FL studio Grouping plugins

[jammer42777]

In fl studio 6, is there a way to make custom groups in the add channel dialog?
(beyond the DX plugins, Fruity plugins, and VST plugins)
I'd really like to be able to edit that, it would make life so much easier.
thanks!
--Joshua

[Jbravo]

well some plugs which consist of a single dll can be renamed so they appear where you want in the alphabetical list, though it's by no means a perfect solution

[tk421]

Make a folder and save fst files in it. Organize them how you want, and add that folder to FL's browser.

[Dazza66]

I've been looking for something like this too, mailnly because I have so many plugins and it would be so much easier (other than delete most of em' ) to be able to view them in a separate group in the add channel dialog as opposed to having them all under "VST plugins...". As a sort-of solution to this, what I did was to prefix all of the dll's (and .dat's where appropriate) with the following (similar to what JBravo is suggesting):
Synth_
FX_
SamplePlayer_
DM_ (drum machine)

This gives me a fairly coarse, but still very useful, grouping so I can immediatley see which plugin does what. This method does require a bit of work as each and every dll/dat has to be renamed, so its probably best suited to if you're just starting to organise your plugins as opposed to have hundreds already. To be honest, its far from ideal, but better than nothing. I'm intrigued to try tk421's method as that sounds far more efficient

[jammer42777]

That's a good idea actually, thanx!
that and I will delete the plugs I have NO intention of using...

[tk421]

Renaming dlls can be a problem if you work on more than one computer or share a file with someone else. They would have to have them named the same way.

[Jbravo]

Renaming dlls can be a problem if you work on more than one computer or share a file with someone else. They would have to have them named the same way.

yeah and it causes problems when opening older projects before the renaming of files. You can get around this by keeping two copies of each dll in the VST folder, one with the new name and one with the original name - but like I said, it's far from ideal!

[Dazza66]

Renaming dlls can be a problem if you work on more than one computer or share a file with someone else. They would have to have them named the same way.

yeah and it causes problems when opening older projects before the renaming of files. You can get around this by keeping two copies of each dll in the VST folder, one with the new name and one with the original name - but like I said, it's far from ideal!

tk421 - good point; I'd never really considered that. I guess it's easier working alone
jbravo - I had exactly this problem when I recently updated many of my plugin names and sample locations. Rather than keeping two differently named copies of the same plugin, I used a hex editor to edit the .flp file (the editor I used was XVI32 - a Google search will locate it easily enough). I'd not used a hex editor before and though editing a binary file such as an .flp looks to be quite intimidating, it's actually surprisingly straightforward. Just locate the name of the plugin, change it and then save it again. I've done a few .flp files like this and it works a treat to enable them to find those 'missing' plugins

[Seus Hawkins]

Sounds like a better solution.
I bought a new computer and then the impulse responses, garritan personal orchestra instruments and soundfonts can't be found. (SFZ etc. doesn't search the folders like FL soundfont player would. SIR and GPO both can't find the files either. SIR and SFZ just load without any files, so you can't know what files it used to use in a song, quite annoying. GPO has to search the entire harddrives each and every time (for each instrument).

Regards