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Old 11-05-2021, 04:55 PM   #1
ashcat_lt
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Join Date: Dec 2012
Posts: 7,272
Default Why is video processor so different?

Specifically, why is it different from JS plugins. I'm willing to accept that they do in fact need to work differently on the back end, so that they're not exactly interchangeable and we have to do some weird things with gmem to get information back and forth. If somebody wanted to explain why that actually is, I'd be happy to hear it, but that's not really my question. My question is more in how we create and implement the things.

First, like, why is it that we have this one plugin called Video Processor that actually does nothing by itself, and all the code to do whatever we want to do is included in presets for that one plugin? In JS, each of these "presets" would be its own plugin, for which we could have any number of actual presets for different values of parameters. Why do the parameters allow us to define defaults if their actual values are saved with the "preset" which should actually be its own plugin? As it is now, if we want easy access to the same code but different starting values for specific different tasks, we either end up with a whole bunch of presets in the list, many of which are identical except for parameter values, which is just ugly and will become pretty tough to navigate before too long. The alternative being to actually save it as an FX chain, but that's a bit of a different thing, too. It's clunky and inconsistent with the behavior of just about everything else we do.

But then, too, the sort of half-assed knobby things that we get for a GUI are pretty wonky and unfriendly and just weird. The window for the FX itself is mostly code, and we have to be careful about parameter names and descriptions and things because you can only actually see so many characters. Want something like a dropdown with multiple options? Yeah... Want to be able to type in specific values? Sorry. Even if it was the basic GUI like we have in JS, with sliders and dropdowns and the code hidden behind an Edit button, it would be sooooo much better. If there was a way that we could create "real" GUIs like we do in JS, that would be even better, but I guess I can see where there might be some collision in the gfx processing or something.

There is actually nothing stopping us from just making a dummy JS as a front end and then either coopting the multichannel video peaker or just using gmem to control parameters in the video processor itself, but that's a bit of a hinkey hack.

We might, also, be able to program the VP preset itself to give us at least some feedback in the video window, but can that be used to capture mouse and/or keyboard inputs? Really, that's just kind of a weird way to do it anyway, but it would be better than nothing.

So yeah, why is this so different? Is there anything we can do to make it better and preferably more consistent with our other plugin experiences? Does any of this bug anybody else as much as it bugs me, or have people found ways around the limitations that I haven't yet found?

Last edited by ashcat_lt; 11-05-2021 at 05:00 PM.
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