Older Projects - Kontact

[sadicus]

Many older projects have a KONTAKT version that is no longer installed. is there any way to figure out what samples were once loaded and being used in the project?
There are no descriptions in the "Notes" to say what instrument was loaded.

[AB99]

Oh my.  Hopefully, someone has an answer.  This reminds me to type in the instrument name in the proper track and with enough specificity so I know what sample library and perhaps what preset.  

Edited February 28, 2023 by AB7777

[JnTuneTech]

Well, unless you saved out the Kontakt instrument(s) in Kontakt itself, and have that data, and appropriate library(s) also available to you, it's a tough road. I have had a few times when I had to open the old project on an old system with the right Kontakt version & libraries installed. I suppose that is almost the nuclear option though.

If the instruments referenced were not highly custom, and you can tweak a few settings in a Kontakt default instrument, or even a similar one you have saved somewhere, that may wind up being easiest. -I have finally made myself back up most of the important VST instruments and FX settings individually in the project folder, after several moves to different computers & software versions over the years has made that a clear priority, to go along with offline copies of the project folders, and Cakewalk custom presets & other necessary assets not already in the project data itself.

[Steve Moddelmog]

I keep every version of Kontakt installed on my machine for this very reason.  Obviously the data on everything is embedded somewhere in the Cakewalk  / Sonar file.  I would love for there to be a way to view this data.  But as someone mentioned above, I am carefully keeping notes on each VST used on every project now - wish I had done it all along.

[Craig Anderton]

These kinds of changes are another reason to render an audio track as a safety. It's not as good as knowing the "raw materials" that went into making a sound, but it's better than nothing when you have to re-visit old projects.

2 hours ago, Steve Moddelmog said:

I keep every version of Kontakt installed on my machine for this very reason.  

It's not just Kontakt, if a project used AmpliTube 4 and all that's installed later on is AmpliTube 5, I'm pretty sure it won't know what to do with the AmpliTube 4 preset.

[AB99]

1 hour ago, Craig Anderton said:

These kinds of changes are another reason to render an audio track as a safety. It's not as good as knowing the "raw materials" that went into making a sound, but it's better than nothing when you have to re-visit old projects.

It's not just Kontakt, if a project used AmpliTube 4 and all that's installed later on is AmpliTube 5, I'm pretty sure it won't know what to do with the AmpliTube 4 preset.

I hear you.  I need to do that with my external midi instruments too!  

[Kalle Rantaaho]

And then there are, or were, the VSTs that don't keep the preset listing. When you re-open the project the VST has the right preset loaded and playing, but you can't see what preset it is.

[bitflipper]

This is why so many heavy Kontakt users set aside a terabyte or more disk storage dedicated to just that VI. Just don't delete past versions and don't move the sample libraries around and you'll probably never have an issue. 

Another good practice is to save your own presets with names like "Song_Name_Strings.nki". This will come in handy when you want to re-use a custom/tweaked Kontakt instrument from a previous project. It will also save you if you run out of disk space and have to move your libraries to a new drive.  It could have even potentially saved the OP, as long as the libraries were not from the factory content.

But even taking those measures is no absolute guarantee you won't have issues in the future.  That's why it's a good idea to freeze your Kontakt instruments as a worst-case precaution.