Ableton Forum

My plugins folder is becoming cluttered and disorganised and was thinking of re-organising it a bit

Would rearranging my plugins into new sub folders etc have any negative implications on any of my old live sets ? When it comes to plugins, does live just check if the plugin exists anywhere or does it go by relative path/location of plugin. I am preuming its the former as I can open a friends live sets who has the some of the same synths as me and they open OK and the synths open with right settings. I guess I just want to be double sure its OK before changing

With an upgrade coming its time for me to do a bit of spring cleaning but I wouldnt want to lose anything from my old productions

So presuming its OK, what kind of structure do folks go for?
I've just got 2 basic categories "Instruments" and "FX" but maybe its time for a few more... Also what about user presets? do most people keep them in the actual plugins preset folder or have some people created a presets folder in live so they can be managed more like the live devices.


help and tips appreciated
stallos

Here it is one approach:
http://www.ableton.com/answers/what-is- ... on-presets

dcocharro wrote:Here it is one approach:
http://www.ableton.com/answers/what-is- ... on-presets

I would disagree, this doesn't handle your plugin folder at all.

You can make however many folders you want within the directory you specified for 3rd party VSTs.

ie:

FX
SYNTHS
SAMPLERS
UTILS
MASTERING

Just re-scan your plugin folder once you're done (or click the on/off button) and it'll get everything reloaded in the folders you specified.

All your old projects will simply look for the VST being loaded into the program - the path to vsts is not defined in your old sets.

This might be useful also:
http://audio.tutsplus.com/tutorials/pro ... eton-live/

You can move plugins round into sub-folders. The only caveat is Live doesn't seems to find them beyond a couple of levels (can't remember the exact number).

Also, you should note that if you later install a new version of a plugin, then it will get installed to the old location so you will have to do some manual tidying up. Similarly uninstalling a plugin won't find the plugin, so it won't uninstall. Be careful about movie associated plugin data folders - some plains need them to be in the same location relative to the plugin, while other record absolute paths (annoying).

Its a pain, over time Ive come to the conclusion its best to just leave them alone. One advantage of AU plugins over VST.

you can make a group from a plugin assaign the functions you use the most and then save it in af folder you can acces from the file browser (1,2,3)

in this way you can build you're own list and label them or put them in folders.
i have done this alongside projects with specific setups or routings, chanels with settings, and other presets/effects

like this:

If you rack all your plugins you can have them all in the library

Thought I bring this topic up to bring your attention to a VST2 Plugin Manager I wrote, which covers exactly these issues and more:

http://www.familiekraft.de/PluginManager