Notion VST ID Solution

[cbandla]

I do appreciate your attempts to help. I have the Kirk Hunter Solo Strings Kontakt instruments and I'm trying to create a set of custom rules to allow me to change articulation by sending keyswitch information from Notion 3 to Kontakt 4.1.1.

I've been using the Solo Strings successfully in Finale PrintMusic by embedding the keyswitch notes in a second layer. I've since found Notion 3 demo and find it much more efficient for writing music and have decided to switch.

I've got both an iMac running OS X 10.6 and a Dell laptop running Vista. I've written a test file of rules to switch between legato and pizzicato which works as expected on the laptop but not the iMac. I made sure to use the same file on both platforms so I think I'm free of syntax problems. It appears that the problem is addressing the Kontakt instance as the keyswitches aren't getting through. At this point I'm just trying to get the legato/pizzicato switching to work on both platforms.

After your comment about character sets I looked into differences between ASC II and the Mac OS Roman set without finding a difference. Guess I'll just have to keep playing with it.

Cbandla

[wcreed51]

I was under the impression that the MAC and PC versions of VSTi had different IDs.

[cbandla]

I was under the impression that the MAC and PC versions of VSTi had different IDs.

From my experience so far I suspect you're right. I've looked for a mac vst hosting program that reports the plugin id but so far no luck. I even tried using a binary editor to examine the file contents but I don't know enough about the file structure to find anything useful.

Cbandla

[Surfwhammy]

I do appreciate your attempts to help. I have the Kirk Hunter Solo Strings Kontakt instruments and I'm trying to create a set of custom rules to allow me to change articulation by sending keyswitch information from Notion 3 to Kontakt 4.1.1.

I've been using the Solo Strings successfully in Finale PrintMusic by embedding the keyswitch notes in a second layer. I've since found Notion 3 demo and find it much more efficient for writing music and have decided to switch.

I've got both an iMac running OS X 10.6 and a Dell laptop running Vista. I've written a test file of rules to switch between legato and pizzicato which works as expected on the laptop but not the iMac. I made sure to use the same file on both platforms so I think I'm free of syntax problems. It appears that the problem is addressing the Kontakt instance as the keyswitches aren't getting through. At this point I'm just trying to get the legato/pizzicato switching to work on both platforms.

After your comment about character sets I looked into differences between ASC II and the Mac OS Roman set without finding a difference. Guess I'll just have to keep playing with it.

Cbandla

QUESTION: Can you post the text for the rules that you want to use?

[NOTE: For reference, if you post the text for your rules file, I suggest using the "Code" tag, since it makes it easier to read and avoids problems with smiley faces replacing text, which happens in some flavors of FORUM message editors. You probably already know this, but other folks might not know it, so it might be helpful to someone . . . ]

QUESTION: What the location where you are putting the rules file?

There are some FORUM members who are expert in rules, so perhaps someone will be able to examine the rules files you are testing to determine whether something might need to be changed. . . .

I downloaded the Kontakt 5 Player Demo and sample sounds, and I might be able to try your rules file as an experiment with version 5 to determine if the version makes any difference . . .

I examined the various plug-in files (AU and VST) using UltraEdit, which is an excellent hexadecimal editor, but I did not see anything that mapped to a VST ID, and there were no matches when I did an ASCII text search on "Nik4", which probably makes sense, considering the demo is Kontakt 5, but I also did an ASCII text search on "Nik", and the only match had the registered copyright symbol after it ("Nik®") . . .

If I have more information, I will post it . . .

Lots of FUN!

P. S. Another possibility is that MIDI is not configured correctly on your iMac . . .

[cbandla]

Here's the text of the custom rule set I've been working on. It works as expected on the PC but not on the Mac. I followed the instruction in the video tutorials and put in in a folder named Rules in the same folder as the score using it.

Cbandla

Code: Select all

<?xml version="1.0" ?>
<rule-set version="1">

<!-- NOTION3 Rules Template File KH Solo Strings in Kontakt 4 PC-->

   <!-- substitute xxxx with a unique 4 character identifier. You can specify as many dynamic maps as you want -->
    <dynamic-map id="xxxx">
      <!-- You can assign your own dynamic values here. 0-127 MIDI values. -->
         <dynamic dynamic="ppppp" value="0" />
      <dynamic dynamic="pppp" value="10" />
      <dynamic dynamic="ppp"  value="30" />
      <dynamic dynamic="pp"   value="40" />
      <dynamic dynamic="p"    value="50" />
      <dynamic dynamic="mp"   value="75" />
      <dynamic dynamic="mf"   value="85" />
      <dynamic dynamic="f"    value="100" />
      <dynamic dynamic="ff"   value="106" />
      <dynamic dynamic="fff"  value="112" />
      <dynamic dynamic="ffff" value="120" />
      <dynamic dynamic="fffff" value="127" />
   </dynamic-map>
   
<plugin id="1315531572"> <!-- Enter PluginID here or use <midi-out id="X"> where X = A,B,C or D for MIDI out port rules-->

<!-- Plugin ID's Menu -->
<!-- Vienna Instruments: 1448299603 -->
<!-- Vienna Ensemble: 1448299589 -->
<!-- Vienna Ensemble Pro: 1987274096 -->
<!-- PLAY: 1886151033 -->
<!-- ARIA: 1195463233 -->
<!-- Miroslav Philharmonik PC : 1346908464-->
<!-- Miroslav Philharmonik Mac : 808536144-->
<!-- Kontakt 4 PC : 1315531572-->

<setup>
   <velocity-map id="xxxx" /> <!-- choose dynamic map by id -->
   <hairpin-map id="xxxx" />
   <hairpin-cc value="11" />
   <!-- uncomment to set return CC value for hairpins. Useful when both velocity and CC control volume as well as timbre -->
   <!-- <hairpin-anchor value="75" /> -->
</setup>
      
      
<!-- Example Rules. Feel free to edit, copy and paste to create rules to suit your needs  -->

   <rule>
      <key-switch type="note-on-prefix" midi-pitch="28" velocity="1" />
      <!-- default to Vivo -->
   </rule>

   <rule name="staccatto">
      <!-- Tests -->
      <if articulation = "staccato"/>
      <!-- Instructions -->
      <key-switch type="note-on-prefix" midi-pitch="1" velocity="1" />
      <key-switch type="note-on-prefix" midi-pitch="31" velocity="1" />
   </rule>   


   <rule name="Pizzicatto">
      <!-- Tests -->
      <if technique = "pizz" />
      <!-- Instructions -->
      <key-switch type="note-on-prefix" midi-pitch="1" velocity="1" />
      <key-switch type="note-on-prefix" midi-pitch="32" velocity="1" />
   </rule>   

      
   <rule name="slur">
      <!-- Tests -->
      <if condition="under-slur" />
      <if not-condition="slide-down" />
      <if not-condition="slide-up" />
      <!-- Instructions -->
      <key-switch type="note-on-prefix" midi-pitch="1" velocity="1" />
      <key-switch type="note-on-prefix" midi-pitch="24" velocity="1" />
   </rule>
      
</plugin> <!-- use </midi-out> if you used <midi-out id="X"> in the start of the document-->

</rule-set>



[Surfwhammy]

The Steinberg VST Developer email never arrived, so I tried a second time with a different email account, and it worked, but I am not having any success discovering where in a VST or VSTi file on the Mac the plug-in ID is located . . .

However, I found this bit of information in a post while doing a bit of web searching, and it might be helpful, since it suggests there is a range of values for the VST ID:

Kontakt 4: 4E696B34 to 4E696B36 (according to 8, 16 out and jbridge)

These correspond to "Nik4", "Nik5", and "Nik6", and you can experiment with the decimal values, which are 1315531572, 1315531573, and 1315531574, respectively . . .

Lots of FUN!

[cbandla]

Thanks Surfwhammy, I'll play around with the variations and see what happens.

Cbandla

[Surfwhammy]

Thanks Surfwhammy, I'll play around with the variations and see what happens.

Cbandla

I found this bit of information in the Renoise FORUM, where a program dump after a crash on a Mac provides this information, where the first four lines are at the start of the program dump, but the last line is from the middle of the program dump . . .

Version : Renoise V2.7.0b3 (Mar 28 2011)
Date : 2011-03-28
Time : 16:19:50
OS : Mac OS X 10.6.7 (i386)
.
.
.
VstPlugs: Analyzing VST plugin 'Native Instruments GmbH: Kontakt 4', Unique ID:1315531572, Version:2400

[SOURCE: "[Buggy Plug] Osx: Crash Opening Editor Window Of Kontakt Vst" (Renoise FORUM) ]

Lots of FUN!

[cbandla]

I've solved my problem with custom rules for Kontakt on the Mac and boy, is my face red...

It ends up that the plugin id for kontakt is the same for both the pc and mac and the test rules I wrote worked on both platforms. My problem arose from the fact that Kirk Hunter's Solo Strings has two violins, "solo violin" and "romantic" violin". I wrote a test rule for the solo violin (as well as viola & cello) to switch between legato and pizzicato but unfortunately the romantic violin doesn't use the same keyswitches. When I tried the rule file on the mac I had... you guessed it... I had the wrong violin loaded. Once I loaded the right violin it worked fine.

Like the man said... lots of fun!

Charles Bandla

P.S. I ordered my copy of Notion 3 tonight.

[Surfwhammy]

I've solved my problem with custom rules for Kontakt on the Mac and boy, is my face red...

It ends up that the plugin id for kontakt is the same for both the pc and mac and the test rules I wrote worked on both platforms. My problem arose from the fact that Kirk Hunter's Solo Strings has two violins, "solo violin" and "romantic" violin". I wrote a test rule for the solo violin (as well as viola & cello) to switch between legato and pizzicato but unfortunately the romantic violin doesn't use the same keyswitches. When I tried the rule file on the mac I had... you guessed it... I had the wrong violin loaded. Once I loaded the right violin it worked fine.

Like the man said... lots of fun!

Charles Bandla

P.S. I ordered my copy of Notion 3 tonight.

Great!

For reference, Native Instruments is having a 50 percent discount sale from November 24, 2011 through November 28, 2011, and Kontakt 5 is $199.50 rather than $399 (MSRP), which is intriguing to me, since I like the crystal glasses and hand bells sample libraries for Kontakt that are done by BOLDER Sounds . . .

Kontakt 5 (Native Instruments)

Crystal Glasses V2 for Kontakt (BOLDER Music)

HandBells V2 for Kontakt (BOLDER Sounds)

Lots of FUN!