Are there any dangers or quirks with batch re-saving?

Missing samples go missing forever If you experience the Samples Missing dialog and you choose to skip, the missing samples will be permanently removed from the Kontakt instrument. Any future batch re-saves cannot fix this - the only way to get them back is to restore your backed up instruments. I said up above not to panic when you see the missing samples dialog, but just make sure that you find everything that's needed, and only skip when you know you should! if in doubt, cancel and double check you have all the samples installed correctly.





Older versions of Kontakt Unlike other applications such as Photoshop, Word, etc. Kontakt is not forwards-compatible when it comes to Instruments and data files. For example, if you save an instrument in Kontakt 5.5, it can't be opened in any previous version of Kontakt (Not just Kontakt 4, but even previous versions of Kontakt 5). If you need your instruments (and the sessions they're used on) to open on a machine with earlier versions of Kontakt installed, you need to make sure you batch save on the lowest version required.

Crashes during batch resave Sometimes you may experience a crash in the middle of a batch save. Native Instruments have been fixing crashes in newer versions of Kontakt, but some still exist (and they're not fixed retroactively in older Kontakts). Don't worry if you experience a crash - your files are not damaged in any way. Simply start the batch re-save again and cross your fingers that it goes through this time. You could also try batch re-saving each sub-folder inside instruments if you're struggling to get through them all in one go.

Why does batch re-saving actually help?

The instrument(s) The instrument is the NKI or NKM file and contains detailed information on what should happen when you play a note into Kontakt. It's this instrument definition that determines which keys make which sound, and what happens when you hit the note soft or hard.







The instrument is theorfile and contains detailed information on what should happen when you play a note into Kontakt. It's this instrument definition that determines which keys make which sound, and what happens when you hit the note soft or hard.

The scripts & resources The scripts and resources are contained in the NKR files. These usually power the user interface you see when you load the instrument, as well as controlling advanced logic under the hood (legato, articulations, round-robin, etc.). Resource files can also contain convolution IRs, graphics for the UI and other resources needed.





The scripts and resources are contained in thefiles. These usually power the user interface you see when you load the instrument, as well as controlling advanced logic under the hood (legato, articulations, round-robin, etc.). Resource files can also contain convolution IRs, graphics for the UI and other resources needed.

The samples The samples are provided either as individual NCW or WAV files, or grouped into monolith NKX files (usually for Kontakt Player libraries). These samples are the core sounds of the instrument. This is the actual recordings - each note played at different dynamics, loops and phrases or different types of hits and sounds.





The samples are provided either as individualorfiles, or grouped into monolithfiles (usually for Kontakt Player libraries). These samples are the core sounds of the instrument. This is the actual recordings - each note played at different dynamics, loops and phrases or different types of hits and sounds.

Makes sense, but if Kontakt is that smart why do some instruments take a long time to load?



A visual comparison of a typical Mac and PC Kontakt cache file. The green areas highlight data that matches between them whereas the yellow denotes subtle differences between the two platforms.

Why don't developers batch re-save before releasing?

To wrap things up

Remember I said that it was important to make a backup of your instruments? There are a few things that can go wrong during the batch process andaffect your instruments. Here are some of the more common things to be careful of:As long as you create a backup of your instruments you have nothing to worry about. If anything goes wrong simply restore them and try again. Batch re-save only affects your instruments and can't damage any other aspects of the Kontakt library.For those that are curious, I'll go into a little detail on why batch re-saving can help in this section of the blog. To start with, lets look at what makes up a typical Kontakt instrument or sample library:You can see from the brief outline above thatare stored as completely separate files from(there are exceptions, but this is rare). When you load the instrument file, it's telling Kontakt '. Kontakt then looks for those files and examines them. It remembers where they're stored and then begins to load them into RAM.Typically, instruments will usepaths to describe where a sample is. This means that instead of providing anlocation of the file on your hard-drive, it details where the sample is. The reason for this is that users will install different libraries in different places (for example, whilst you may have installed Albion toanother Mac user may have put it in). The relative path means that the exact location isn't important - all that matters is where the samples are in relation to the instrument.Libraries can be huge - some of them hundreds of gigabytes. When you're dealing with links/references to this much data it can take too long to look things up every time you open a Kontakt patch! To make this whole process much, much quicker, Kontakt does something called. In basic terms the idea behind caching is that we do all this time-consuming, hard-drive-searchingand then store the results locally. You'll notice these results stored asfiles in your Kontakt library folders. Next time Kontakt needs to find a sample reference, it can look it up in the small NKC file, rather than having to plough through gigabytes of files and folders.It's mostly down to the difference in file systems between the two Kontakt platforms - PC or Mac. When you save a Kontakt instrument on a, the references to the sample files arethan when saving an identical instrument on a. This also means that the correlatingfile created by Kontakt and referenced each time you open analso differs between the two operating systems.This isn't a noticable problem when you're loading the instrument on the same platform is was saved on - the instrument will load as snappy as the day it was saved. The problem arises when you take an instrument saved on aand open it on the oppositeplatform (or vice versa). Because the sample references inside the instrument differ slightly from the opposite platform, Kontakt can't utilise on thecache and has to use the long-winded process of searching the drive and filesWhen you batch re-save you're essentially recreating all these sample references on your local machine, usingfiles that your Kontakt is guaranteed to be able to utilise when loading the saved instrument.Most of them do. The problem is that different developers tend to develop on different platforms. For example,instruments are primarily built and prepared on a Windows PC, whereas other companies use Macs. If a user opens a (PC-developed) Spitfire Audio product on a Mac, they may well encounter this slow loading. Similarly, if a user opens a (Mac-developed) library on a PC, they may also notice slow loading times.Here's a video of Paul Thomson from Spitfire Audio talking users through batch resaving. It may be useful if you're more of a video-tutorial type of person:Other than that, this has been a brief guide to the Batch re-save process in Kontakt, and a little technical knowledge on how and why it does what it does.