FX presets and FX chains

A favourite does not have to be an empty plugin. VFxM can take a plugin with its settings as they are right now off a REAPER track and keep it on a Favourites board, so loading it back gives you the sound you saved, not a default instance.

Two buttons under the Favourites list do it:

• Add FX Preset — saves one plugin off the selected track, with its full state.
• Add FX Chain — saves the whole chain on the selected track, in order.

Both land on the Favourites board you are looking at, beside your ordinary plugin favourites.

Select a track first

Both buttons read the track selected in REAPER. With no track selected they flash NO TRACK SELECTED! and SELECT TRACK FIRST and do nothing — hovering either one shows the same warning.

Saving one plugin — Add FX Preset

1. Select the track in REAPER and get the plugin sounding the way you want it.

2. Click Add FX Preset. A window opens — Choose FX to Save as Preset — listing every FX on that track in order, numbered as REAPER numbers them.

3. Type a name in Preset Name if you want one. Leave it empty and the preset carries the plugin’s own name.

4. Click Save This FX on the row you want. The window closes and the preset appears on the current Favourites board with a Preset badge.

Every row has its own Save This FX button, so one trip through the window saves the one plugin you meant, not the whole track.

Saving the whole chain — Add FX Chain

Add FX Chain opens Save FX Chain, which lists the contents of the chain it is about to save and takes a Chain Name. One Save Chain button writes the lot. The result sits on the board with a Chain badge and loads every plugin, in order, in one action.

Loading one back

A preset or a chain behaves like any other favourite:

• Double-click it to load it onto the selected track, or onto a new track if nothing is selected.
• Drag it onto a track in REAPER, or onto a chain in Active FX.
• Select several and load them together; presets, chains and plain plugins can be mixed in one selection.

The saved state comes back with it. Your Insert Behavior settings still apply, so a preset respects keep FX windows closed exactly as a plugin does.

Thumbnails, names and badges

• A preset takes the thumbnail of the plugin it came from, so a board of presets still reads as pictures rather than text.
• Capture Thumbnail on the right-click menu gives one its own picture instead. Autocapture is greyed out on a preset or chain with the reason shown — autocapture photographs a plugin window unattended, and a preset has no window of its own.
• Rename Preset changes the preset’s own name.
• Edit Overlay Name writes a label across the thumbnail without changing the name underneath; Clear Overlay Name removes it.
• The badge in the corner says Preset or Chain, so the two are never confused with the plugin they came from.

Inspect and delete

• Inspect Preset shows the record VFxM holds — the plugin name, developer, type, which track and slot it came off, when it was made, and the path of the file holding its saved state. This is what to copy into a support message.
• Delete Preset Favorite removes the preset and the file behind it. Removing a preset from a board with Remove Selected takes it off that board only.

Where the files live

Saved state goes in a FXSnapshots folder inside your Virtue/ data folder — one .vfxsnap file per preset or chain — with an index in VFxM_FXSnapshots.ini beside it. See file locations.

Both are inside the folder a backup copies, so presets and chains travel with your backups and survive an update like the rest of your data.

Imported .RfxChain files are not the same thing

A chain saved here is VFxM’s own; an .RfxChain file imported from REAPER stays a file on disk and is loaded from there. Both sit on a board and both load on a double-click.