Moving project between desktop/iOS

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MisplacedDevelopment
Posts: 94
Joined: Sun Feb 28, 2021 9:40 am

Moving project between desktop/iOS

Post by MisplacedDevelopment »

I have been trying to work out the most convenient way of being able to edit the same project on iOS and desktop for instrument plugins which are available on both platforms but are not seen as the same plugin as they have a different internal plugin identifier, for example DRC.

The best solution I have so far is to have two tracks per instrument, one with the iOS version of the plugin and one with the desktop version. Although the other platform plugin is obviously not loaded (it becomes a MISS) its state is preserved on export which means you can flip between iOS and desktop MTS and not need to set up the plugin presets etc each time you open the project.

To solve the problem of syncing the MIDI between the two tracks I start the project on the desktop and create two tracks, then "Open..." the Track 1.mid file into track 2 so both track 1 and 2 are listed as "Track 1". Editing the notes in one track causes the MIDI in the other to sync when the project is saved. That way I can edit either the iOS or desktop track MIDI and the other will be up to date when loaded. It looks like this:

Track 1. MIDI -> iOS plugin A
Track 1. MIDI -> Desktop plugin A
Track 2. MIDI -> iOS plugin B
Track 2. MIDI -> Desktop plugin B
..etc..

I have done some limited testing both ways and it appears to work as expected. The MIDI does not re-sync until the project is reloaded. I haven't quite worked out the precedence if you update both versions of the track (which you should not be doing anyway) but MTS seems to keep the changes made to the second track regardless of the order in which you changed them.
Support
Posts: 1717
Joined: Fri Aug 27, 2004 2:17 pm

Re: Moving project between desktop/iOS

Post by Support »

Note that you can copy instrument slots by dragging-and-dropping them. You could add (empty) dummy MIDI tracks, just to use their instrument slots for storing the other platform's settings.


Giel Bremmers
MisplacedDevelopment
Posts: 94
Joined: Sun Feb 28, 2021 9:40 am

Re: Moving project between desktop/iOS

Post by MisplacedDevelopment »

Wow, I didn’t know you could do that!
MisplacedDevelopment
Posts: 94
Joined: Sun Feb 28, 2021 9:40 am

Re: Moving project between desktop/iOS

Post by MisplacedDevelopment »

There are some plugins which are almost compatible where the AU loads correctly when moving the project between iOS and desktop, but the presets are not restored for whatever reason - possibly the version of the plugin is not compatible with the one on the other platform. In this case you have a problem since you need to reset the plugin state manually every time you move the project, which may be fine for one plugin but does not scale. In this case the plugin automatically loading is a bad thing!

To work around this, I have moved/removed the AU version of the plugin on desktop so that MTS does not find it and instead use the VST3 version. This means I can still use the technique described in the OP:

Track 1. MIDI -> iOS plugin A
Track 1. MIDI -> Desktop plugin A (VST3)

It is still a manual task to ensure the plugins are set up the same way but you only need to do this once rather than every time you move the project.

Edit: Assigning the two track types different colours makes opening a single set of platform tracks easy in the Multi MIDI Editor as you can select by track colour!
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