KVR Audio

AdmiralQuality · Post by **AdmiralQuality** » Tue Sep 19, 2006 3:53 pm

I'm 99% sure the answer is no, but does anybody know of a way to detect if a VSTi is playing in real-time vs. rendering?

I suppose I could compare the sample count to real system time. But Cubase has a real time export feature which would fool that. Also I'd only be able to detect that after some period of time had passed, and the render would have already started.

Why I'm wanting to do this is; I'd like my plug-in instrument to force highest quality during rendering. I guess maybe that's a bad idea as it takes control away from the user. Hell, maybe someone will even WANT the artifacts from lower quality? (In fact, I know some people will.) So I guess I'll just not bother. What I was hoping to avoid though was people who had set it to low qualility just to get through a real time performance/recording... then forget to set the quality back to maximum before rendering. Even if it could pop a dialog to remind them and give them the option of setting it, that would be great. Of course you don't want to deal with this every time you load the plug.

Oh well.

Caco · Post by **Caco** » Tue Sep 19, 2006 5:23 pm

How about getCurrentProcessLevel(). If it returns 4 then maybe set your quality to high? The question is though, how many hosts actually support this? Anyway, hope this helps

From the VSTSDK documentation:

Returns the hosts's process level. A plug is like a black box processing some audio coming in on some inputs (if any) and going out of some outputs (if any). This may be used to do offline or real-time processing, and sometimes it may be desirable to know the current context.

return
0 : Not supported.
1 : Currently in user thread (gui).
2 : Currently in audio thread or irq (where process is called).
3 : Currently in 'sequencer' thread or irq (midi, timer etc).
4 : Currently offline processing and thus in user thread.
other : Not defined, but probably pre-empting user thread.

AdmiralQuality · Post by **AdmiralQuality** » Tue Sep 19, 2006 5:28 pm

HEY THANKS FOR THAT! Missed that one. Will give it a try.

runagate · Post by **runagate** » Tue Sep 19, 2006 5:29 pm

FL has a "detect rendering" option in it's wrapper for VSTs.

As I recall from something in Looptalk when I was a newbie that FL's weird options for plug-ins are due to the fact that their dev team insists on meeting all the standards in the VSTSDK something or other but many VSTs themselves aren't made to rigorously meet those standards.

Hope that's useful info.

brambos · Post by **brambos** » Tue Sep 19, 2006 6:01 pm

Caco wrote:How about getCurrentProcessLevel(). If it returns 4 then maybe set your quality to high? The question is though, how many hosts actually support this? Anyway, hope this helps

Good one. Tunafish currently doesn't support this, but that was because plugins never seemed to use it. However, this smells like a chicken 'n egg situation so I'll add it in the next TF release.

Cheers!

Mike from reFX · Post by **Mike from reFX** » Tue Sep 19, 2006 6:04 pm

Xphraze & HALion also support "getCurrentProcessLevel" and have an option to switch to highest quality automatically.

brambos · Post by **brambos** » Tue Sep 19, 2006 6:06 pm

Michael Kleps from reFX wrote:Xphraze & HALion also support "getCurrentProcessLevel" and have an option to switch to highest quality automatically.

So how about Nexus? [Nudge nuge wink wink]

Mike from reFX · Post by **Mike from reFX** » Tue Sep 19, 2006 6:11 pm

Yep, will also have that option

AdmiralQuality · Post by **AdmiralQuality** » Tue Sep 19, 2006 6:30 pm

Ok this is starting to sound like not such a whack idea after all. Thanks again everybody!

duncanparsons · Post by **duncanparsons** » Tue Sep 19, 2006 7:45 pm

I knew that there was an offline mode, but couldn't for the life of me remember how to check for it. In full offline mode, the plug can play the host and should have access to samples from anypoint in the sequence, but I doubt many hosts support that level of sophistication.

It's all in the initial Steinberg docs

DSP

BertKoor · Post by **BertKoor** » Wed Sep 20, 2006 6:31 am

A better option: put the "high quality" option ON THE GUI!! I don't want a plugin to sound different just because we're rendering, I want that superiour sound NOW!

That's how e.g. SFZ has done it: a quality control ranging from Draft to Superb, at your own control.

AdmiralQuality · Post by **AdmiralQuality** » Wed Sep 20, 2006 6:35 am

BertKoor wrote:A better option: put the "high quality" option ON THE GUI!! I don't want a plugin to sound different just because we're rendering, I want that superiour sound NOW!

That's how e.g. SFZ has done it: a quality control ranging from Draft to Superb, at your own control.

Yes yes, but I didn't want people forgetting it's on "draft" is all.

Still not even sure I'm going to attempt this. Think I'll leave it up to the user. At first anyway... might add it later if I can make it work and it's not screwy across different hosts.

Detecting rendering?