Hey folks,
Is there any way to take a plugin inventory other than counting and writing? Is there some sort of tool that does this? Not into writing down, like, 275 plugin names. Thanks!

Not sure how useful it is but using the with the "Default All Plugins" layout selected, open "Manage Layouts" for FX and synths and save the layouts. This will product XML files of all the plug-ins which can be viewed in a browser. Other than that, all the data in the registry. Anything in particular you are looking for? It might be something which could be scripted.

Alternatively, you can often extract text from images. It's not a perfect solution, but it works fairly well. If you have MS One Note, that's what I usually use to extract text from images.

open a command window
 
CD to plugin folders
 
copy/paste this command:   Dir /s / n > plugins.txt
 
open the text file, copy all
 
open a spreadsheet, paste
  parse to move names to separate column, if wanted
 
 

Also: using more that about 30 plugins: you are wasting your life time.

Thanks guys!!! I'll give these a try!

YouDontHasToCallMeJohnson
Also: using more that about 30 plugins: you are wasting your life time.

Hell there's more than 30 in X3 alone!!

Grem

YouDontHasToCallMeJohnson
Also: using more that about 30 plugins: you are wasting your life time.

Hell there's more than 30 in X3 alone!!

 
 Yea. And how many do actually we use?
 
I install everything. Occasionally I attempt to learn about some of them.
 
But I then come back to the Sonitus tools.
 
And I use the old amp sim a lot.
 
Getting good with a few tools saves time.  Which is all there is.
 
But ya can't tell young people that. They won't believe ya. 
 
 
 

YouDontHasToCallMeJohnson

Grem

YouDontHasToCallMeJohnson
Also: using more that about 30 plugins: you are wasting your life time.

Hell there's more than 30 in X3 alone!!

Yea. And how many do actually we use?
Getting good with a few tools saves time.  Which is all there is.
But ya can't tell young people that. They won't believe ya. 

I've got over 400 installed (64 bit), I use a couple regularly but...
There's always that one sound that you just HAVE to get. I've bought expensive guitars just to get to play a part that I thought was cool. I've got Rick's, Strats, Tele's, Les Pauls, Flying V's, Baby Z's, a Dano Bari, a P-Bass, a closet full of stomp boxes, and a spare bedroom full of guitar amps. It's the same thing. You may end up using something once, but if it gets you to where you want to go it's probably worth it. Depends on your ear.
 

I wrote a plugin inventory program that reads the registry, gets version and vendor information from the DLLs and places the results in an Excel spreadsheet, but it only runs on XP. I'll have to dig that project up and see why it didn't work on 64-bit OSs, now that I'm running a 64-bit O/S. Maybe it'll run as-is in compatibility mode, I'll check.