Unfortunately not. The initialization of the plugin happens before the plugin's data (which would contain the MIDI input port count) is loaded, so this is simply not technically possible.

I was just hoping that maybe you could have a global grid matrix in the preference to control this.  I see the problem.  Perhaps there could be some additional VE PRO plugins included that have fixed ports, i.e. "VE PRO 1 port" "VE PRO 4 port" as additional plugs.

Is something like that possible?

Yes, but I don't think it's realistic to add that just to avoid longer initialization times in Cubase (other hosts aren't affected by this at all). I'd recommend setting it to a sensible maximum.

I have an enomorous template with over 1200 tracks in it. Many composers I know have gigantic templates as well.  I have been using Cubase for many years and it suffers some slow loading issues etc. from large track counts.  It is magnified big time by the number of midi ports.

If you take a blank Cubase sequence add 1000 midi tracks and add a couple of VE PRO 5 plugins and then save and close it.  Now change the ports in VE PRO to populate 48 ports.  Try opening your sequence you just saved.  It will now probably take about 10 minutes per VE PRO plug in that you put in the sequence to open.

Making suggestions about how to manage the ports, etc. does not fix certain issues that can not be avoided with large templates.  I currently use 14 ports per plug and it is super slow already.  Big templates are a balancing act.  If you could implement these "sub" smaller plugs it would really help in a HUGE way and allow much more flexibility in how many of us set up across multiple machines.

Thanks,
Danny

It's unlikely that we will ever do these extra plugins. The reason the initialization of VST3 MIDI ports takes so long is that an automatable parameter has to be created and initialized for every possible MIDI CC (that's 16*128 parameters per MIDI port). This is a required workaround because VST3 doesn't actually support MIDI directly. Without the workaround, MIDI CC's simply wouldn't work unfortunately.

An option is to use the VST2 version of VE Pro in combination with VE Pro Event Input plugins to access the additional MIDI ports. This comes at the cost of an additional buffer of latency though.

I forgot all about the VST2 version because Cubase hides it initially.  I think the VST2 version will help me quite a bit since there are a couple of instances I had to throw to a 32 bit VI frame for 1 instrument.

I have never used the EVENT plugin so I am not sure why it would add the latency.  Does it compensate correctly in Cubase?

-Danny

It compensates correctly in most hosts, including Cubase. The buffer of latency is a technical limitation caused by the fact that there are multiple plugins involved. A single buffer is the lowest possible latency that can be offered without breaking the physical laws of causality ;).

Is this loading time directly related to the number of ports in the cubase project or is it realated to the number of active ports per VEPro instance?

For example. My template uses 4 VEPro instances each with 16 Midi Ports (takes about 3 min to load). If I rearrange that to 8 VEPro instances each with 8 MIDI Ports, should I expect a decrease in load time? Or not really.

Thanks

The time does seem to go up rather exponentially with a lot of ports, so it could help. I'd just try it out.

It probably will make no difference as that equals the exact same amount of ports.

-Danny

Depending how Cubase handles things, it may or may not scale linearly, so I'd say it's at least worth a try.