VST names incomplete in FX dialog

[hovmod]

(edited)

...

But worse is the names displayed in the dialog. I have several plugs that come in more than one 'flavour', like the Kjærhus GAC-1 and GEQ-7, as well as a few Blue Cat utilities and more. They come in separate mono and stereo versions, for instance, and other variants as well.

In Reaper they all just say 'VST: GAC-1(Kjærhus Audio)' or 'VST: Blue Cat FreqAnalyzer'. I had to open all three today, before getting the right one. Same with the GEQ-7, they were ordered the other way around...

Other hosts display the extra info right there in the plugin browser, why not Reaper?

Thanks.

[alex zonder]

hovmod, you can create as many folders in the FX browser as you like, name them 'compressors' or 'synths' or 'Sonalksis', whatever you like, and drag and drop the vst/dx from the general list into these folders. Afterwards you'll probably only use your own folders, but all the VST/dx stay in the general list as well; as needed for instance for searching plugins (filter function).

About VST names: check your Preferences/Plug-ins/VST settings, where you'll find 'Get VST plug-in names/types when scanning'. Uncheck it if you like REAPER to start up fast, but you might want to select it, do a full rescan etc.

A nice feature of the FX Browser as well is that it will let you rename plugins. Beware however: if you open existing REAPER project files that contain the 'old' names, AFAIK REAPER will search for these - and not find them. :)

[hovmod]

Thanks. Sounds good. I'll check it out.

[hovmod]

Well, this doesn't really help.
I still have several versions of many plugins named exactly the same, making it really awkward to pick the right version.
Other hosts manage to separate them, so what's Reaper not doing?

I have the Get VST names/types selected, but it still gives all the varieties of the plugs the exact same name. Any ideas?

Renaming in the FX browser seems like an awful lot of work (I have to open each one to see which one I'm renaming, do the deed, and then my old projects won't work) for something that other hosts manage without help.

[alex zonder]

I still have several versions of many plugins named exactly the same, making it really awkward to pick the right version.

what about a big clean up? ;)

[WOK!]

what about a big clean up? ;)

Why cleanup something that's all needed?

I also had this as a feature request already.
Why can't Reaper show the plugins with their complete names like any other host?
Why can't Reaper show them in the folders like they are on the HD like every other host does?

Having the opportunity of making favorite folders is not very helpful if you have hundred plugins already installed in appropiate folders with descriptive names. Why have to do all the work again??

[norbury brook]

Because once you've done it it will be more efficient in the long run as you can put groups of FX etc in folders regardless of the hierarchy they're in on your Hard disk.



MC

[hovmod]

Because once you've done it it will be more efficient in the long run as you can put groups of FX etc in folders regardless of the hierarchy they're in on your Hard disk.


Uhm.
Nah. Most efficient: *I* decide the hierarchy on the hard drive, which then is recognized and respected by ALL hosts, not requiring extra labour at any time.

AND

The problem with the names does NOT require a cleanup. The plugins come in different flavours: Stereo/mono, sidechain/no sidechain, two inputs/four inputs and so on. They are different tools, and they *actually* have different names, which Reaper fails to recognize. It's an annoying oversight. Thanks Wok, for agreeing.. :D

[Jae.Thomas]

I have to agree with all of you, but especially hovmod -- for his nice way of going about his request :)

i think we should be able to have both options available to us.

that is what reaper is about, no?

The way hovmod is speaking of is pretty much standard and should be available in reaper, but not forced.

[drew]

I can see the benefit of REAPER at least initially picking up VST(i) folder structure, but personally speaking I like to have folders of effect types containing both VST(i) & DX(i) and I can't think how that would work if REAPER's plug-in folders were tied to the VST folder sub-paths.

Has anyone made a way to import the full VST structure in order to make the initial process easier? After all it's only a question of getting the vstpath from reaper.ini and parsing the dll info into reaper-fxfolders.ini + there's probably a way to read the full name out of the dll I imagine.

[hovmod]

Well, Drew, you came up with the answer - all I had to do was to edit the entries in the reaper-vstplugins.ini file.

I still think that's a shaky workaround, for several reasons:

1 - I have no idea whether Reaper keeps the new entries or overwrites it later. I guess I'll find out. :) Maybe it will cause a big crash at some point where it decides to rescan or something. Feels wrong to be editing ini files like that without reassuring documentation...


2 - The real names of the dll files were in that file, and Reaper itself has managed to shorten them from the perfectly descriptive names to the less descriptive repeated ones (for instance GAC1_SC.dll -> GAC1 and GAC1_SCM.dll -> GAC1). So it seems Reaper does it on purpose.


3 - Everybody else gets it right:


http://www.hovmod.com/img/vstnames.jpg



Keeping the folder structure from the hard disk could be optional, particularly after reading your argument about wanting to mix vst and dx effects, although I can't think of a single scenario where I would want to see ALL the vst effects on one page. Impressing dumb customers, perhaps. :D


Anyway, I've made my point and I've found my workarounds, back to work.

Cheers.

Tormod

[WOK!]

i think we should be able to have both options available to us.

In the list of plugins in Reaper the only thing missing between "ALL PLUGINS" and "MY FOLDERS" is "HD" with the folders and subfolders in it - can't be so hard to code that reaper reads the structure and displays it there.

Or can someone code a tool, that is reading the directory structure of the HD and placing that info together with the filenames into the "fxfolders.ini", where all the "My Folders" are stored?

[xackley]

Renaming the plugins doesn't do much good either. I sorted the ones I use into My Folders. And renamed them in a useful manner.
But the only way do get rid of deleted plugins from the default list is to do a full rescan. REAPER wipes out all the naming corrections. The least I could hope for is to have reaper respect the naming corrections in My Folders. Appears the plugin database is atleast 1 field short, possibly to be call UsefullName.

Also I would hope reaper is finding plugins using there SSID.

Question, how do you view plugin properties. I rightclick on them but there is no Properties (or Delete)

[historic stork]

it would help if plugins were sorted by brand by default. That would be a start. The custom folders option is nice, but it shouldn't be the only way to get plugs organized. CF would ideally be an 'advanced option.'

It would be nice to see this:

Brands
└Waves
└Stereo
└Mono
└Voxengo

All Plugins
└DX
└DXi
└VST
└Vsti

Custom Folders
└Favorites


I was going to illustrate this, but hopefully it makes sense. Or an option could be added to sort plugs by brand, dx/vst, release date, size etc. On the other hand, at times it is nice to see all the plugs in one place. And the filter helps if you know what you're looking for.

[hovmod]

One of the later installations has apparently overwritten my carefully edited reaper-vstplugins.ini, so now it's back to stupid again. I use these plugs a lot, and now I have no idea which one I'm selecting.

Is this not a problem for anyone else? Many DIFFERENT plugs get the same names in the browser..?

[fegi]

it is a bit annoying indeed...

[rafa1981]

Hi, all, this is my first post.

Ok, i did this program for everyone that needs to keep the hard disk structure, the program scans your vstplugins dir, and create the .ini file.

There is also a ".bat" file, if you cange the commented lines folders by the one located in your hard drive, it will automate all, and everithing you have to do is to run it when you install some new plugins.

In a Spanish installation the directory "Program Files" is called "Archivos de Programa", because every language and computer is different, the program was intended for personal use, and i don´t wanted to know about how to retrieve this values from the windows registry, you have to edit manually. It´s easy, you only need the direction of your VstPlugins Folder, the direction where the program is copied, and the Reaper .ini dir.

There are also three bad things in the program to take in consideration:

-Reaper doesn´t allow to create subfolders, because this, there will be one folder level depth in the .ini generated, but with all the plugins contained in all subfolders.

-There can´t be any plugin in the folder that you point, saying in another way, the folder that you point only can contain more folders, no unclassified plugin is allowed.

-When the program ask for your VstPlugins dir, you can´t write spaces, write any other character instead. That happens because the C function strlen doesn´t allow to detect the length of a string if it have spaces, or at least, i don´t wanted to solve that problem because the program was primary intended for personal use.

There is a little howto in the file.

The direction is this, you have to be registered, but may be you all are, and if not, is really free and fast, no e-mail feedback.

Here´s the URL.
http://stash.reaper.fm/v/727/Reaper.Vst.Folder.Structure.7z

Regards.

[NAS]

Nice one cheers :)
Reapers plug in organising is totally useless for me personally
This will help a little hopefully
The ammount of plugins i have that all show up as the same plugin is horrendous and makes life in Reaper a no go for serious work


NAS

[S-N-S]

it would help if plugins were sorted by brand by default. That would be a start. The custom folders option is nice, but it shouldn't be the only way to get plugs organized. CF would ideally be an 'advanced option.'

It would be nice to see this:


I was going to illustrate this, but hopefully it makes sense. Or an option could be added to sort plugs by brand, dx/vst, release date, size etc. On the other hand, at times it is nice to see all the plugs in one place. And the filter helps if you know what you're looking for.


this is a great idea,this will get my +1

[rafa1981]

It would be nice, but the problem is that my program is based in editing an text file of the hard disk location of the plugins.

The feature that you request, is really usefull, but requires to retrieve values from the windows registry, and now i don't know how can be done from C++, is a lot of work more than this simple program, and for me is not usefull.

If we add to this the reverse engineering work necessary to do integrate the feauture inside reaper, it can be a nigthmare, in my case, i would have prefered to organize manually than writing the program.

I'm sure that the trick i did, and the feature that you requested can be easily integrated by Cockos, and you will see soon in Reaper, having the program code it can't take more than two-three hours to implement it.

I'm sorry.

[jens]

I have to agree with all of you, but especially hovmod -- for his nice way of going about his request :)

i think we should be able to have both options available to us.

that is what reaper is about, no?

The way hovmod is speaking of is pretty much standard and should be available in reaper, but not forced.

nice one Jason - I started another thread about this issue at a later point where you basically told me the way Reaper does it is just fine and I should e-mail the developers since it's the plugins themselves where Reaper gets the names from.


At that time your post annoyed me big-time t.b.h. (as if I would e-mail dozens of developers if every other host out there gets it right - that's what they would tell me anyway), but reading your (older) post here in this thread makes it worse (where you say just about the opposite).

[NoiseMan]

I would like to add one (minor) thing:

If you have a Novation ReMote, it comes with Universal AutoMap, which creates wrapper plugins for the VSTi you want to have controlled by ReMote. These wrapper plugins are labelled like "VSTi Name XY (AutoMap)" in other hosts.

Unfortunately, in Reaper they get the same name as the original one, which makes it a pain in the butt, because you can be sure that whatever flavour of the plugin you want, it's the other than the one you just selected...

Nothing that couldn't be corrected with three mouse clicks, but still...

[rafa1981]

I would like to add one (minor) thing:

If you have a Novation ReMote, it comes with Universal AutoMap, which creates wrapper plugins for the VSTi you want to have controlled by ReMote. These wrapper plugins are labelled like "VSTi Name XY (AutoMap)" in other hosts.

Unfortunately, in Reaper they get the same name as the original one, which makes it a pain in the butt, because you can be sure that whatever flavour of the plugin you want, it's the other than the one you just selected...

Nothing that couldn't be corrected with three mouse clicks, but still...

It also happens me, but with Antress Modern Plugins, it's annoying.

All the things like that we have to submit to reaper feature request, i think that things like this one are easy to fix and they are working to.

[Spyrow]

I would like to add one (minor) thing:

If you have a Novation ReMote, it comes with Universal AutoMap, which creates wrapper plugins for the VSTi you want to have controlled by ReMote. These wrapper plugins are labelled like "VSTi Name XY (AutoMap)" in other hosts.

Unfortunately, in Reaper they get the same name as the original one, which makes it a pain in the butt, because you can be sure that whatever flavour of the plugin you want, it's the other than the one you just selected...

Nothing that couldn't be corrected with three mouse clicks, but still...


Oh my god, I just bought a Novation Nocturn and this is a serious pain in the ass.
No workaround??

[schwa]

For the next build automapped plugins will say (automap).

This may have been mentioned in the thread, but VST plugins report their own names to the host. Some plugins may report a very descriptive name, others report a less than useful name. Some hosts ignore the name that the VST reports and use the dll filename instead. In most cases the dll filename will be less descriptive than the VST's reported name, but it seems you have some cases where the reported name is less descriptive than the filename. Reaper uses the reported name if the plugin reports one, figuring that a VST that goes to the trouble to report a name is reporting a sensible one.

[Spyrow]

Hey schwa, that's really nice. Thanks thanks.

In some cases maybe it's better the VST reported name, in others maybe it's better the filename (as other DAW's do), so could I suggest you one thing? I think this will help:
If during the scan Reaper reads the same VST reported name in two or more plugins it uses the filenames to name those plugins instead.
So Automap, Sidechainig, Mono/Stereo plugs with the same VST reported name would be named for its filename and problem solved. We won't have duplicated (but different) plugins ever again.

[Spyrow]

I've just realized this maybe is not going to work for the Waves plugins.
They have one single .dll for hundreds of plugins.

Ok, I'm sure you'll find the best solution.

[DarkStar]

Once you have sorted out what is what
... right-click the FX in the FX browser and Rename it,
... or edit the reaper-vstplugins.ini file where you can see the actual dll names.

[Spyrow]

Man, I have hundreds of plugs. If Reaper can solve this it will save a lot of work to a lot of users (work you don't have to do in other DAW's, by the way).

[zappsunzorn]

The auto renaming sounds kind of tricky to implement, and is almost guarantied to cause someone trouble.

What if when you open up the window to change the name you can click on something that says "change to dll file name" etc. If you want to change a bunch of VST names just select all of them and click the change to dll name button and all of the names get changed just as if you typed in the names manually.

[Spyrow]

That's smart too, thanks.

You could select the plugins you want, right click -> "rename selected plugins using the filename" and voila! :)

[schwa]

Spyrow: have you tried unchecking this and rescanning? That should rename all of your plugins to their file name.

http://stash.reaper.fm/oldsb/139176/10933151911-REAPER-Preferences.png

[Spyrow]

That solved the problem... the names get the "(automap)" string, but still not usable.

First because all the plugs are named with the folder they are in so for example, if I open a Neve 88RS it's named: "Powered Plugins/Mono/Neve 88RS" and in the mixer I only see: "Powered" because it's too long.
If then I open a LA2A it's "Powered Plugins/Mono/La2a" and I get again only "Powered" in the mixer, so I don't know which is which.
I could delete the folders, but if I do the plugins in Cubase will be a mess.

Second, with that mode it's not extracting the info of the "WaveshellX.dll" of the waves plugins, so they have disappeared.

[Spyrow]

I would like to do another comment relating Automap behaviour.

When you open a plugin the Automap server opens automatically the preset for that plugin. That works nice.
But if you are working with two or more plugins (two or more open windows) you can't change between them just changing the focus, you have to close and open the window again.
It's not that bad, but it will be wonderfull if the same info that is being sent when you open the window could be sent when it gets the focus too so you can switch faster between plugs.

Maybe that's sent by the plugin dll so it's not possible but just for the case...

[WOK!]

But if you are working with two or more plugins (two or more open windows) you can't change between them just changing the focus, you have to close and open the window again.
A workaround would be to enable the option "allow only one plugin window", so you jump to another plugin by clicking the fx button.
btw: Do you have experience with controlling the Reaper mixer with automap?
> http://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=34075

[Spyrow]

But I want to have more than one plugin window open.

About your other question, I've not tested the mixer option very well yet.