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Old 02-14-2021, 09:34 AM   #1
Nonlinear
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Default How are you handling GUI scaling for 4K monitors?

Some of my (Mac) customers have complained that my plugin GUIs are "way too small".

When viewed in Windows 10 and on my 2014 iMac the GUIs appear correctly sized, i.e., their text and controls are the same size - if not larger - than similar features in Logic Pro, Pro Tools, etc. So I'm assuming these customers must be running 4k monitors and the apps are scaling but my plugins are not?

If that's the case then all of my GUIs, controls, etc., need to be scaled up by about 2x. Re-sizeable GUIs are popular but it seems from many threads here that resizing GUIs on the fly is problematic. I don't want issues like that making my plugins unstable.

How are YOU handling this?
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Old 02-14-2021, 11:31 AM   #2
olilarkin
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Unfortunately dealing with different DPI awareness settings on Windows it’s quite tricky and many hosts are not doing it right or have recently improved things in their latest versions. The easiest solution I found, where available, is to recommend people to enable bridging the plugin, Which will run it in a different process with a different DPI awareness setting and therefore it won’t be tiny.
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Old 02-14-2021, 11:47 AM   #3
Nonlinear
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Quote:
Originally Posted by olilarkin View Post
Unfortunately dealing with different DPI awareness settings on Windows it’s quite tricky and many hosts are not doing it right or have recently improved things in their latest versions. The easiest solution I found, where available, is to recommend people to enable bridging the plugin, Which will run it in a different process with a different DPI awareness setting and therefore it won’t be tiny.
The only complaints I have received are from Mac users.

Can you explain further or point me to some info on what you mean by "bridging"? Do you mean like running the plugin in a middleman host like DDMF's MetaPlugin - or something else? I'm afraid many users wouldn't be too receptive to such "add on" interfaces.
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Old 02-14-2021, 01:33 PM   #4
olilarkin
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oh thats odd. I assumed you were talking about windows, since mac handles scaling much better, and windows with 4K screens has been where I have had reports of tiny-guis (for iPlug 1/1.5 plugins).

bridging is when the plugin is run in a separate process. usually when you want to run a 32 bit plugin in a 64 bit host.

https://www.image-line.com/fl-studio...pluginsettings
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Old 02-15-2021, 11:23 AM   #5
Nonlinear
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Quote:
Originally Posted by olilarkin View Post
oh thats odd. I assumed you were talking about windows, since mac handles scaling much better, and windows with 4K screens has been where I have had reports of tiny-guis (for iPlug 1/1.5 plugins).

bridging is when the plugin is run in a separate process. usually when you want to run a 32 bit plugin in a 64 bit host.

https://www.image-line.com/fl-studio...pluginsettings
All of my plugins are compiled and distributed as 64-bit so there really isn't a need for "bridging" besides the GUI size issue.

Weird that you only see this on Windows and I'm only seeing it on Mac. Actually, I don't see it anywhere - it looks good to me on both my iMac and Win10 PC systems. I've requested the complainers send me some screenshots of what THEY see - but so far crickets...
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Old 02-17-2021, 11:20 AM   #6
Nonlinear
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OK, I'm confused about the GUI "tiny size issue". I asked a customer who complained about it to send me a screenshot from their system. The knobs, switches, text, etc., on my plugins are the same size - if not larger - than the knobs, switches and text in the DAW itself.

So if the PLUGIN is too small how are they using the DAW?

Last edited by Nonlinear; 02-18-2021 at 09:49 AM.
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Old 03-10-2021, 04:12 PM   #7
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I get equal number of complaints about being too big as I do too small. I've never seen it in real life. I have had times where a plugin will take up a lot of room on a small screen, but I figure that's a price people are willing to pay to be mixing on a tiny screen.
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Old 03-11-2021, 09:24 AM   #8
Nonlinear
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Originally Posted by bozmillar View Post
I get equal number of complaints about being too big as I do too small. I've never seen it in real life. I have had times where a plugin will take up a lot of room on a small screen, but I figure that's a price people are willing to pay to be mixing on a tiny screen.
I've been using DAWs for over 20 years and have never had an issue with a plugin being "unusable" because it was either too big or too small. Not sure what people are doing these days. If you're using a 4k driver on a 24" screen and the plugin is "too small" then I submit you probably can't see the DAW either!

I don't understand.

Last edited by Nonlinear; 04-17-2021 at 09:31 AM.
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