Well that is very helpful indeed ! I don't even really know why I added "Service Center" to the default exclusion list ! None of the "exclusions" are really necessary and can of course be edited in the preferences of the SNPID utilities screen. The only reason I included these at all was because they are not Kontakt libraries as such although they do have SNPID tags int them (some of them have many of them!), and since the initial scan scans for SNPIDs in the Service Center folder, it picks up on all thes "non-libraries" and they totally clutter up the anomaly listing ! I shall remove the Service Center default exception but I'll leave the others for now. KLU does save YOUR preferences once you've set them up so it won't go back to defaults unless you specificallu choose to do so. Thanks for taking the time to debug this.

 

Version 1.2.1 is in the first post. As version 1.2 but removed the default "Service Center*" from the default exceptions list which was causing problems (see above). Thanks again @Indivism

 

Thank you @Fred Bloggs for creating this tool! So much better than having to wrangle with KiTTY scripts. I'm glad I could be of help

 

Ooops !!! So sorry guys. I left some debugging information in the first post of Version 1.2.1. The link now points to the same version minus the debug information

 

This is a fantastic tool - many thanks!

 

Last edited: Mar 3, 2023

Thank youuuu!!!! Your tool Is magic.
Finally, i have all my libraries on kontakt.

Either with nict files or creating one from scratch!

Logic 10.7.6
Kontakt 7
Monterey 10.6.3
MB M1 Max

 

@Londoner and @Dreamsuite71 You are very welcome. Glad it could help

 

@Londoner I received a notification mail with your mail containing more information than is posted here on the thread. Very odd! Anyhow, if you really did post the extra text, I would need a bit of clarification as to what it is you would like added to KLU. Let me see if I understood the problem you are trying to resolve.
You deleted a library folder without actually removing it from Kontakt first with KLU or Kitty scripts or even manually. Now you can no longer get rid of it with KLU or manually. Is that correct ?? You said it still appears in KLU. Did you do a re-scan in KLU ? Did the library appear as an anomaly ?
The initial message KLU gave you, '"If it continues being troublesome, delete all traces of it from the Service Centre, Main and User preferences folders and reinstall.", seems fairly appropriate to me, minus the "reinstall" part if you don't want it any more…
You should definitely start with that if I have my facts right ! You'll have to do it by hand though.
If the library folder has been deleted, I can't understand how KLU is still seeing it ! Normally, the initial scan will not find a NICNT file as there is no library folder any more. This would in turn generate an anomaly (anomalies) when/if it finds the Service Center XML and the main preferences file with no related library folder (NICNT file). Mmmmm… ???

 

Hello Fred:

I have no luck when i tried to install KLU pop´s a message "Couldn't install the Service Center file." and if i click "Just change the snpid" the message i see is "Sorry ! I had a. problem doing this. A permissions problem, maybe ?"

Well at least know with this new version KLU is telling me something that i knew and logical; for whatever reason it can´t write in the Service Center folder. I check permissions in all the folders, give KLU permissions to access all the disks and folders etc....inthe options security and privacy menu of the Mac....and that´s is the problem unable to wi¡rite the xml file, it creates the nicnt file i can change the nuber but when i click in add it says could,t install, where could be that permission trouble-issue? and this is in Big Sur since a month or so, in Mojave i did near 300 libraries with nicnts wallpaper from this forum etc....In fact i did with the older version Nicnt Creator, but know neither the older or the new can create the xml (btw the preferences plist in library user or root is not create also, at least i can know that the problem is about a permissions issue but i tried a thousand things, methods, changes.

Regards

 

@klander Sorry you're having issues. When you klick "Install library", does KLU ask for your password ? Is your account an Admin account ?
It's normal that files in the SS folder should be only Admin access… same for the main library preferences folder. This is why KLU has to ask the user to type in their password in order to be able to do this. Kitty scripts do this via sudo commands in the terminal, which is frowned on by Apple if you do it within an application. You can however ask a user to type their password in an app in order to install files in "Admin only" folders. I'm not sure why Apple finds that logical, but that's the way it is !
So basically, if you are using an Admin account and KLU has asked for your password to install, there's nor reason why it shouldn't UNLESS there are existing files already in those folders. KLU WILL NOT replace existing files. You have to deliberately and specifically remove them.
Lastly KLU's own preferences are written to your user preferences folder which of course belongs entirely to you so it doesn't need permission to do so, and if the preferences aren't being written, you definitely have permissions problems on your user folder !

 

I've been having issue with this utility. Anyone knows of any other tools ? I've used the kontakt library scripts but its not working either..

 

Errrr… not on Mac, no. PC apps won't help.
"Having issue" is not very constructive . What "issues" are you having ? What system/Mac are you on ? With a little more information, someone may be able to help…

 

Yeah i thought i would go another way but maybe there are things to be done
macos 13.2.1 & kontakt 7.1.5. last v of the utilities

The app usually can create nicnt files ok.
Then i click "install this library in kontakt" in your app
I get a message that it worked but the "remove this library from kontakt" is greyed out
But then in kontakt 7 they doesnt appear and when i manually try to import the content choosing the folder it says
"incompatible files. Please be sure to.."

I can somewhat work around this by using kontakt 5.6 and scanning with it and then they appear under the older kontakt view only. But when its the case your utility is only used to create nicnt files for kontakt 5.6 to recognize and add.

And i've tried with many differently lib and most don't seems to work. A few did..

Anyway the work done is still amazing

 

@lisalis Did you run the SNPID utilities on your libraries to check for anomalies ?
I've only had 1 failure to install using the latest KLU on about a dozen libraries, and the one that failed was due to an old installation that hadn't been removed properly.
If the "Remove Library" button is greyed out it's because you need to re-scan your libraries to recognise that the library has been installed. This was made optional as for people who have very large libraries, this scan can take a little while, but if this proves to be confusing, I'll make it automatic.
Thanks for the compliment, even though you are having difficulties

 

This long loading thing still happens every time I open it. I replaced it with your clean prefs plist just in case there was something wrong there.





Why is it rescanning every time?

 

There are SOOOOOO many things that can go wrong when scanning libraries, and as many things that could slow down the scan starting with hardware, and the distribution of your libraries. Are they on your boot drive ? Are they in several different places or drives ? Are the drives slow, medium or fast ? etc… Is the spinner advancing or does it stay static in one place for a while ? A corrupt nicnt file ? How fast is your computer ?

By re-scanning every time, do you mean each time KLU is launched ? If so, that is perfectly normal as KLU cannot possibly know if things have been changed behind its back, without running a permanent background task watching your every move !! I can't imagine anyone wanting that, least of all me !

Perhaps a couple of words on KLU's start-up process could clarify things…
On start-up, KLU looks for a Service Center folder which anyone running Kontakt libraries will have in the Application Support folder. If not found, it will quit ! No SC folder, no libraries. If found it will scan it for XML files containing SNPID numbers, ignoring files with names on KLU's exception list in the preferences. For each XML found, it will look for a plist file having the same name in the main preferences folder. When/if found (not finding it is an anomaly, there HAS to be one if the library is installed!), it checks its validity as a plist file and gets the location of the Kontakt library from this playlist file. KLU then checks for a nicnt file in the folder indicated by the playlist, wherever it may be, and that could be literally anywhere (!), and checks that it has the same snpid number as the XML file in the service center. If all that aligns, then on the face of it, the library is installed and it is added to the list in the SNPID utilities section. This information IS stored, all the time KLU is running but is lost when KLU quits. The ONLY thing KLU does store at the moment are the exceptions in the prefs file, and even those are not compulsory, just a convenience…
As you can see, there's a lot going on here and it can take a certain time, but is needed to generate the initial list of libraries. That said, on my Intel i9 MacBook Pro, it takes under 10 seconds to scan my 560 odd Kontakt libraries AFTER my 10TO hard drive on which they are stored spins up ! This alone can take more than 30 seconds if it has spun down, but pretty much zero if it is spun up. Yes ! I would love to have a 10TO SSD, but I'd probably have to sell my house to buy it .

I'm not sure if any of this can help you, but it may give you some pointers…
I'm looking to optimise the whole process, although all these routines are already running in shell scripts which are about as fast as you can do them ! Maybe moving everything to XCode and Swift… but that's another story !

 

Just found this tool, very nice work! Thanks a lot Fred!

 

You are very welcome

 

Thanks, Fred for the detailed description. I'm not sure why it would take so long for me then. An earlier version (maybe your first one) didn't do this for me. The version where I gave my initial feedback about libraries not installing and the SNPID window not being scrollable - that version didn't have this behaviour for me. All subsequent versions have though. Nothing has changed in my setup in that time. I have a maxed-out 2020 intel iMac, it's pretty strong. Certainly not the root of this problem. All my libraries are spread across 3 SSDs. They should be more than fast enough.

The spinner does advance, but it takes maybe 10 mins to finish its process. Which strikes me as not the way it should be.

Also additional thing - tell me if this is expected behaviour - after waiting through the scanning process, I wanted to remove a newly installed library. In that nicnt section, I loaded/navigated to a library (where its nicnt was stored etc). It loaded up displaying all the relevant info and wallpaper, but thought it wasn't installed and consequently the 'remove library' and other options weren't available. This might be an extension of the other problem I'm experiencing where installing a library says it's successful but it isn't. It doesn't create the relevant files in Service Centre or anything. How can this be when it works fine for others? I have no weird permissions on my machine. Service Centre, all these folders are intact and in the correct place. So far all I can really use KLU for is SNPID lists and NICNT creation. Weird.

 

Weird indeed !! What you're reporting is definitely NOT expected behaviour ! Once the initial scan is complrted an a library appears in the SNPID list, KLU considers it installed and the NICNT page should reflect this when you load a library. I'm looking to streamline "under the hood" operations for a future version which may help your problem, but I cannot foresee any significant changes for the initial scan routine. As you may have gathered, there is a "path" you're obliged to follow which HAS to start from the service center folder, when listing installed libraries. The initial scan is a background task so you can do other things whilst it is scanning, but the NICNT screen will not reflect the correct installed status of a library until the scan has completed. Off hand, I really cannot think of anything causing your problems. A dramatic de-bug test would be to boot on an external drive and install say just one of your library SSDs to that system and see how KLU reacts to that ! Kiity scripts can install a disk full of libraries by dropping it on the install script ! If I think of anything else, I'll keep you posted…