# Missing samples message when batch re-saving in Kontakt 6



## Ashermusic (Oct 1, 2019)

As some of you know I had a recent SSD failure and I had to re-download and reinstall a bunch of libraries. When I load Logic projects of course it asks me to point it to the samples and with every single one it says it can’t find some but when I skip them they seem to work.

So I decided to do a pre-emptive strike by batch re-saving in Kontakt and it’s the same bs hapoening.


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## EvilDragon (Oct 1, 2019)

Did you try using the "Allow alternative file types" checkbox?


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## Ashermusic (Oct 1, 2019)

EvilDragon said:


> Did you try using the "Allow alternative file types" checkbox?



No, I take it I should?


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## EvilDragon (Oct 1, 2019)

Give it a shot. If it doesn't work, then I guess it's really missing some samples, somehow.


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## Ashermusic (Oct 1, 2019)

EvilDragon said:


> Give it a shot. If it doesn't work, then I guess it's really missing some samples, somehow.



I did and it didn't help.
1. Too many freshly downloaded and installed to be my\issing samples I think.
2. They seem to play ok anyway.

3. I hate Kontakt.


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## EvilDragon (Oct 1, 2019)

So this is only when loading your Logic projects, right? If you load the same NKI belonging to any of those libraries that report missing samples in standalone Kontakt, they open fine without samples missing dialog, or?



Ashermusic said:


> 3. I hate Kontakt.



Some attitude.  I'm trying to help here.


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## Ashermusic (Oct 1, 2019)

EvilDragon said:


> So this is only when loading your Logic projects, right? If you load the same NKI belonging to any of those libraries that report missing samples in standalone Kontakt, they open fine without samples missing dialog, or?
> 
> 
> 
> Some attitude.  I'm trying to help here.



I hate Kontakt but I love you, ED.


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## halfwalk (Oct 1, 2019)

Your project will try to load whatever data kontakt had in it when you saved the project last. It does not necessarily look at the latest NKI file. So you would still have to reload the new NKI in your old project/template and then re-save the project. Simply batch resaving the NKIs wont update your project/template automatically even if you overwrote the NKI you were using. It's supposed to be a feature, but seems like a bug at times like this.


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## Ashermusic (Oct 1, 2019)

halfwalk said:


> Your project will try to load whatever data kontakt had in it when you saved the project last. It does not necessarily look at the latest NKI file. So you would still have to reload the new NKI in your old project/template and then re-save the project. Simply batch resaving the NKIs wont update your project/template automatically.



Yep, that is what I have learned. :(


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## EvilDragon (Oct 1, 2019)

Still regardless of that, you should be able to point the libraries with missing samples to their new locations, then resave the project.


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## EgM (Oct 1, 2019)

The advantage of using Kontakt on MacOS unlike Windows is that you can simply hit Search Spotlight and it will find them if:

- They exist at all
- If your drive is included in Spotlight search


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## Ashermusic (Oct 2, 2019)

EvilDragon said:


> Still regardless of that, you should be able to point the libraries with missing samples to their new locations, then resave the project.



I can, but it’s a time taking process on a bunch of 30 projects, each with about 15 Kontakt instances. No such issue with EXS 24 or Play.


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## EvilDragon (Oct 2, 2019)

Neither EXS nor Play need to differentiate between Player or non-Player libraries. Kontakt does, and this only happens with non-Player libraries really. Therein lies the cause for this.

Sure there are ways to improve handling of this, but I don't know when or if it's gonna happen. For now this is the only way to deal with it that I know.


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## Ashermusic (Oct 2, 2019)

EvilDragon said:


> Neither EXS nor Play need to differentiate between Player or non-Player libraries. Kontakt does, and this only happens with non-Player libraries really. Therein lies the cause for this.
> 
> Sure there are ways to improve handling of this, but I don't know when or if it's gonna happen. For now this is the only way to deal with it that I know.



I am sure that’s true but frankly I don’t care. It’s N.I.s problem to solve, not the users.


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## polypx (Oct 2, 2019)

All plugins save their state within a Logic document. Not just Kontakt. If you replace a disk preset in any other plugin, Logic will not update it when you load. This is normal DAW behaviour, and Logic obeys it. NI is behaving exactly as industry standard.


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## halfwalk (Oct 2, 2019)

Ashermusic said:


> I am sure that’s true but frankly I don’t care. It’s N.I.s problem to solve, not the users.



It's actually your DAW's problem, not NI's, if you're looking for somewhere to place the blame. Not that blaming anyone will fix your project files...

edit: looks like polypx beat me to it


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## Ashermusic (Oct 2, 2019)

No you both are wrong. True, the ones I mentioned won’t load the patch. But they won’t make you have to find the samples.


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## Ashermusic (Oct 2, 2019)

And are you telling me that other DAWS find the Kontakt samples on their own?


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## polypx (Oct 2, 2019)

It's a computer, it has no attitude. It's a very simple system. Maybe take a class in Logic from an expert? Oh , hang on...


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## Ashermusic (Oct 2, 2019)

polypx said:


> It's a computer, it has no attitude. It's a very simple system. Maybe take a class in Logic from an expert? Oh , hang on...



Well explain to me why in standalone Kontakt notoriously gives you missing samples messages during batch re-saves when there aren’t any missing? Two developers include instructions on dealing with it. You can’t blame the DAWS about that.


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## halfwalk (Oct 2, 2019)

I'm just saying the software works as advertised, and it sounds like you just don't like how it works. It seems problematic in this situation, but it wants to make sure it's loading all the right stuff, so it's making you verify all that. Yeah, it's tedious if you have to go through it all, but Kontakt seems pretty speedy in its auto-search if you point it in the right general direction.

It's just trying to get your old project to open exactly the way you left it. It doesn't want to make changes without asking you. It doesn't want to just make assumptions about what you want. It's just trying to restore the session _exactly_ as you left it, which in most other cases would actually be a boon. Kontakt is incredibly complicated; Play and EXS don't have a built-in programming language and integrated IDE, for instance. It sucks that you had a hard drive failure. But the reality of using such complex tools is that the "fix" is going to be different for each individual case, so there has to be user input. If in trying to automagically "fix" your broken files, they made assumptions and just changed stuff around without your input, and _got it wrong_, I suspect people would get pretty mad about that, too.

I'd imagine NI makes more money from Kontakt library developers via licensing than it does from end users of Kontakt. So they are probably going to cater toward the needs of devs, which means having more control at the cost of some convenience.


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## Ashermusic (Oct 2, 2019)

I would settle for less complication and less aggravation but I don’t tweak it under the hood much.


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## halfwalk (Oct 2, 2019)

Well, proprietary playback engines do seem to be in vogue, so perhaps there is, or will be, a trend toward simplification in the VI world.

I'm a masochist Reaper user though, maybe that's why i don't mind Kontakt's quirks. Anyway, sorry about your hard drive and troubles, I meant no hard feelings.


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## Ashermusic (Oct 2, 2019)

halfwalk said:


> Well, proprietary playback engines do seem to be in vogue, so perhaps there is, or will be, a trend toward simplification in the VI world.
> 
> I'm a reaper user though, maybe that's why i don't mind Kontakt's quirks. Anyway, sorry about your hard drive and troubles, I meant no hard feelings.



Hey this is just a discussion, I don’t take any of the comments personally.


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## polypx (Oct 2, 2019)

Maybe the confusion with Kontakt stems from the fact that we have a Kontakt document (on disk, or saved within a DAW). And that document itself points to other documents on your drive... the samples. For me this is blindingly obvious, because Kontakt is a sampler and therefore needs samples ... but I think perhaps it's not obvious for everyone, some people think of Kontakt like a synthesiser perhaps. But Kontakt definitely points to other files, those samples.

Move the samples, and both your Kontakt presets and your DAW Kontakt presets are confused. You need to locate them again. And of course, a hard drive crash is pretty much the same as moving shit around.


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## EvilDragon (Oct 2, 2019)

Ashermusic said:


> Well explain to me why in standalone Kontakt notoriously gives you *missing samples messages during batch re-saves* when there aren’t any missing? *Two developers include instructions on dealing with it.* You can’t blame the DAWS about that.



No but you can blame library developers for that. I haven't had that from any library in a long long while. The only reason why this would happen is if the developer of the library saved NKIs with absolute sample paths... which would make NKIs only work without asking for missing samples on his computer only!

Which libraries are these?



polypx said:


> And of course, a hard drive crash is pretty much the same as moving shit around.



Only on Mac, though, where drive name would change in that case. On Windows, if you replace your drive after it crashes, have everything on it with EXACTLY the same paths as before, and assign the same drive letter to the drive, it will be as it was before, stuff will load without missing samples dialog, because nothing "moved around", the drive letter stayed the same.



Ashermusic said:


> But they won’t make you have to find the samples.



So wait... you think that loading NOTHING when resources can't be found is better than keeping the instrument data and asking to find where the samples are? Amazing...




halfwalk said:


> Play and EXS don't have a built-in programming language and integrated IDE



Play does have scripting under the hood (Python).


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## Saxer (Oct 3, 2019)

It‘s a boring procedure but happens too when exchanging songs on two systems even with the same libraries installed. Kontakt is the only sampler that doesn‘t know where the samples are. Never a problem with VSL, Falcon, Play, EXS...

Click in Kontakt „Search Spotlight“ is the fastest way. In every instance of Kontakt. In every song. Every time.

Why can‘t Kontakt (on Mac) ask Spotlight directly without clicking „Search Spotlight“ 1001 times? That would be a really usefull option. It could be on/off switchable.


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## EvilDragon (Oct 3, 2019)

Saxer said:


> It‘s a boring procedure but happens too when exchanging songs on two systems even with the same libraries installed.



Again, not happening with Player libraries at all, since the path to them is stored in registry/plist.



Saxer said:


> In every song. Every time.



Not every time. Just the first time, then you resave the project and next time you don't have to, for that project.


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## Ashermusic (Oct 3, 2019)

EvilDragon said:


> Again, not happening with Player libraries at all, since the path to them is stored in registry/plist.



So why not do it for the non-player libraries as well? Is it that hard to implement?


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## EvilDragon (Oct 3, 2019)

It is, because the registry/plist part ties into NI's activation scheme (NA is a part of this, and this again heavily ties into NI's internal infrastructure in many ways) and some other factors too. It's not possible for non-Player libraries, a different method needs to be devised. Good suggestion would be to have a global option to automatically search through database/spotlight when missing samples are detected, then mark every found file so that if it's asked for again in the same session it wouldn't require rescanning the database/spotlight, etc.

However non-Player libraries don't seem to be in focus because NI is constantly pushing NKS (which makes sense from marketing and revenue perspective), and only Player libraries can be fully NKS, etc. As always it's a matter of prioritization of resources vs expected returns from manhours spent.


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## Ashermusic (Oct 3, 2019)

EvilDragon said:


> It is, because the registry/plist part ties into NI's activation scheme (NA is a part of this, and this again heavily ties into NI's internal infrastructure in many ways) and some other factors too. It's not possible for non-Player libraries, a different method needs to be devised. Good suggestion would be to have a global option to automatically search through database/spotlight when missing samples are detected, then mark every found file so that if it's asked for again in the same session it wouldn't require rescanning the database/spotlight, etc.
> 
> However non-Player libraries don't seem to be in focus because NI is constantly pushing NKS (which makes sense from marketing and revenue perspective), and only Player libraries can be fully NKS, etc. As always it's a matter of prioritization of resources vs expected returns from manhours spent.



As always as Deep Throat said, “Follow the money.” 😄


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