Anyone using large orchestra templates?
 

I’m sequencing the score for a show in PT 2019.5. About 200 tracks total, about 16 of which are connections to VEPro.

I’m not even going to go into the instability of video in an app owned by a video company - that’s another post.

But what I’m encountering is inconsistent MIDI playback. Control changes seem to sometimes work and sometimes not. In particular, messages that I send through VEPro into Kontakt, which is using Mind Control to organize many instances of OT Berlin Strings. Don’t know who’s folding - PT, Kontakt, Mind Control, Capsule... any thoughts from folks with larger templates welcome.

Please, as a courtesy: if you prefer Logic or Cubase that’s great, but I want to see about solving this with Pro Tools for various reasons.

Re: Anyone using large orchestra templates?
 

Most of the time I get "huge" sessions to mix they have been arranged in Logic and the most sensible thing would be bouncing stems (strings, woods, brass, percs, etc) as audio.

The largest orchestra template I have ever seen is the one Spitfire is using.

Re: Anyone using large orchestra templates?
 

I do it sometimes. It can be pretty dicey. Are you using a separate machine, or running VEP on your main workstation? Is your problem with program changes, or just all CCs?

Re: Anyone using large orchestra templates?
 

I just looked up Mind Control. I haven't heard of it before. I thought you had mis-typed MIDI Control. I just use a Kontakt Instrument for each articulation, or use Program Changes or Key Switches (depending on the library) to switch the articulations.

Re: Anyone using large orchestra templates?
 

I run large orchestral templates in Pro Tools for scoring to picture. I mostly have Instrument tracks routed to VEPro, one track per patch, with MIDI going to VE and audio from the patch in VE routed back to it's corresponding instrument track (the same one the MIDI was sent from).

I personally don't have any issues with my setup, either with midi notes or controller data not being played back correctly. This makes me think that Mind Control might be the issue. Have you tried taking Mind Control out of the equation and seeing if you get the same or different results?

Re: Anyone using large orchestra templates?
 

Thanks for the replies, folks.

I’m thinking now it may be a combo of Using Capsule (which is a giant scripting monster) inside Mind Control. Berlin Strings are cool but I sure wish they just did UACC like Spitfire does - in Spitfire you can assign all of the articulations for a section - first violins, say - to a single MIDI channel, and a sound will not play unless it’s seeing its particular cc message that enables it, but it will still respond to other CC’s - and then when you send dynamics to them via CC’s, all of the instruments get the dynamics messages, so if you switch articulations, rather than needing to see a dynamics controller after the switch, the articulation will already be there. If I have all articulations on different channels, first I will have a billion tracks, because I’m using almost every articulation in the library for each instrument - a max of about 65 for a section - and second, because ProTools doesn’t do folders, I would have to record enable every track in a section that I used before I did a dynamics pass. So less than elegant. That’s the benefit of Mind Control - load a massive bank of patches, assign them to change via CC or whatever, and you are almost as cool as Spitfire.

Why am I not using Spitfire? Just not as exciting sounding as Berlin Strings, and Berlin dovetails with the Metropolis Ark stuff too.

Re: Anyone using large orchestra templates?
 

I’m using PT with VE Pro and a large template without issue. It’s super solid here so my inclination would be there’s an issue with Mind Control.

Have you looked into Kontakt Multi Scripts? There’s one where you load instruments/articulations into slots then assign keyswitches, program changes or CC messages to switch between them. Not in the studio today so can’t be more descriptive at the moment but it can work.

Re: Anyone using large orchestra templates?
 

Hi Dave -

Mind Control is a multi script, more or less - that’s what it does, except many conditions can be engaged, including legato playing styles, speed and so forth for switching... I think my issue may be that Kontakt really wants to have one Capsule (Berlin instrument) and not much more per instance. I was just wanting to avoid an insanely massive series of VEPro instances with fifty instances of Kontakt within. And I have just tried the same thing in Cubase with the same result - and it didn’t happen when I used Mind Control to drive 8Dio Adagio before. I really, really wish Capsule worked more like the Spitfire stuff does - I would like to be able to use a script to not pass note data unless a cc was at a certain value, but to allow all cc’s, so all of these Kontakt instances could chase the same dynamics.

Re: Anyone using large orchestra templates?
 

To the op:
Is your version of VEPro up to date?
VEPro 6 or 7?
Since you don't know exactly what's falling over maybe mention this in the VEPro forum and see what people there might know.

Re: Anyone using large orchestra templates?
 

It's the way you are using kontact. You need to set up multiple instances inside vepro. I have run into the same issue.

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