I’d vaguely heard of Virtual Patches from the QC 3 release-notes, but I’d never really thought about using them until recently. OK, you’ve probably all beed using these for ages, but for me it’s a bit of a revelation. At some point in the future, I’m planning to release a set of QTZs to be used as virtual patches, so that everyone can get the dubious benefit of being able to drop tb patches straight into their compositions.

In terms of working on your own stuff, I think virtual patches are probably a real time-saver, and I wish I’d discovered them earlier. I can tidy that up before release, anyway. I’m still a bit worried that since Macros can be a different size from patches, things may not line up as I’d like in my flattened QTZs, but that’s just me being excessively anal, I think. The problem isn’t by any means insurmountable- if you give the virtual patch a custom name, then that name is reflected in the macro that’s created when the flattened file is saved, so I’m not put off too much. Hopefully this will be incorporated into a future version of the program. I’ve submitted an Enhancement Request to the Apple Bug Tracker asking for the macros to be automatically named the same as the original virtual patch. Which isn’t helpful when it comes to readability. In fact, they’re all called ‘Macro Patch’. The problem is, the macros automatically created this way are not correctly named.

So far, so good- you get a portable file that works fine for someone who doesn’t have your virtual patches installed on their system. If you use a virtual patch in a QTZ, then save a ‘flattened’ version of the file, the virtual patch will be converted into a ‘real’ macro patch. I’ve also discovered a great new bug to go with it!

Plugins not showing up vdmx