Jog wheels
ScratchCraft can be scratched from a DJ controller’s jog wheels, with the touch sensor acting as your hand on the record. This page covers setting up a jog wheel, choosing how it moves the deck, fixing encoders that misbehave, and scratching with an ordinary fader, knob or pitch wheel instead.
Setting up a jog wheel
Section titled “Setting up a jog wheel”- Click MIDI Learn in the header.
- Right-click the platter (on the Mix tab) or the deck’s waveform, open Jog wheel / encoder and choose MIDI Learn. Or, in Learn mode, just click the platter.
- Touch the top of the jog wheel, then turn it.
If your wheel has a touch sensor, its note becomes the deck’s Touch mapping, and the turning becomes the Jog mapping, both in one go. Learn waits a couple of seconds after the touch for you to start turning. The encoding is detected from the way the wheel turns.
Repeat for the other deck. If your controller has no touch sensor, the jog still works: while you turn it, it holds the record, and it lets go shortly after you stop.
Jog mode: Vinyl, Nudge or Auto
Section titled “Jog mode: Vinyl, Nudge or Auto”Each jog mapping has a Jog mode, set in the mapping editor:
| Mode | What turning the wheel does |
|---|---|
| Vinyl | Grabs the record and moves it like a hand: scratch with it. |
| Nudge | Shifts a running deck’s timing, like the pitch bend on a CDJ. The record keeps playing; the shift is played out gently, at no more than ±3 % speed, so it never jumps or wails. |
| Auto (Nudge when synced) | The default. Nudges while the deck’s Sync Loop is on and its motor runs; acts as Vinyl otherwise, including while the motor is off or held. |
With Auto, a jog wheel scratches as you’d expect, but on a deck that’s looping in time with the song it nudges the loop’s phase instead of knocking it out of time. A nudge stays until you switch Sync Loop off. See Sync Loop.
At sensitivity 1, one full turn of the wheel moves the record 1.8 seconds in Vinyl mode, or nudges it 0.18 seconds in Nudge mode.
Ticks per revolution
Section titled “Ticks per revolution”Set ticks per revolution (next to the Jog mode, 16 to 4096, default 128) to the number of ticks your jog wheel sends per full turn. Then one turn of the wheel turns the on-screen record once, which feels natural. Your controller’s manual usually lists the number; if not, try turning the wheel exactly once and adjust until the platter matches.
Use Sensitivity to make the wheel move more or less than that on top.
When an encoder moves the wrong way
Section titled “When an encoder moves the wrong way”Relative encoders send their direction in one of three ways. Learn detects it, but if a jog or encoder only moves one way, crawls, or jumps in large steps, open the mapping in MIDI Map and try another Encoding:
- Two’s complement (1 / 127)
- Sign-magnitude (1 / 65)
- Offset 64 (65 / 63)
If a knob that should be endless was learned as absolute (Learn only guesses encoders on a deck’s jog), set its Control to Encoder / jog (relative) and then choose the encoding.
If the wheel turns the record backwards, switch on Invert.
Scratching with a fader, knob or pitch wheel
Section titled “Scratching with a fader, knob or pitch wheel”Any absolute control can scratch too. Map it to a deck’s Scratch target (the Scratch fader / knob submenu), or learn a knob or fader on Jog, which turns it into the same kind of absolute scratch.
The control’s travel then covers a stretch of the sample around the cue point, set by From / To (default ±0.25 seconds either side). With Anchor at grab on (the default), the first movement grabs the record where it is, and the control moves it from there, so nothing jumps. A smaller range gives finer scratches.
The pitch wheel is mapped this way by default: it scratches Deck B. Small jitter from a resting control won’t grab a still record; it has to actually move.