So I use quite a few “wrapped” RTAS plug-ins, meaning that the plug-in was designed for VST and hacked (via FXpansion’s VST-RTAS wrapper utility) to work as RTAS in Pro Tools. For example, all of the UAD stuff shows up as wrapped plug-ins in my inserts menu. This isn’t a big deal, as with most VST plug-ins the wrapper utility works flawlessly, but no matter which plug-in you end up using, it hides itself in the “Wrapped Plug-ins” sub-menu of your inserts menu. I have talked to Avid (Digidesign) about this and unfortunately, as long as they are “wrapped” VST plug-ins there is no way to get them into their correct categories (e.g. EQ, Dynamics, etc), aside from possibly hacking the plug-in .dpm file (I’ve looked into this. Without some sort of hint as to how the category identifier is determined/stored, I can’t see anything obvious when I pull up the files in a hex editor). While there is currently no easy way to get the wrapped plug-ins into their correct catagories, there is an easy workaround of sorts that will get you to your favorite plug-ins quickly.
Default EQ and Dynamics:
The first thing you want to do is set up your mixer’s default EQ and Dynamics plug-ins, these will show up at the highest level of the insert selection menu so put your “go to” EQ and compressor plug-ins in these two slots. To set the default EQ/Dynamics choose Setup > Preferences > Mixing Tab.
Plug-in Favorites:
The default EQ and Dynamics option only allows you to save one favorite within the EQ and Dynamics sub-menu, which blows if you want use a wrapped plug-in as your favorite EQ or compressor. In this case, you can save a plug-in as a “favorite” and it will show up at the top of the plug-ins list (within the plug-in type sub-menu on stereo tracks, e.g. TDM/RTAS or multi-channel/multi-mono).
To save a plug-in as a favorite: Hold Command (Mac) or Control (Windows) while selecting a plug-in from the inserts menu. The plug-in will not be inserted but will be stored as a favorite. Remember, you must hold Command (Mac) or Control (Windows) before clicking on the track’s insert selector.
To remove a plug-in favorite: Repeat the steps above, hold Command (Mac) or Control (Windows) and re-select the plug-in stored as a favorite from the insert selector menu.
You can have as many favorites as you’d like however keeping this list small will ultimately save you more time.
This entry was written by , posted on October 19, 2009 at 12:12 pm, filed under Articles, MixTips and tagged mixing, MixTips, plug-ins, pro tools. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.
