Hi all,
I don't post much here. Mostly I've talked with a few of you directly. Now that Automated Preview Creator is out in early access, I'd like to say a few words about why it exists.
Komplete Kontrol is one of the few places where any plugin can feel at home: browse with previews, load from the keyboard, knobs ready to use. That works beautifully for plugins whose makers ship NKS files. For everything else, and for every preset you make yourself, you're on your own. I learned to make NKS files by hand before this project started, and found out quickly why so few people do it.
So the idea from day one was simple: previews and NKS files for the presets nobody else makes them for. Your own presets, third-party expansions, and plugins whose makers never joined NKS. Many of the requests that shaped it came from this forum, from threads that never got an answer.
It started as an experiment that was meant to stop once it could make previews automatically and offline without and AI. It didn't stop. Along the way it learned to lay out a whole instrument on the keyboard, with tabs and pages instead of just the first eight knobs. I know many of you gave up on that years ago. And it isn't done with the traditional MIDI templates: there turned out to be another way, one that was never documented anywhere, and that's what gives a plugin full pages and tabs, the way NI's own instruments get them. To me that's the real point. VST instruments are affordable because the hardware isn't there, and that missing hardware is exactly what a player needs: one hand on the keys, the other on a knob, changing the sound while you play, not reaching for the mouse. Now you can have that for all your custom presets, and for the expansion packs nobody else makes NKS files for.
A few other things came along too: your own MIDI templates (per preset, and not limited to the four the keyboard itself can store) for live use, key colours, and filling in previews and pictures that are missing from the libraries you already have. It only adds what's missing and never changes anything that's there.
It runs fine on an eight-year-old PC, because that's what it was built on.
As a thank-you to this community, I have a few free keys to give away, for your own private use. Automated Preview Creator isn't meant for making NKS files to share here or to sell, so I'd rather give away some keys. The first 10 who send me a DM get one. If they go fast, I may add a few more.
Some may wonder why it isn't free. Simply put, I don't program for free, and you get something Native Instruments never made possible for anyone but its partners. If all you want is a preview and a picture for your presets, it does that, and a good deal more.
Right now the Komplete Kontrol keyboards are fully supported and Maschine partly. It runs on Windows only for now. Once Maschine is fully supported, the next step is a Mac version. After that, the ongoing work is adding more instruments. That costs money, since two thirds of the supported instruments aren't free, and every instrument behaves a little differently, so getting each one to work automatically takes a lot of testing. Some of you have probably guessed that's also why the only other attempt I know of, PresetMagician, stopped being developed after covering only a few dozen instruments.
If you'd like to support me directly, Automated Preview Creator is 50% off during early access at previewcreator.com.
Thanks for reading, and happy browsing.
