Avid Pro Audio Community

Avid Pro Audio Community

How to Join & Post  •  Community Terms of Use  •  Help Us Help You

Knowledge Base Search  •  Community Search  •  Learn & Support


Avid Home Page

Go Back   Avid Pro Audio Community > Pro Tools Software > AAX Plug-ins

Reply
 
Thread Tools Search this Thread Display Modes
  #1  
Old 06-26-2022, 09:33 PM
JEROMEWAUK JEROMEWAUK is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Apr 2012
Location: CHICAGO
Posts: 26
Default Where are the 3rd party plugins

Help anyone please. On several occasions I've had to perform a clean uninstall / reinstall of Pro Tools software for reasons such as a corrupted third party plugin
to running out of start up drive space etc... nothing particularly earthshaking or out of the ordinary.

However , after reinstalling PT ALL of my 3rd party AAX plugins cannot be located and need to be reinstalled. I'm on a Pro Tools Studio subscription based product.
Clearly , having to reinstall every 3rd party plugin to regain AAX compatability is cumbersome , time consuming , and counter intuitive. I should add , when upgrading PT to the latest version under the subscription model all is well.It's only when a clean installation is performed this occurs.

Logic Pro X does not behave this way with Audio Units when reinstallation is necessary. Am I missing (pun intended) something that everyone else probably knows? I'm on Mac OSX Mojave 10.14.6.

Thanks everyone
Reply With Quote
  #2  
Old 06-26-2022, 10:16 PM
Darryl Ramm Darryl Ramm is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Nov 2010
Location: USA
Posts: 19,488
Default Re: Where are the 3rd party plugins

Why have you had to do a "clean uninstall" of Pro Tools? Especially on a Mac... this should not be needed. And how exactly have you done this?

And if you run out of drive space you never would uninstall the plugins themselves (plugins don't take much space, and they can only be in the one folder), at most you might move any separate VI sample files to a different drive/volume. Or maybe if stuff is messed up delete the VI samples and reinstall them from the installers again but placing them on on a seperate drive or volume.

For a corrupt plugin... you find what plugin is the problem and either remove it or update it with one that is not messed up.

I'm confused by what you are doing, if you have been doing standard plugin troubleshooting you would have been moving out plugins from the plugin folder... so you would know where it is, and then it's your call if you move them all out or not. If you moved them out... and you want them there you put them back... So it would be great to be a lot clearer about exactly what you have you been doing? There are certainly times where it's best to just give up and do full clean installed, macOS, Pro Tools, and all plugins but nothing besides you deleting files directly should be deleting plugins.

All .aaxplugin plugins live in /Library/Application\ Support/Avid/Audio/Plug-Ins. If you deleted those files you need to recover them from backups or reinstall the plugins.

Just reinstalling Pro Tools will not delete third party plugins.

If the .aaxplugin files are in the plugin folder but not showing up in Pro Tools then (as you do for all troubleshooting) start by trashing prefs. Get Pete Gates PT Prefs utility (http://petegates.com/pg-pt-prefs.html) to make it easier to do this.

Do you then see the plugins being loaded in the Pro Tools splash/startup screen when you start Pro Tools? It will do that slower as Pro Tools rebuilds it's plugin index trashing prefs just deleted.

Do you see the plugins load in the Pro Tools splash screen in the inserts/plugin menus?

Also have a read of "Help us help you" up the top of each DUC web page for more info about troubleshooting.

Last edited by Darryl Ramm; 06-27-2022 at 03:21 AM.
Reply With Quote
  #3  
Old 06-27-2022, 08:21 AM
albee1952's Avatar
albee1952 albee1952 is offline
Member
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Norwich, CT
Posts: 39,292
Default Re: Where are the 3rd party plugins

Good info above. As for me, in 20 years and dozens of uninstall and re-installing Pro Tools, no plugins have ever had an issue, other than sometimes updating PT calls for updating a plugin or two. Could this be operator error? Are you trying to install Pro Tools to a drive that is not your system drive?
__________________
HP Z4 workstation, Mbox Studio
https://www.facebook.com/search/top/...0sound%20works


The better I drink, the more I mix

BTW, my name is Dave, but most people call me.........................Dave
Reply With Quote
  #4  
Old 06-27-2022, 06:25 PM
JEROMEWAUK JEROMEWAUK is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Apr 2012
Location: CHICAGO
Posts: 26
Default Re: Where are the 3rd party plugins

Darryl , thank you , thank you , thank you. I found the aax plugins exactly where you said on an attached back up drive. I'm over the moon man. I'm so thrilled to see these plugins that I have no idea how to point pro tools to this folder. Forgive my ignorance on this process please.
Do I need the pete gates utility to accomplish this?
Reply With Quote
  #5  
Old 06-27-2022, 08:34 PM
Darryl Ramm Darryl Ramm is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Nov 2010
Location: USA
Posts: 19,488
Default Re: Where are the 3rd party plugins

Quote:
Originally Posted by JEROMEWAUK View Post
Darryl , thank you , thank you , thank you. I found the aax plugins exactly where you said on an attached back up drive. I'm over the moon man. I'm so thrilled to see these plugins that I have no idea how to point pro tools to this folder. Forgive my ignorance on this process please.
Do I need the pete gates utility to accomplish this?
Uh, be careful here. You never point Pro Tools at odd places Pro Tools are. Plugins have to be in the proper plugin directory. Don't ever try to do anything "too smart" there with symbolic links etc. you will burn yourself at some future time with problems if not with Pro Tools, with some other plugin installer having problems.

The only thing you ever put anywhere different is the large virtual instrument sample libraries.... and they are not directly installed in the plugin folder. Say if they won't fit on your boot/system drive then typically the installers for that plugin or a utility that the plugin vendor give you will help make it easy to move the sample libraries, and to tell the plugins where they got moved to.

I'm still trying to understand what you have been doing. And you want to stop doing it

Start by just restarting Pro Tools. It will automatically put back the core plugins (core are the very basic core, not the Avid Complete plugin Bundle plugins, they are all separate) into /Library/Application\ Support/Avid/Audio/Plug-Ins and should recreate any missing folders there if it needs to. It copes those core plugins from a hidden folder in it's own application bundle to the plugin directory, and will make sure they have correct permissions and ownership etc. That also means that you have core plugins that are known to be the correct version match with your version of Pro Tools... well because they came from that version of Pro Tools.

Now you can copy from the command line or drag and drop plugins from your backup volume into the plugin folder. And as you don that don't overwrite the core plugins you put back, they are know good, and make sure plugins you copied back have the same owner and file permissions as the core plugins. Or you can just install the plugins over again... and that may not be a bad idea anyhow, especially of there is a chance you have old version of plugins installed or you've been doing whatever messing around you have been doing.

And in case it's not obvious .aaxplugin files are not really files, they are bundles, a directory structure containing binary code and other components of the plugin. If you start copying stuff around using the command line be careful what you are doing. And if needed check that ownerships of the enclosed folder and files look correct.

When doing major upgrade on macOS many of us will will reinstall all apps and plugins on clean macOS installs, it's a way if keeping installs very clean and avoiding occasional problems.
Reply With Quote
Reply

Thread Tools Search this Thread
Search this Thread:

Advanced Search
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is On

Forum Jump

Similar Threads
Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
Ilok only enables Avid plugins, third party plugins no not get activated!?*SOLVED* Kristo Kotkas AAX Plug-ins 6 04-22-2020 01:19 PM
Do I Still Own old 3rd Party Plugins? jack s. Licensing & Accounts 14 03-22-2016 10:52 AM
Where to put 3rd party plugins? boycie Windows 4 01-27-2012 04:29 AM
3rd party plugins w/PT8... lwilliam 003, Mbox 2, Digi 002, original Mbox, Digi 001 (Mac) 3 10-14-2009 05:42 PM
3rd Party Plugins abrice Digidesign Hardware & Software 2 11-10-2001 08:19 PM


All times are GMT -7. The time now is 01:34 AM.


Powered by: vBulletin, Copyright ©2000 - 2008, Jelsoft Enterprises Limited. Forum Hosted By: URLJet.com