My working method involves assigning many of my sounds in VEP to different VEP output channels. Is there a way (as there is in Pro Tools and DP) to determine which outputs have already been assigned? If not, would you consider making that change? This could be done by displaying the already-assigned outputs in the dropdown menu in bold, or in some other color. Anyway, is there a way to already determine this? 

Thanks,

Peter

I'm gonna reply to myself and say, great idea, me!! :-) Seriously, can we get the ability to sort MyVSL by date? Really would be very helpful.  Thanks.

Peter

Sorry—I realize I asked this question last August, and Paul, you gave me a good workaround—clicking on the existing file name in the destination folder will fill the file name field with that name. But I'll use this opportunity to point out that, since I vaguely remembered asking this, before I posted today I did try searching for "Save As" in the forums—no results came back. Also, I looked at MyThreads; the ordering of threads seemed vaguely like it was oldest first, but on closer examination, I discovered that it's kind of random. Can you allow us to sort "MyThreads" by date? (I did ultimately find my old thread in one of the middle pages.)

Thanks,

Peter 

Hi Herb, Paul et al,

In almost all other Mac programs I can think of, when you execute a "Save As" command, the dialogue comes with the current name of your file already filled in; you can then just append a "2" or a "B" (or the date) to the name in order to quickly save it as a new version. But in VEP, the file name field comes up blank in the dialogs for both "Save Project As" and "Save Server Project As"; is there any particular reason for this, and would you consider changing it?

Thanks,

Peter

While it's great that we can filter our MyVSL page by file type, I'd love it if additionally we could choose to sort by date, so that all the most recent updates were at the top or bottom of the page. I know auto-update is built in to VEP 6, but because I'm updating on two different machines, I prefer to manually download the install files only once. Anyway, that would be a nice additional feature. Thanks.

Peter

This is somewhat related to an earlier thread of mine, but with a twist. As VEP 6 works now, Cmd-S saves the instance, and Opt-Cmd-S does a "save as" of the instance. Would you consider letting us choose via a preference whether or not those commands save the instance or the server project? The way I work (decoupled preserved instances), I almost always save server projects and almost never save instances. In VEP 5 those commands worked on the instance when you were in an instance window and the server when you were in the server window; VEP 6 gives us no option within the program to save the server project via a key command. If I have to choose one, personally, I'd rather have the commands apply to the server project. Possible to give us the choice in a later release?

PL

Thanks for the reply. Guess I don't quite understand the difference between "plug-in parameters" and "custom data" in Paul's earlier message. For my edification, can you clarify? (I'm not doubting you, I just like to understand this stuff.)

PL

Originally Posted by: Paul

As you are probably saving the file in the same folder as previous files anyway, I´d click on the file name of a previously saved project and add/change whatever you like. 

We´re focussing on bug-fixes and major improvements with VE PRO 6 right now, but I´ve noted your request as well. 

Hadn't realize one could do this! Nice workaround, but a tad dangerous—working at high speed, it would be easy to click on the wrong name, change THAT, and end up very confused in the future... :-)  Anyway, thanks for noting the request.

PL

OK, last comment about file saving! This has been a question I've had since the beginning of VEP. In virtually every other program I've used (music-related and non-music-related), when you want to perform a "Save As" operation, the "Save As" dialogue box comes up with the name of the current project in the "file name" slot. This allows you simply to add an incremental number (or today's date) on the end of the file name and save, rather than having to retype the whole file name. I'd find this a nice time-saver. Is there any reason it can't work that way with VEP projects and server projects?

Thanks,

Peter

Ah, yes—thanks. Nice touch, separating the menus—much clearer. 'Twould be nice if "save server project" and "save server project as" got their own key commands...

Thanks. And now... how do we do a "save as" of a VEP project (i.e., not a metaframe)? The floppy disk icon in the VEP header bar lets you "save the current project." But let's say I want to make a few small changes and save the current project (not the metaframe) with a slightly different name. Is there still a way to do that, as there always has been in earlier versions of VEP?

PL

 Interesting point. In fact, I always use VEP decoupled for that exact reason, i.e., that when I don’t, DP takes a very long time to save. It’s not like being asked one more time “Do you want to save” when you go to close the program (right after you've just saved) is that big a deal—it’s that it plants a seed of doubt in one’s mind that the project is really saved. I wonder, though—is there any way to build some sort of “software flag” into the code that gets thrown every time a change is made after a save? That way, when the user wants to quit, VEP wouldn’t need to compare the entire contents of a metaframe bit by bit to see if something’s changed—it would simply check the flag. I say that as someone who knows nothing about writing code. Which may be obvious! :-)

PL

Is there an easy way in VEP6 to save your metaframe, as opposed to the individual instance projects? As it happens, I use one huge instance for my orchestral library (performance with DP is much better that way). I'm finding that in VEP6 if I want to save the metaframe itself, I have to detach the project instance in order to get access to the metaframe window. I can imagine for people that have many instances in a metaframe this would be cumbersome.

Am I missing something? Is there any easy way to do what I'm asking in VEP6?

Thanks,

Peter

Very excited about the new VCA folders for VEP6! Was almost excited about the new option to turn off "ask to save changes on exit." BUT... then I discovered that the setting is absolute—i.e., if you deselect the "ask to save changes" option, it will allow you to close the metaframe without warning even if you've made a change since the last time you saved. Can this feature be modified to work the way it does in most programs? What I would like is the following:

• If there have been no changes to the metaframe since the last time I saved it, I should not be asked if I want to save when I close the server (since I've already saved).

• If there have been changes to the metaframe since the last time I saved it, I should be asked if I want to save when I close the server.

The way it works now, the preference setting is absolute: With the option deselected, if I make a change to a VEP instance and close the server, I'll lose that change without warning. All other programs I'm familiar with (and not just music programs) give you such a warning whenever (and only if) there have been changes since the last time you saved. Curious—is there any reason VEP can't work that way?

Thanks,

Peter

This may sound like a stupid question, but... do you have an actual instrument loaded? Sometimes I end up with empty instruments for various reasons. Selecting "reset windows" from the view menu consistently fixed the problem for me.

Peter

Leon—are you saying that all plug-ins instantiated in series on the same track of a DAW necessarily use the same core? That's useful info if so.

Peter

Paul just gave me the answer via a tech support email, so I figured I'd share it: use the "reset windows" command in the View menu. Thanks, Paul!

PL

For some reason (no doubt user ignorance), sometimes my instances of VE Pro 5 display view tabs on the bottom (instrument, mixer, MIR Pro), and sometimes they don't. Can anyone tell me how to make the tabs appear if they're not there?

Thanks,

Peter

Yeah, yeah, rub it in! 

I've heard the same re cores. Impressive that you've been able to work at 128! I fear that could be a Nuendo vs. DP thing. Sigh...

Thanks. To be clear, I didn't just win the lottery, and I'm not looking to spend as much money as possible!  It just occurred to me that I had never seen the question asked in the form, "What's the best possible system in theory, regardless of money?," and that that might be an instructive starting place for discussing the implications of various hardware choices. Understandably, the question is virtually always framed as "What system gives you the best value for your money?," which is a great but slightly different question. Here's an example of what I mean, again from the top of the market, but it could apply equally to the high middle of the market. The "trash can" Mac Pro is configurable three ways in terms of processors:

1. 3.5GHz 6-Core (with Turbo Boost up to 3.9 GHz
2. 3.0GHz 8-Core
3. 2.7GHz 12-core

My priority, as I said, is to work with as low a buffer setting as possible while actually sequencing. So, which is the best choice for working with DP and VEP? With each increase in the number of cores, processor speed drops, so it's not clear which choice would better help me reach my holy grail of working at 128. This is a question that would need to be answered with custom PC's as well.

PL

Originally Posted by: DG

There is nothing wrong with the new Mac Pros. They are very fast machines. However, I would raise two points:

1. Due to the lack of internal storage (and other things) you will be hanging a lot of stuff off it, and external drives are more expensive than internal ones.
2. You are paying a lot of money for a graphics card that is pretty much useless for music applications.

If you want to stay with OSX there are better options, IMO, but realistically you need to decide on your sequencer and once that is decided various doors could be closed anyway.

DG

Thanks. Good point about the graphics card. My sequencer is DP, and has been for over 20 years. Curious for your thoughts about better Mac options, if you don't mind. Thanks.

Peter

Yes, I have a friend who's very happy with his Vision DAW machine. However I've heard that the new "trash can" Macs also do great with VEP—a lot of people are apparently successfully running on one machine. Any comments?

Peter

Thanks—looks like a good place to start. Yes, more than I need—but I thought it would be interesting to see what the optimal system would be and work down from there.

PL

Start-up delay doesn't seem noticeably different in DP. My question really pertained to whether or not the existence of add'l MIDI ports per instance stresses the CPU of either the master or the slave computer, but it sounds like the answer is no.

PL