Subject:OPT Plug-Ins?? Where are they?

Posted by: merlyn60

Date:7/30/2003 4:37:43 PM

When Acid 4.0 came out, there was a big huge debate on this forum about Sofo going with OPT support rather than some other industry standards. We are now a good way down the road with Acid 4.0 and I'm yet to see an OPT Plug-In that really matters (although the Geniesys stuff is interesting). I'm very happy with Acid 4.0 in it's current state, so I'm not complaining. I'm just wondering if we will ever have any true use for the OPT compatibilty in Acid? Anyone out there have any comments or know of some useful OPT plug-ins that I don't know of? Is the answer that there is no interest in OPT in the industry? What do you all think? Sofo....what do you have to say?

Merlyn

Subject:RE: OPT Plug-Ins?? Where are they?

Reply by: Iacobus

Date:7/31/2003 2:56:03 PM

OPT, like most other technologies that hope to become standards, was more than likely a hit-or-miss attempt.

What other standards are there? OPT was the first of its kind that I've heard of. (Then again, MIDI isn't my forte like digital audio is.)

Personally, I'd love to see an OPT plug-in that has a traditional notation staff view.

Iacobus

Subject:RE: OPT Plug-Ins?? Where are they?

Reply by: pwppch

Date:7/31/2003 4:18:35 PM

While third party development of OPT plugins was hoped for and promoted, the reality is that ACID uses this internally for all MIDI editing. All of our editors are OPT based and all future developement of MIDI features internally will be based upon the OPT data model. The level of their functionality or usefulness is not a limitation of what OPT permits, but only an indication of the current feature set we provided.

What this means is that even if no third party plugins appear, ACID will still use OPT plugins to expand its MIDI capabilities in editing and control. All internal advancement of ACID's MIDI features and functionality will be through the OPT architecture.

The biggest problem with third party OPT development is that nobody supports OPT editors beside ACID. (Yamaha has a sequencer - SQ1 - that is all OPT based. This is an Asian market only product to date. The plugins that ship with this tool can be used in ACID and in fact work very well in ACID. Yamaha has chosen not to release these plugins to the market.) Sonar is the only major third party app that supports OPT, but it only supports level 1 OPT plugins as all of their MIDI editing features are native to the host.

Any type of plugin developement and distribution is not a huge $$$ market. Genisys created some very interesting and useful plugins for ACID, but the revenue stream was not there to support further development. Perhaps there will be more general adoption of OPT amongst the other host applications. If that happens, perhaps the viability of OPT plugins will expand and third party development will expand.

The underlying architecture of OPT will be part of ACID's MIDI feature set. There are many things that OPT permits us to do with regard to MIDI and we will continue to exploit them in future versions of ACID and our other products.

Peter

Subject:RE: OPT Plug-Ins?? Where are they?

Reply by: merlyn60

Date:7/31/2003 6:19:19 PM

Peter, as usual, I can always count on you for a complete and total answer for any question I ask. I was wondering what the current status of OPT technology was and you explained that in full. In addition, your answer suggests that OPT doesn't hinder the further development of midi sequencing in Acid, which is a nice thing to hear. I look forward to the midi improvements that I'm sure you guys are working on right now.

Merlyn

Subject:RE: OPT Plug-Ins?? Where are they?

Reply by: merlyn60

Date:7/31/2003 6:38:15 PM

I probably wasn't very clear when I said that OPT was chosen over other standards. What I should have said was that OPT was chosen as a way to "inject" midi into the current coding of Acid, which revolves around looping, instead of re-coding Acid to use midi the "standard" way that most other midi sequencing apps do (i.e. cubase, logic, etc). Cakewalk's Project 5 seems to have borrowed the development model of Acid 4.0 and "injected" looping into their "standard" midi sequencing shell (although the Project 5 UI leaves much to be desired and the app is far from being anywhere near Acid's ease of use and flexibilty loop wise...in my opinion of course). All of that brought me to my initial inquiry on OPT development.

Merlyn

Subject:RE: OPT Plug-Ins?? Where are they?

Reply by: bartchilders

Date:8/1/2003 8:59:57 AM

Not to be a turd-in-the-punch-bowl or anything but ...

It sure seems like it would make more sense to exert the effort to make ACID a rewire slave so we could use it within a host like SONAR that has rich, full-featured MIDI features. Seems kind of redundant to try and put those MIDI features in ACID when that wheel has already been invented.

Is it really difficult to add REWIRE Slave support? I have no idea.

Subject:RE: OPT Plug-Ins?? Where are they?

Reply by: merlyn60

Date:8/1/2003 11:04:41 AM

The "Acid as Rewire slave" suggestion is one that has been made numerous times on this forum and I think its a valid one that SoFo should look at (i'd be surprised if we don't see this in the next full release version). However, if SoFo can get the "rich, full-featured MIDI features" that you feel SONAR offers into Acid without screwing up the way Acid works (which, from what I gather, is why OPT was chosen as the vehicle to supply midi in Acid), I, for one, would be extremely happy.

Merlyn

Subject:RE: OPT Plug-Ins?? Where are they?

Reply by: MyST

Date:8/1/2003 11:31:54 AM

"However, if SoFo can get the "rich, full-featured MIDI features" that you feel SONAR offers into Acid without screwing up the way Acid works (which, from what I gather, is why OPT was chosen as the vehicle to supply midi in Acid), I, for one, would be extremely happy."

I would prefer this scenario myself. For me as a hobbyist, this is much more appealing. I'd rather not have to go out and purchase more software (which I can't afford to do anyways) to be able to work with midi. I'm very happy with the way Acid is evolving regarding midi.

M

Subject:RE: OPT Plug-Ins?? Where are they?

Reply by: pwppch

Date:8/1/2003 7:00:11 PM

>>Is it really difficult to add REWIRE Slave support? I have no idea.

Yes, it is.

Peter

Subject:RE: OPT Plug-Ins?? Where are they?

Reply by: pwppch

Date:8/1/2003 7:05:46 PM

There is nothing about how ACID does MIDI that is different in general to how a a typical sequencer does things. OPT is just a mechansim to look/edit/change the MIDI data used by a host. Specifically it doesn't care how the host manipulates MIDI internally. An OPT plugin - for example our Piano Roll- just asks the host for MIDI data in a speicific way. The host just gives it out. Our Piano Roll works inside of the Yamaha host - which is a traditional MIDi sequencer.

What is different about ACID is how it permits you to work with MIDI data. OPT has nothing to do with this. MIDI is a native part of the ACID engine. What is different with how ACID does thing is how it permits you to work with MIDI. ACID works with MIDI in the exact same way you work with audio. The paradigm is identical. OPT has nothing to do with this. (In fact Yamaha was a bit surpised that OPT mapped as well as it does into ACID non-traditional sequencer model.)


Peter