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Plugin thumbnail feature?


Danny Wyatt

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Hey guys,

 

Today I was watching a Cubase tutorial and noticed that suddenly the guy's plugins are super small, like a thumbnail. Not sure if that's a Cubase feature or not (anyone using Cubase here?). Anyway, what do you guys think of that feature being implemented in Logic?

 

So here's how that would work:

In the main plugin window we would have an icon that when pressed it would shrink the window down to 20% of its original size (like the image below, but no dropdown menu or anything. Just maybe the track's name and the thumbnail). That would allow us to still work on the project and see the plugins on that particular channel strip without closing the plugin's window and then opening it again. Then we would just need to click anywhere on that thumbnail window to bring it back to its normal size. I struggle a lot with the whole "open-close-open-close" windows, especially with plugins taking 80% of the screen space.

 

What do you guys think? For me, at least, it would be a great time saver. Your thoughts?

 

9719226_LogicThumbnail.thumb.jpg.6a26c19bdc524f60c189962f67055910.jpg

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Have you tried the plugin window link feature options?

 

Yes I use this sometimes

But I think we are talking about different features. I’m talking about having thumbnails that allows us to have smaller window versions quickly accessible.

If I’m working on an EQ and then suddenly I want to mess with the automation I have to either close the window and or move it to the side because the plugin takes 80% of the space. Then I have to open it again.

With this feature I could have maybe 3 or 4 plugins in thumbnail version that wouldn’t be in the way

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I agree that it can be sometimes challenging to work with plug-ins covering too much of your main window, especially with larger plug-ins or when you have multiple ones open at the same time. I often use the V key to toggle plug-ins off and on but that's not always the best solution, so you may be on to something with this thumbnail idea.
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Yes, a nice idea. But on the other hand, floating windows will *always* get in the way, no matter how small and where you put them.

 

This would be an option, with a button, so it’s not something that you would “have” to deal with if you didn’t want to.

 

But think about this: even if a small thumbnail is in the way, if you click and drag it to the side you can move it from one side of the screen edge to the other with just one move. If you have a huge window, you need to drag it 3-4 times until it moves out of the way and still is in the way. Then when you have to have it back, you need to drag it again. ;)

 

With the thumbnail is not just easier to drag, but quicker to access without extra moving, if that makes sense. And again, if for some reason this wouldn’t always work for you, you could use it sometimes, but not always. From what I saw on that video when you click the thumbnail it actually dims down the rest of the screen’s brightness and the plugin goes straight to the middle of the screen. It becomes the main and only focus. When you click outside the window, it goes back to thumbnail mode. I think it’s pretty cool

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I agree that it can be sometimes challenging to work with plug-ins covering too much of your main window, especially with larger plug-ins or when you have multiple ones open at the same time. I often use the V key to toggle plug-ins off and on but that's not always the best solution, so you may be on to something with this thumbnail idea.

 

Thanks David! Glad you liked it. I’ve already submitted the idea. Maybe they will like it as well

 

What do you mean by toggling plugins on and off?

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What do you mean by toggling plugins on and off?

Actually I should have said press V to hide or show all plug-ins windows.

 

No problem ;)

It was actually a good tip that I see myself using from now on. The amount of times I had to move windows around, it's ridiculous...

So thanks for pointing that out!

 

Off topic: I sent you a message a few days ago. Let me know if you received it

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I remember years ago that there was a Terminal hack to turn Logic's floating windows into regular windows, so that you could bring the main window in front of everything else. That hack stopped working in El Capitan.

 

Maybe there's a similar new hack floating around the internet. Ask Dr Google....?

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I remember years ago that there was a Terminal hack to turn Logic's floating windows into regular windows, so that you could bring the main window in front of everything else. That hack stopped working in El Capitan.

 

Maybe there's a similar new hack floating around the internet. Ask Dr Google....?

 

May I ask what the purpose of that hack was?

If we can hide and show the windows with the shortcut David mentioned, I don't see how that hack could be useful... maybe you can explain it?

 

Also, this is not about having windows in front or back, it's about making these super small so you can still have them visible and ready to click to enlarge, but also still being able to work on your project without having huge windows distracting you. This is probably one of the things that Apple did that I still don't understand. In Logic 9 everything was smaller. We could still see things and it felt we had more screen space. Since Logic Pro X, buttons seem they are for people with sight issues... too much, in my opinion. The new UI for the stock plugins looks nice to me, but also huge knobs and all that. Really unnecessary in my opinion. And in the end, some plugins don't even show all the buttons unless you go over 100%... makes no sense

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May I ask what the purpose of that hack was?

If we can hide and show the windows with the shortcut David mentioned, I don't see how that hack could be useful... maybe you can explain it?

One advantage of working with regular windows is the ability to partially hide it behind the main window. Imagine being able to have only one or two knobs from a plug-in window visible to the right of the main window, the remaining part of the plug-in being hidden behind the main window. That could be useful in certain situations. For example if I want to automate the frequency of the low-pass EQ in the Channel EQ plug-in I really don't need to see the 7 other bands on the left, just the frequency field of the 8th band all the way on the right in the Channel EQ plug-in, on the other hand I wish I could see the automation track while I'm automating it.

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The hack was to put floating windows behind others, and then use Exposé to find them and bring them to the front again. It worked system-wide, so you could, for example, open a Help window and keep it open and move it to the back without the Help window disturbing your workflow.
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...And in the end, some plugins don't even show all the buttons unless you go over 100%...

Which ones?

Besides, Logic's plugin UI are vector graphics and consequently scalable down to 50%.

Which makes me believe that your idea should be a rather easy thing to implement, at least graphically speaking.

After testing the Link feature, there seems to be hiccups some times, especially when using the Multi option, Logic getting confused and opening the wrong plugin interface... But that is another story, I guess...

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...And in the end, some plugins don't even show all the buttons unless you go over 100%...

Which ones?

Besides, Logic's plugin UI are vector graphics and consequently scalable down to 50%.

Which makes me believe that your idea should be a rather easy thing to implement, at least graphically speaking.

After testing the Link feature, there seems to be hiccups some times, especially when using the Multi option, Logic getting confused and opening the wrong plugin interface... But that is another story, I guess...

 

Open the “Echo” plugin. At 100% you won’t see the Copy and Paste buttons.

I mean, why we need a huge on/off button? Are we all blind?

Why do we need a button that says “compare”? And others that say undo, redo, copy, paste?

Don’t we all use icons anymore? That’s a huge amount of space.

 

Regarding “my” idea, it’s not just for the stock plugins. Any plugin would work. So basically a button would automatically scale any plying to 20%. The idea here is my to make it “workable”. Just a thumbnail. And then clicking it would bring it back to whatever zoom value they had before.

 

I also believe this would be a super simple feature to implement.

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May I ask what the purpose of that hack was?

If we can hide and show the windows with the shortcut David mentioned, I don't see how that hack could be useful... maybe you can explain it?

One advantage of working with regular windows is the ability to partially hide it behind the main window. Imagine being able to have only one or two knobs from a plug-in window visible to the right of the main window, the remaining part of the plug-in being hidden behind the main window. That could be useful in certain situations. For example if I want to automate the frequency of the low-pass EQ in the Channel EQ plug-in I really don't need to see the 7 other bands on the left, just the frequency field of the 8th band all the way on the right in the Channel EQ plug-in, on the other hand I wish I could see the automation track while I'm automating it.

 

I see. I asked that because I actually thought it was the normal behavior. I’ve never used it that way though, that’s why I got confused.

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...

Open the “Echo” plugin. At 100% you won’t see the Copy and Paste buttons.

I mean, why we need a huge on/off button? Are we all blind?

Why do we need a button that says “compare”? And others that say undo, redo, copy, paste?

Don’t we all use icons anymore? That’s a huge amount of space.

AFAIAC, Undo/Redo/Copy/Paste are basic key-commands every users should know as it is used in pretty much every software.Their presence on the GUI is a simple courtesy. If one wish to save space at all cost, there is a (dark rectangular) switch to hide that space at the top right of the GUI.

 

Regarding “my” idea, it’s not just for the stock plugins. Any plugin would work. So basically a button would automatically scale any plying to 20%. The idea here is my to make it “workable”. Just a thumbnail. And then clicking it would bring it back to whatever zoom value they had before.

 

I also believe this would be a super simple feature to implement.

Well, perhaps not so easily then if that involve 3rd party plugins as well...
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...

Open the “Echo” plugin. At 100% you won’t see the Copy and Paste buttons.

I mean, why we need a huge on/off button? Are we all blind?

Why do we need a button that says “compare”? And others that say undo, redo, copy, paste?

Don’t we all use icons anymore? That’s a huge amount of space.

AFAIAC, Undo/Redo/Copy/Paste are basic key-commands every users should know as it is used in pretty much every software.Their presence on the GUI is a simple courtesy. If one wish to save space at all cost, there is a (dark rectangular) switch to hide that space at the top right of the GUI.

 

Regarding “my” idea, it’s not just for the stock plugins. Any plugin would work. So basically a button would automatically scale any plying to 20%. The idea here is my to make it “workable”. Just a thumbnail. And then clicking it would bring it back to whatever zoom value they had before.

 

I also believe this would be a super simple feature to implement.

Well, perhaps not so easily then if that involve 3rd party plugins as well...

 

When you create a product or service, you should never assume that the users will know this or that. That's actually the first thing that makes some companies or products fail. You should actually assume they know nothing and if you do that, then you will be able to create something that suits the majority of users.

 

Now, here's the problem with what you just said: open the Echo plugin. If you have the feature activated to include the plugin undo steps, try to move a knob and then use the shortcut to undo. In my case, the plugin is gone, yet clicking the Undo button, actually goes back to the previous state. So assuming that the user knows the shortcut and will use it as it's supposed to, means nothing here...

 

Another thing: if it's a "courtesy" as you said and they assume we all know the shortcuts (which to be honest I didn't even know that copy/paste was possible via shortcuts on the plugin window and I've been using it since 2007, so thanks for that, actually), then using icons would be the same and it would take only 30% of the space, right?

 

Also: what is the shortcut to the "Compare" button? I don't think there is, so why would you have shortcuts to some buttons there and not for others?

 

You mention the dark rectangle. To me, that's another useless feature, because if the space was used to have smaller buttons and all of them worked, why would we need to hide that space? I've never used it and never will. It makes no sense to me. One way or another, I will always have to open it to search for the next preset, to use the compare or even use the ON/OFF button (which also doesn't have a shortcut, I believe...).

 

This all could be solved by having smaller buttons. I actually posted about it a long time ago:

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=138435&p=710478&hilit=copy+paste+buttons#p710478

 

Wouldn't this be way more clean and visually easier to work with? And you could still have the shortcuts (as long as they would work... apparently the undo doesn't and if we could have the shortcuts for Compare and for the ON/OFF).

 

Regarding the feature with the 3rd party plugins, it would "simply" involve taking a screenshot of the plugin window, resizing it to a pre-determined size (let's say 150px by 100px), store it in the project's folder (maybe a "Thumbnails" folder) and that's it. Any developer would be able to code this easily

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Regarding “my” idea, it’s not just for the stock plugins. Any plugin would work. So basically a button would automatically scale any plying to 20%. The idea here is my to make it “workable”. Just a thumbnail. And then clicking it would bring it back to whatever zoom value they had before.

 

I also believe this would be a super simple feature to implement.

 

It would for the stock plugins but many 3rd party plugins cannot be resized, Waves for example. They aren't vector graphics like stock plugins so it would be an issue for them to implement. Not sure if Pro Tools or Cubase allows resizing of them, though that thumbnail feature is probably implemented from within Cubase. In which case, hm, it could be done. Just force it to 20% view, regardless of vector or proper scaling.

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Regarding “my” idea, it’s not just for the stock plugins. Any plugin would work. So basically a button would automatically scale any plying to 20%. The idea here is my to make it “workable”. Just a thumbnail. And then clicking it would bring it back to whatever zoom value they had before.

 

I also believe this would be a super simple feature to implement.

 

It would for the stock plugins but many 3rd party plugins cannot be resized, Waves for example. They aren't vector graphics like stock plugins so it would be an issue for them to implement. Not sure if Pro Tools or Cubase allows resizing of them, though that thumbnail feature is probably implemented from within Cubase. In which case, hm, it could be done. Just force it to 20% view, regardless of vector or proper scaling.

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