Media Composer Template Manager (MCTM)

MCTM is a collection of Reaper scripts designed to make working with large orchestral templates easier. It is tailored to a workflow using Vienna Ensemble Pro (VEpro) as a plugin host, which (without this proposed workflow) leads to a lot of visual clutter in Reaper due to the need of separate tracks to handle MIDI sequencing and audio return.

It is designed to be operated with stereo or four-channel (4.0) instrument-audio, since quad (Left, Right, Surround Left, Surround Right) is my preferred way of delivering a surround sound music mix to a film production.1

Design Philosophy

  1. Use CSV files as a single source of truth for template creation.
  2. Store track type and status in a prefix that is human readable and can influence script logic.
  3. Be interoperable with other community scripts (e.g. Reaticulate).

State of the project

MCTM is currently under active development during my free time inbetween music projects. I actually use it on a daily basis, but I would not encourage adoption just yet. I consider myself still in the research phase for the best way to set certain standards, especially when it comes to the global unified template CSV. But if you somehow stumbled upon this now, have a read through and please do give me feedback on what you see and on how useful you imagine the functionality to be like.

Prefix Overview

  • CTRL: Track that hosts something like a VEPro instance (VSTi). Routed to and from a CTRL track are tracks with the prefixes
    • A: Audio track -> shown only in Mixer by default but can be shown in TCP via script (e.g. when you have bounced MIDI to Audio)
    • M: MIDI track -> never shown in Mixer
  • N: Native track (VSTi hosted on an FX slot in Reaper -> traditional setup without using VEpro)
  • D: Disabled track (ignored by the MCTM scripts, such as “show all M tracks”)
  • My CURSE script collection already introduces the following prefixes, which MCTM also relies on:
    • B: Bus track (instrument groups for STEM-Export)
    • FX: Send FX track (ideally routed to the same Bus as the source track to keep STEM export tidy)

Why even bother with Prefixes?

  • Reaper does not distinguish between track types. In other DAWs, there are “Instrument” tracks (for VSTi), Send FX tracks, Bus tracks, and so on.
  • This behavior of Reaper is actually great, because it’s flexible. But this script collection was born out of a frustration that arises once you try to pair Reaper (or any DAW for that matter!) with Vienna Ensemble: The track count explodes! For VEpro in Reaper, we need a Midi Track to sequence and at least one return audio track per Instrument.
  • So this collection aims to offer smart visibility actions to help you navigate your projects that are based on a template with a humongous track count (I have 800+ tracks).
  • For this to work, we need to store the type and status of a track in a format that is both human readable and script-logic-ready. Introducing: Prefixes.
  • For VEpro specifically: each virtual instrument exists as a group of tracks: one or more audio tracks and one MIDI track. The D prefix tells the system that the user does not need that track pair; display/filter functions ignore such tracks. There is a script that allows you to “disable” a track. This hides it from view and applies the D Prefix.
  • Same goes for tracks that the user designates FX Sends and Busses.
  • Same goes for the occasional “native” track (“N” prefix: a VSTi where Midi Sequencing and Audio return from the plugin should live on the same track). This allows us e.g. to use the same script to freeze a track for a complex multitrack VEpro Instrument (e.g. Drums with multiple return audio tracks) and a simple VSTi that lives directly on a track. Just one keyboard shortcut to memorize, and it should also handle all types of “multi-selections” so you can freeze tracks in parallel, which Reaper allows to be very fast, because it is able to render in parallel.

Why not just use the Track Manager (Ctrl + Shift + M)

  • The selection you make in the Track Manager must be applied to the tracks with an additional click that cannot be scripted.
    • The track manager shows any and all tracks in the project, which might be very cluttered
    • Although I coded the scripts to work regardless of which of the track pairs you select, being shown all tracks in the track manager doubles the list of entries to be even more humongous than it already is with a huge temple
    • The custom GUI allows me to introduce usability improvements such as
      • Select all
      • Deselect all
      • Filter by instrument groups or libraries or VST Instances, etc.
      • Apply certain commands

Included scripts

Note: for easier reading the jg_MCTM_ prefix and .lua extension are ommited, otherwise these headlines correspond to the exact script names.

Building your template

Build tracks from CSV

Create project tracks from the CSV template, naming them and setting up MIDI/audio group structure.

Build Reabank from CSV

Generate a Reaticulate .reabank file from the CSV template for importing articulations and keyswitches.

Using your template

Choose Tracks

Choose your instruments in a more comfortable way compared to the track manager. Instruments are grouped by Bus they are routed to. Select the instruments and apply selection.

Toggle D Prefix and Visibility for track pair

Best used as a shortcut in your main toolbar to deactivate a track group. You only have to select one track of the group, it will toggle activation and visibility for all of them.

Toggle Track Pair Visibility

Toggle TCP visibility for MIDI/audio instrument pair to bring up the one that is currently hidden from the pair or hide the one that is selected.

Toggle TCP Visibility A

Toggle TCP visibility for all audio (A) tracks in the project to quickly declutter the track list.

Toggle TCP Visibility M

Toggle TCP visibility for all MIDI (M) tracks in the project to quickly declutter the track list.

Helper script

This script is required for other scripts to work. It is not present in the action list.

Key functions

  • parse(label) -> { prefixes = {…}, name = “…” }
  • findPairs(tracks, opts) -> table with key = canonical name -> { name=…, audio=label?, midi=label?, ctrl=label?, disabled=bool }
  • is_audio(parsed), is_midi(parsed), is_ctrl(parsed), is_disabled(parsed)
  • format_label(prefixes, name)

Examples

1) Parsing:

  • M Violin -> prefixes = {“M”}, name = “Violin”
  • D M Viola -> prefixes = {“D”,”M”}, name = “Viola” (normally ignored)
  • CTRL VEHost -> prefixes = {“CTRL”}, name = “VEHost”

2) findPairs: Returns a table that, for each instrument, provides the existing track labels for audio/MIDI/CTRL and indicates whether it is disabled.

currently defunct

Set all CTRL Envelopes Active

Due to VEpro tending to crash when activating many instruments at once via envelopes, I will not develop this further until I have tried VEpro 8.

Update May 2026: Maybe the issue was Reaper’s “Flush FX on start”, which is activated by default for all VSTis and has to be disabled in each plugin’s compatibility options.

Toggle VEPro Activation depending on D Prefix

Due to VEpro tending to crash when activating many instruments at once via envelopes, I will not develop this further until I have tried VEpro 8.

Update May 2026: Maybe the issue was Reaper’s “Flush FX on start”, which is activated by default for all VSTis and has to be disabled in each plugin’s compatibility options.

  1. 4.0 in this case is not to be confused with “Quadraphonic” or “Higher Order Ambisonics”. The four channels map exactly to a standard 5.1 surround setup. The center channel is reserved for dialogue, the LFE for, well, Low Frequency Effects. Do note that in a 5.1 setup, the “surrounds” are not behind the listener, but more or less just “next to their ears”. True “rears” are only introduced with 7.1. What this means is that you can use what in e.g. Orchestral Tools libraries is literally called “surround” mics perfectly for your surround channels, without switching around the panning or anything. Left is still left, right is still right, it’s just that the speakers are placed at a more extreme position. ↩

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