has this been fixed in 8.5? or have we had the same situation (yet again) where $teinberg release a new function to put on their flashy website announcement page but in reality it is a Half-Assed attempt and doesnt work as expected and never properly finished?
do we STILL have to use a Hex Editor to name our vst3 plugins the way we want in this latest 8.5 update?
I don’t know whether renaming is possible directly in C8.5. But with Nuendo 7 I was able to rename the plugin as displayed in my collections by simply editing the corresponding xml file. The plugin collections created by the user (not the default lists) is managed in a file called PluginManager.xml in your preferences folder. It is an xml file and contains the collections and folders for FX and instruments. To modify it, a text editor is sufficient. For each plugin in a collection there is a line of the form
The string after cid must not be changed, this hexadecimal value identifies the particular plugin inside Cubase (or Nuendo). But the name itself (the string after name between the quotation marks) can be changed and will appear in that plugin collection after the application is launched again. It would be wise to backup the file before making any changes, so you can roll back if necessary.
I also can’t understand why it is not possible to edit the “display name” of the plugins in the plugin-manager if the collection information ist stored in an xml file already.
I am using lots of Fabfilter Plugins and with reduced channel width my mixer shows “Fabfil” in almost evere Slot, because the vendor named them “Fabfilter Pro-C 2”, “Fabfilter Pro-MB”, “Fabfilter Pro-L” and so on. It would be nice if one may double klick the display name and may change it to “Pro-C2”, “Pro-MB” or “FF-PL” and save that in the pluginmanager xml file to make the resizing of the mixer useful.
That would enhance my workflow a lot.
If they also may implement a way to “freeze” multiple tracks in one go I would by satified much more
exactly the problem Backdraft! glad i am not alone!@ it is madness!
absolutely this is exactly how it should be implemented…and i was shocked when i purchased C7.5 just for this Plugin Manager only to find that the ability to double click on the display name in the manager to change it was “greyed out” and not possible. How is this helping with “ease of workflow” $teinberg???
Another reason for renaming plugins is that if you use a control surface with a limited number of characters (maybe 6-10 depending on what controller you have), it becomes difficult/impossible to identify the name of various plugins.
Well, whadayaknow? I just tried this and yes, it does work in Cubase (at least for the dozen or so plugins that I’ve tried). Thanks very much for this tip. I think a lot of people would like to know about this.
did you try it with VST2 and VST3 effects plugins or only VST3 ? any changes i make to this file on a PC causes cubase to crash with the Cubase “A serious problem has occurred…” red cross crash window popping up when i try and rescan my plugins in Plugin Manager…
I am also on PC (Win 8.1 64Bit). I renamed a lot of plugins and have had no problems at all but as far as I remember, I have not rescanned my plugins since doing this -I just edited the XML file and restarted Cubase and my plugins are all renamed, (including on my S3 control surface, which is a seriously useful thing). What happens if you just load up Cubase without rescanning your plugins?
The plugins that I renamed include Waves, Soundtoys, Sonnox, Native Instruments, Slate Digital and quite a few more. I would need to check if any of them are VST2 but pretty sure they will be (all are 64Bit though).
hi J-S-Q thanks for the response, i tried renaming some waves ones (some are the most cryptic of all plugin names) but upon a simple reboot they were not renamed. For instance i renamed the CLA-2A to Waves LA2A. upon reboot it still was listed as CLA-2A, and upon rescan i had the fatal crashes.
im going to work through my plugins list and try and weed out the problem…maybe a rogue plugin thats causing the scan crashes that is unrelated to this problem.
if this workaround is truely valid and works (and i hope it does!) , then i would think it would be a fairly simple thing to write up a nice GUI to make these changes to the xml file until $teinberg gets their act together…hell i rekkon i could even get some guy to write the prog for me from the website Fiver…
Thanks a million Mike for the tip, works perfectly with Cubase 8.5 on Windows 10. Modified the names and it stuck even after reboot. Just in case, save the original .xml somewhere you can get to and overwrite the modified one if it causes problems.
They have “xml notepad” - a 1 MB download from Microsoft.com (search it on Microsoft website)
Once installed you can right click an XML file and the Explorer shell menu will list the option
“Edit with XML Notepad”
But in C Pro 8.5 the naming is in “Plugins.xml” in the AppData\Roaming\Steinberg\Cubase 8.5_64
Folder not in PluginManager.xml
Always make a backup copy before editing any file. Just in case you need to undo.
fretthefret ya i mean something a bit more elegant than an xml editor but youre right, and thanks for the tip also!
i was thinking it could be a nice graphical GUI in a vst plugin wrapper or something so you could just call it up within Cubase and scroll down the list of plugins and change the names…
having said that you would still need to reboot Cubase actually so it may as well be standalone…just thinking out loud…
ideally its something $teinberg will do within the Plugin Manager…with their “new leaf” that they have turned and public statement maybe this will be addressed?
(still testing this myself but now with a 2nd confirmation from tryphon its looking positive! saves you having to do my WinHex hack of the plugin files directly which is great news!)
I opened PluginManager.xml and it already had all my plugins listed. I simply edited the names and saved the file. I did this using Notepad. I have renamed 90% of my plugins by the way (including Waves CLA-2A) and so far it has been completely trouble free.
I’m not sure if this is relevant but just FYI… I had previously created a new Plugin Collection in the Plugin Manager so I could customise what plugins are shown and put them in different folders etc. This might be why all my plugins are already listed in the XML file so if you are not seeing them then try making a new collection.
are you saying that after editing the name in the XML file that the new name is how it appears in the mixer? when i do it here it changes the name as it appears in the plugin list, but once loaded in the mixer its still the original name.
No, it remains the same in the mixer but is renamed in the plugin list and (crucially for ME) it is renamed on the screen of my Avid S3 controller. I realise lots of people are mainly concerned with names in the MixConsole but that doesn’t bother me that much -sorry, I was looking at this more from the perspective of my personal ways of working when I posted!
I am on C9.5 now. For fabfilters vst2 I simply renamed dlls, and for vst3 I edited vst3plugins.xml by removing “FabFilter” everywhere where said FabFilter “plugin name”. And everything is working fine, even my project where I used FF vst3s (before renaming them) opened with no problem, with all FFs nicely renamed in the mixer. The inly cavet is, when you search “fabfilter” in your plugin list, you are geting only vst2s, but if you search for specific plugin, like pro-q, you get both vst2 and 3.