Playbox user presets location on Windows 11?

soundmural

Hello,

I've been enjoying working with Playbox and would like to find and back up a custom user preset I build within Playbox so that, in the event of a catastrophe, I can restore the chords and assigned samples to the sample matrix, etc.

Where does Playbox save these on Windows? A search of the entire drive for files with the name listed in the interface does not return results. Thank you for your help!

Monochrome

They should be under:

• C:\Users\<Your Name>\Documents\Native Instruments\User Content\Playbox\Playbox

Note that presets in the Kontakt world are called Snapshots and you can create those via the camera icon (Snapshot View).

• https://www.native-instruments.com/ni-tech-manuals/kontakt-manual/en/using-snapshots

Kymeia

Also note that I'm not using the camera icon to create snapshots, but rather, the disk icon and naming field within the Playbox GUI itself. 

Do you mean this?

Kymeia

What I suggest to back your preset up is to open your file in the above menu, then save the preset using the snapshot menu and that will give you an actual file you can save a copy of

Monochrome

They should be under:

• C:\Users\<Your Name>\Documents\Native Instruments\User Content\Playbox\Playbox

Note that presets in the Kontakt world are called Snapshots and you can create those via the camera icon (Snapshot View).

• https://www.native-instruments.com/ni-tech-manuals/kontakt-manual/en/using-snapshots

soundmural

Thank you for your quick response! I've navigated the path but it only goes to "Native Instruments" and does not contain a User Content folder. I also searched my entire Native Instruments path in Documents and do not find string "Playbox." However, I have explored the path I installed the library to, discovering C:\Komplete and Kontakt Libraries\Playbox\User Data\Snapshots\, and do see a variety of folders/files there (Chords, Data, FXs, Groups) and various .nka files, etc.

Unfortunately none of them are named or seem to contain (by text editor) reference to the name of the Playbox preset I've created, which makes me nervous. Am I missing something? Also note that I'm not using the camera icon to create snapshots, but rather, the disk icon and naming field within the Playbox GUI itself. Therefore they're showing up as custom presets within the Playbox GUI itself rather than the more external Kontakt presets tray at the bottom, if this is helpful to know.

Kymeia

Also note that I'm not using the camera icon to create snapshots, but rather, the disk icon and naming field within the Playbox GUI itself. 

Do you mean this?

Kymeia

Or did you mean this?

Those seem to go into a file called 'User_Snapshot_Names.nka' in Playbox Library/User Data/Snapshots/

Kymeia

What I suggest to back your preset up is to open your file in the above menu, then save the preset using the snapshot menu and that will give you an actual file you can save a copy of

soundmural

Hi, Kymeia- It is disappointing that the "preset name" and disk icon method saves the presets into an unknown place (I edited the User_Snapshot_Names.nka and it doesn't seem to contain the preset name string, or anything other than a header, yet the preset exists AOK).

That said, your Kontakt disc icon method for saving snapshots (as .nki files) works really well, and does a great job of containing all settings not to mention any stacked Kontakt libraries, I would imagine, as it seems to be grabbing anything in the Kontakt interface stack. So I'm just creating snapshots that way and saving those in my project folder.

If that seems right to you, great, otherwise let me know if I'm off. Thank you for your help on this, very helpful!

Kymeia

Hi, Kymeia- It is disappointing that the "preset name" and disk icon method saves the presets into an unknown place (I edited the User_Snapshot_Names.nka and it doesn't seem to contain the preset name string, or anything other than a header, yet the preset exists AOK).

Yeah it all seems a bit of a kludge really, programming wise. I did open it in a hex editor and the preset name is in there at least (which is how I found it) but it's possible the actual preset data is in one of the other nameless files in that folder. So not sure really why the developers felt the need to add some other way of saving presets when there are snapshots already meant for that purpose, especially given it obfuscates their location.

soundmural

Ah, great. It didn't show up in Notepad but that wasn't deep enough compared to a true hex editor, I understand now. Glad it is in there, and thank you again for your work on this.

Kymeia

Incidentally there is one other way to save snapshots - and which I prefer myself and that is to save Playbox user patches in Komplete Kontrol. I just like to keep it all in the Komplete Kontrol database but functionally I don't think there is any actual difference to the snapshot data.