Where did Batch Resave go?

Kymeia

I used to have a Creamware system myself before moving to Mac

As I said I have no doubt this has worked for you but I would also not be surprised if that is not always the case for other users and can understand NI wanting to play it safe by taking the host out of the equation. At least that's my best guess as to why it was removed

Jeremy_NI

I have some feedback about this change: the Kontakt devs are cleaning up the menus across the board and catering to real plugin workflows. Batch resave should be done in standalone.

@Antony Robinson Sorry that it goes against your workflow.

Antony Robinson

Well that should be made clear in some documentation then. I only found out it was even in the standalone because someone mentioned it in another forum.

Sure it's not a major hardship, just feels like a bit of a clunky workflow, like something from the late '90s.

Also I'm not sure what you mean by "real plug-in workflows"? My workflow was plenty real and common. I've never even heard of people downloading a library, opening Kontakt standalone to batch resave, close standalone, open DAW, open Kontakt plug-in to use library, as a workflow. I guess NI's concept of 'flow' is different to mine.

But I guess it is what it is now. Kontakt was always a bit clunky anyway, so I guess this continues that tradition :)

Kymeia

I've never even heard of people downloading a library, opening Kontakt standalone to batch resave, close standalone, open DAW, open Kontakt plug-in to use library, as a workflow

As I said it has always been recommended practice for any NI library to open it in the standalone product first (not even just for Kontakt). tbh I'm not sure if it is even needed anymore to batch resave a library installed by Native Access, I used to do it mainly for libraries I was moving between drives or onto a new system, but anyway it's only something that needs doing the once until you move drive again. So it could be done in that first time it is opened in the standalone, if it is really necessary.

Antony Robinson

Yeah, it's not a big deal, just feels a bit clunky in 2023. I mean if they had batch resave in Native Access that would be a better workflow. Open NA, download library, batch resave, good to go. Having a whole other standalone program just to use one function seems bonkers to me.

btw in 11 years I have never heard anyone say that NI recommend using the standalone for batch resave. OK, I'll admit I'm not a big documentation guy (RTFM!), but this is the first time in 11 years I'm hearing this - not even seen it mentioned in various music forums I visit (and Evil Dragon is on two of them), so I'm just wondering why I'm only finding this out now.

Kymeia

Having a whole other standalone program just to use one function seems bonkers to me.

Well it isn't really, for myself Standalone is what I consider to be the place to build sample instruments and manage instruments and libraries. As I said I wouldn't dream of doing any of that in the plugin as for me that would feel more clunky and I would see the additional risk and overheads of doing this in a host as increasing the potential for something to go wrong. It looks like that is also the workflow for many users, you (and the others who posted here) are one of the first people I have come across who does batch resaves in the plugin, and it does sound like you have perfectly valid reasons for doing that due to the idiosyncrasies of your system, but it also sounds like NI consider the standalone to be the place for at least managing libraries, the plugin is where you play and record them in hosts.

Antony Robinson

I don't build libraries in Kontakt, I just use it as a player. I'm sure many users are not power users and also use it this way (look how many people use presets on synths and never build there own for instance), so I have never had any use for the standalone. The only time I even use the wrench is to find the Snapshot folder, which could easily be a button on the main interface.

Non-power users probably don't post on this type of forum often as they don't need to, so maybe that's why we seem invisible to you. This is certainly my first time here. Unless something else goes wrong I doubt I'll ever post again.

I have no interest in building sample libraries in Kontakt: the GUI has never felt user friendly to me. Again I'm sure if you're a regular user you find it OK, but for someone who just wants a few samples here and there and isn't building multi-layers etc. then something like TAL-Sampler is all I need for that. I don't even have to read the manual or watch how-to videos for that one. For complex libraries I just buy from decent developers.

I am used to hardware samplers back in the day, and Creamware STS-5000 which worked like hardware (and actually sampled, unlike most software so-called samplers), so the Kontakt GUI never really inspired me to try it out.

Jeremy_NI

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/111408#Comment_111408

We definitely need to make this clearer, our knowledge base article will be updated as soon as possible.

EvilDragon

Batch resave is NOT a required thing you have to do for any newer library (newer = Kontakt 4.2 and above, or in case of wanting to add a non-Player library to the new browser in K7, Kontakt 5.0 and above). It's a feature designed around Kontakt 4.2 times, when the NKI file format drastically changed to improve loading times (moving from a packed XML to a fully binary serialized format). So this is not something a plugin user should be concerning themselves with, especially since batch resaving produces a modal dialog that completely freezes the GUI of your DAW for whatever amount of time. It is way better to just do it in standalone (if at all needed).

Antony Robinson

OK. I always follow the Dragon's advice, especially if he's evil :)

Antony Robinson

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/110346#Comment_110346

That looks like the standalone to me. I never use the standalone, only the VST3. Batch Resave has disappeared off the plug-in for some reason (on PC, your screen shot is Mac). I am not sure why NI deemed this a necessary change, I don't want to launch the standalone just to do my batch resaves.