Easiest way to move all plugin manager presets to a new machine

[Sven]

I haven't seen the easy answer I would like to this question so please point me to that thread if it exists already.

I've patiently setup Cakewalk  on a new Win 10 machine and moved or installed all my vst plugins to the new machine.   I have hundreds of plugin presets I would like to move to the new machine as easily as possible.  I believe I need to export my old presets using the plugin manager and then import them to the new machine.   

Please let me know if this is the correct approach to export/import everything quickly:    I see nine categories and all the registered plugins available when I highlight each category.  It seems that if I choose a category like VST3 I can highlight all the registered plugins (728 found) and then export that list.  I can call that "Plugin VST3 Export " or something and then import this later to the new machine.  I can then choose DXi, VSTi, MFX,  DMO, etc... and highlight all registered plugins and export those to the appropriately named file for later import.

Is this the easiest and best way to do this?  It's not too painful and I can export/import everything in a short amount of time.  There's nothing important on the new machine but out of curiosity does the import merge or overwrite the existing plugins?  If this is not the best method please tell me how I should do this or point me to another thread.

Thanks!

 

 

[msmcleod]

They're stored here:

%APPDATA%\Cakewalk\Cakewalk Core\Plug-in Menu Layouts

...so you should just be able to copy them across.

I suspect however, that the presets rely on each plugin being in the same location as it was on your old machine.  For those that aren't, you'll probably need to re-categorise them.

[scook]

I don't use the Cakewalk preset management system but the method describe in the OP is the only documented way I know to transfer presets managed by that system between machines. 

Of course, the import/export process in the Plug-in Manager only handles Cakewalk and user presets maintained in the registry by the Cakewalk preset manager. It does not handle ProChannel Presets (stored in Cakewalk Content), PC module presets (stored in the registry) or presets maintained in the individual plug-in managers (location depends on the plug-in) or any other plug-in preset files stored on disk.

 

[Sven]

Hi msmcleod,

  I reduced many, many vst install locations on the old Win 7 PC to only four on the new Win 10 machine.  Am I in for a nightmare if I do your suggested copy idea or is it simple to re-categorize them later?  Is the export/import a better option?  I just want to make sure I do this right.

Thanks.

[scook]

Plug-in categories are stored in 

%appdata%\Cakewalk\Library\Library.db

This is used by the "Soft by Category" plug-in layout.

[Sven]

Thanks for your comments.  So if I just do my export/import plan I should have all vst plugins that use that convenient save/load method including Cakewalk plugins?  But not ones that require a save/load within their specific app, right?   

Anyone know the answer to this?:

"out of curiosity does the import merge or overwrite the existing plugins? "

Thanks again.

[Sven]

"out of curiosity does the import merge or overwrite the existing plugins? "

This might have been a confusing question.  I was hoping the import would let you select all registered plugins  for any given category and get any saved settings  those plugins knew about.  Apparently, you have to go one by one on each plugin to see if there's anything available to import from your exported file.  The export was fast.  The import seems tedious.  Am I wrong?

Thanks.

[Noel Borthwick]

 

On 11/7/2021 at 2:08 AM, Sven said:

I haven't seen the easy answer I would like to this question so please point me to that thread if it exists already.

I've patiently setup Cakewalk  on a new Win 10 machine and moved or installed all my vst plugins to the new machine.   I have hundreds of plugin presets I would like to move to the new machine as easily as possible.  I believe I need to export my old presets using the plugin manager and then import them to the new machine.   

Please let me know if this is the correct approach to export/import everything quickly:    I see nine categories and all the registered plugins available when I highlight each category.  It seems that if I choose a category like VST3 I can highlight all the registered plugins (728 found) and then export that list.  I can call that "Plugin VST3 Export " or something and then import this later to the new machine.  I can then choose DXi, VSTi, MFX,  DMO, etc... and highlight all registered plugins and export those to the appropriately named file for later import.

Is this the easiest and best way to do this?  It's not too painful and I can export/import everything in a short amount of time.  There's nothing important on the new machine but out of curiosity does the import merge or overwrite the existing plugins?  If this is not the best method please tell me how I should do this or point me to another thread.

Thanks!

 

 

Are you are referring to plugin PRESETS as opposed to plugin layouts? 
If you have saved actual presets for plugins from within Cakewalk, you can export them all using the export feature in plugin manager.

Select all the plugins (you can multi select) and then click Export to export to a preset library file. Then on the new machine assuming you have the same plugins, import it .

 

[Sven]

Thanks for your reply Noel Borthwick.   I've exported all the presets for each category to individual files.   When I go to import those files on the new machine the import button is grayed out until you select any registered plugin.  Then you can select your export file and import only for that single registered plugin.   You can do this for each plugin but I was hoping that the import would have a batch mode similar to the export to retrieve all known presets for all know registered plugins at one time.  

Please tell me if I'm misunderstanding this.

Thanks.

 

[Noel Borthwick]

If I remember you can select all the plugins and then import and it should import to the relevant ones.

[Rickstudio2021]

I received this error message when I did a 'batch' import of all vst3 plugins:

 

It seems that the other categories imported okay with 'batch mode' (all registered plug-ins).   Even with this error message a quick check of some vst3 plug-ins appear to have the old presets so I think I'm okay now.

This error message threw me a couple of days ago and that's why I thought I had to do a tedious import process.

Thanks!

 

[Noel Borthwick]

That error is displayed when no presets were imported for a selected category or something failed while loading a specific preset. However if you see the presets imported OK looks like you are all set.

[Sven]

Thanks Noel.

 

[Rickstudio2021]

One more slight problem:

I see this error message opening various older songs from the previous PC even though the new machine has the plugins installed.  They may be in a different vst folder but would that cause this error?  I can open the song with these error messages and then insert the plugin fine.  So the plugins are really installed.

[Sven]

I was hoping for a response but I'd just like to know if anyone has migrated to a new machine and seen a similar problem.  This is not a big problem but a slight nuisance. 

I can open my old projects and reinsert the original plugin, delete the old one that caused the error message but I won't know the last presets I had on that plugin.   I can then guess or hopefully choose the correct saved settings from the export/import exercise mentioned above.  I was hoping to reinstall everything on the new faster PC and have everything load like the old one.

Any thoughts on this are appreciated.