Restoring Old Style Plugin Popup Menu

[MaxC]

I just moved to Tracktion 6 from Tracktion 3. I have hundreds of VSTs organized into many subcategories (effects vs instruments, dynamics vs eq, compression vs limiting, etc.). In Tracktion 3, the plugin popup menu would mirror my directory structure exactly, where each higher level folder would fork into multiple subfolders. Sometimes folders would expand four or five layers deep (and I liked it that way). Now, in Tracktion 6, every populated folder is listed at once. Additionally, high level folders are not displayed (for example, "Instruments" and "Effects" do not appear in the paths displayed in the plugin popup menu). Instead, it shows a truncated path for every populated folder.

Is there anyway I can go back to the old style of popup menu? When I add a plugin, I would like the menu to start by JUST showing the "Instruments" and "Effects" folders. Those folders should then only display the next level of subfolders before forking out into deeper and deeper levels. I realize that T6 has the "Custom Plugin List" feature, however this would require me to go back and replicate literally hundreds of folders that I've already neatly organized in Windows Explorer. Am I missing something, or is that my only recourse?

Thanks in advance.

[chico.co.uk]

Settings page, plugins tab. Choose from the dropdowns the way you want it to look.

[MaxC]

I've tried both of the Plugin Selector formats, and neither of them uses the old framework. Let's suppose I have a folder named "Effects", and in "Effects" there are folders for Dynamics, EQ, Modulation, Visualization. When I add a plugin, I want the first layer to display ONLY the "Effects" folder. Hovering over "Effects" should then display the four subfolders. Instead, when I add a plugin, I get the following, all listed simultaneous at the first layer of organization:

Effects/Dynamics
Effects/EQ
Effects/Modulation
Effects/Visualization

To me, this totally defeats the concept of a popup menu, because every single folder is displayed immediately. I have many more folders than in my simple sample above, so I'm left having to browse through a long list of complex directory paths to try and track down the plugin I want, even though I've already gone through the trouble of organizing them in an intuitive way in my directory structure. Considering this was already an existing feature in previous Tracktion versions, I am hoping it would be possible to restore this format as an option.

[Ben di Arrows]

Are you sure you have 'sort by disk location' selected?

I get your required behaviour both as a popup menu and tree

[MaxC]

Yes, "Sort by disk location" is selected. I'm wondering if it's due to the fact that I only have a few plugins installed thus far, and Tracktion is trying to be more efficient by sparing me the work of navigating the directory tree when all of the populated folders can be displayed simultaneously in a list. I'll try installing a bunch more and see if this behavior changes. Thanks for sharing, Ben.

[whyterabbyt]

I've tried both of the Plugin Selector formats, and neither of them uses the old framework. Let's suppose I have a folder named "Effects", and in "Effects" there are folders for Dynamics, EQ, Modulation, Visualization. When I add a plugin, I want the first layer to display ONLY the "Effects" folder. Hovering over "Effects" should then display the four subfolders. Instead, when I add a plugin, I get the following, all listed simultaneous at the first layer of organization:

Effects/Dynamics
Effects/EQ
Effects/Modulation
Effects/Visualization

To me, this totally defeats the concept of a popup menu, because every single folder is displayed immediately. I have many more folders than in my simple sample above, so I'm left having to browse through a long list of complex directory paths to try and track down the plugin I want, even though I've already gone through the trouble of organizing them in an intuitive way in my directory structure. Considering this was already an existing feature in previous Tracktion versions, I am hoping it would be possible to restore this format as an option.

If you're describing what I think you are, I reported this as a problem in T5. ie its not really the 'style' (ie UI implementation) of the menu that's not right, but the contents of the menus?
I read it as you basically saying that the level of 'nesting' of folders is wrong, that you want Dynamics to be be a submenuof Effects on the menu, but instead you're getting a menu called 'Effects/Dynamics', am I right?

(I posted what I was seeing here
http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic ... 7#p5634167)

[MaxC]

Yes whyterabbit, that's exactly what I'm experiencing. There is no pop-out structure to the menus, but rather a list of every populated directory. I've added dozens of additional plugins, which has merely resulted in dozens of additional menu items, none of which pop out from higher levels of organization.

[whyterabbyt]

Yes whyterabbit, that's exactly what I'm experiencing. There is no pop-out structure to the menus, but rather a list of every populated directory. I've added dozens of additional plugins, which has merely resulted in dozens of additional menu items, none of which pop out from higher levels of organization.

Yeah, sounds the same all right. Like I say, I was seeing this in T5. Originally when we got custom menus in T6, I thought we'd be able to base them on, for example, the folder structure, with some post-facto changes (like one can in say, Sonar), which would have meant we could have tweaked/repaired anomalies like these, but it kinda missed a trick in that we have to build custom menus from absolute scratch. Number of plugins Ive got, that's really too cumbersome a route.