Import Instrument Tracks audio input & Vienna Ensemble Pro

[akm2018]

Hi,

I'm attempting to use Pro Tools 2018.4 for as the basis for a film scoring/ orchestral template solution. I'm using Vienna Ensemble Pro on my master and slave computers.

In order to get around the 512 instrument track limit, I tried creating sets of instrument tracks in separate PT sessions that corresponded to my instruments loaded in VEP, and import those instrument tracks only as needed for each project as I go, instead of having to set them up one at a time for every new project. Therefore, my main template only consists of busses for routing of sections and reverbs, and aux tracks with the VEP plugin that connects to my separate instances, but no instrument tracks.

When I first open my template and import the instrument tracks from the sessions where I set them up, all the routing is correct (MIDI, audio input, and audio output) for those imported instruments.

However, if I close that session and reopen it, the audio input assignment is incorrect (it is assigned to a different instance of VEP, but has the same audio channel assignment). Basically, the audio input of the instrument track will be assigned to channels 3/4 coming from VEP (which was correct for the instance it should be assigned to), but it will be for the wrong instances (i.e. it will be channel 3/4 from the Pianos instance of VE, not the Strings Long instance like it should be).

This issue appears to affect tracks regardless of whether they are assigned to VEP instances on my master or slave computer. I also tried saving these instrument tracks as Track Presets and dragging them in from the workspace, hoping it would preserve the proper routing, but it did not help.

Just to reiterate, the audio input assignment for these imported instrument tracks is correct when first imported into a session using my main template, but is changed when I reopen that session.

Curiously, when I create a new instrument track in my session and route it, rather than importing an instrument track that was pre-routed, the routing is preserved correctly after I reopen the session. This only seems to affect imported instrument tracks.

Does anyone have an insight as to what I could be doing wrong, or a different strategy to keep the routing preserved when importing the tracks? I've tried a bunch of different tests and workarounds but nothing seems to be working.

Thanks for your help.

[akm2018]

After some further testing, it looks like the issue occurs almost exclusively with tracks that are linked to an instance of VE that is on my slave computer, but not with VE instances on my master computer.

I don't know if this will help, but I'm including a screenshot of my tracks after I've imported them in to a new session. Some of the tracks connect fine, but others have the audio input menu greyed out.

Anyone have an idea of what could be going wrong? I'm not sure if this is a Pro Tools or VEPro issue, but I haven't heard back from Vienna support so I figured I'd try updating this thread.

[Shan]

It's good to see someone push the MIDI track limit in PT. What's the maximum amount of MIDI tracks you use in a session?

Shane

[akm2018]

Originally Posted by Shan

It's good to see someone push the MIDI track limit in PT. What's the maximum amount of MIDI tracks you use in a session?

Shane

I definitely don't break the 512 midi or instrument track limit in my projects. If I were to create a template with ALL the sounds that I might potentially use, it would probably be close to 1,000 tracks.

Personally I'd rather not have a template with a huge number of tracks, and just import tracks as needed per project, which lead me to discover this issue when I was creating sessions with pre-routed tracks connected to VEP.

For now I am using a template with a collection of the basic sounds I use the most, and when I want a different sound I create instrument tracks and route them accordingly.

With that said, it still would be nice to have tracks pre-named and routed that I could just import in to a project instead of setting them up while trying to write.

As stated in my reply, there only seems to be an issue with tracks routed to my slave, so I'm not even sure if this is a Pro Tools or VEP issue. Still haven't got a reply from VSL, but a reply from Avid said it was an issue with the VEP plugin, so that's as far as I've got in figuring out why this is happening.