECTION

COMPUTER BEAT GRID (CBG) AND MANUAL BPM CORRECTION