Another little utility for you

Ever renamed your VST plugins, reinstalled SONAR and found your carefully chosen names changed?  Want to migrate to a new machine and you know you've got some custom VST settings set that you'll lose?  I have and it bugs me no end.
 
And I've come up with a little utility that backs up key VST settings to an XML file and then restores them.  There's also a single-click backup/rescan/restore option too.
 
https://www.dropbox.com/s/j6o5h6jztammexw/VST%20Settings%20Manager.zip?dl=0
 
Notes:
 
1 - I've tested it on Windows 7 x64 with 32 and 64 bit installations of SONAR X3 and SONAR Platinum, but I obviously can't test on a huge variety of machines.
2 - It needs .NET 4.5 installed (Why .NET?  Because I use it in my real job so it's easy for me).
3 - The .config file lists all VST settings that are backed up; this matches a hard-coded list in the application ("Default settings") which I think are important; you can remove some of these or add more if new ones are important to you or are added by Cakewalk - the file format should be obvious.
4 - Extract, virus scan and double click.
5 - Use at your own peril as it can write to the registry (as I say, I've tested quite thoroughly but...); that said, it's useful just to dump out the key settings as a human readable record.
 
A quick copy and paste from the help screen from the latest version:
 
File
 Backup - Backs up all VST settings from all instances of SONAR to CupCake format XML file
 Restore - Restores VST settings stored in CupCake format XML file
 Export All As
  CSV - Saves all VST settings in a Comma Separated Value file for use in Excel
  Registry - Saves all VST settings in a Registry (.reg) file
Exit - Quits CupCake
 
SONAR
 Every instance of SONAR installed has an entry
  History
   Clean - Deletes invalid files from file history
   [1]...[9] - Removes this file from file history and reorders the list
  VSTs - Lists all VSTs installed in this instance
    Paths - Lists all VST scan paths (click to open in Windows Explorer)
      Clean - Removes repeated paths and path stems
  VST Tools
   Scan - Performs standard SONAR VST scan (no reset)
   Rescan - Performs standard SONAR VST scan with rescan
   Backup - Backs up this inventory to CupCake XML file
   Refresh - Backs up user-editable settings, rescans, restores user-editable settings
   Pro Channel, VST 2 and VST 3 submenus, split by plug-in/synth
    [VST] - Click to open editor in tab; control click to open read-only pop-up window
 
Options
 Hide Excluded - Hide excluded VSTs from menus
 Save Inventory On Exit - Stores current list of VSTs in registry for comparison purposes
 Monitor VST Folders - Monitors VST scan paths and shows changes in Path Monitor tab
 
Tools
 Clear Path Monitor Tab - Deletes all contents of Path Monitor tab
 
VST Tab
 Middle click tab or Ctrl-F4 closes window with prompt to save settings to registry
 Double click tab opens read-only pop-up window for comparison
 * indicates edit has been done

I will dload this tonight
Thanks for sharing with us. And hello to a fellow .netter!

6 - You can edit the saved XML file in Notepad or similar to change names and re-import all changes in one go (quicker than doing it one by one).
7 - The default filename is vstsettings_ddmmyyyy.xml (although this may depend on regional language setings), so you can do some basic version control.

KPerry
8 - Importantly, it's a 64 bit application so won't run on 32 bit Windows,

I regard this bit a great feature. Time 32 bit was dumped forever..

Wow!
 
Can we start sending you feature requests?
 
 
 
 

Thanks KPerry...

I'm not sure I need this or what I will do with it, but I fully appreciate your work!

Keni

Well, I've made two minor changes:
 
1 - Renamed Backup/Restore to Save/Load.
2 - Added a Backup option under File menu which exports the relevant VST registry keys in their entirety for absolute safety (not that I don't trust my own code, but I'm paranoid...and it also helps me when I'm coding as I can dump the keys out while I try something else out).
 
Get the latest version here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/j6o5h6jztammexw/VST%20Settings%20Manager.zip?dl=0

What I can't work out how to do (and I'm being lazy, so using Windows applications like reg.exe rather than doing it all manually) is how to export multiple registry keys to a single file: exporting the whole Cakewalk key is easy, but that then includes lots of things, not just "preferences".

That's great. Thanks.

Last update of the day, just making the inline editing a bit smoother:
 
https://www.dropbox.com/s/j6o5h6jztammexw/VST%20Settings%20Manager.zip?dl=0
 

That is awesome!
Thanks a truckload!

nevermind - it opened the utility but took about 90 seconds :)
 
But now I just dont know what to do.  

What is the difference between "SAVE" and "EXPORT"
 
What does Options > "Default Settings" do?
 
 

Export exports all the VST settings as a .reg file; open/save uses an XML file and just does the 'user-editable' settings (and is used by the rescan process to hold the settings during that process).

It does take a while to open which is unexpected - it's building the editable menus that's slow, and I'll work on optimising that.

I've updated the utility so the scan/menu build is a bit quicker, but .NET just seems slow to build menus programmatically (if I just extract VST data from the registry, it's fast, so it's definitely the menu building part of it).  To mitigate a little, I've added a progress bar so at least you know it's working!
 
I've also made a couple of changes to the VST menu: internal/Pro Channel plug-ins are in italics and their names can be edited (yes, this does mean that the order of Pro Channel modules can be user-controlled through judicious application of knowledge of the alphabet) and plug-ins excluded via the Plug-In Manager are identified by having a strikethrough, so you can ignore them.  I should probably add an option to exclude visually too...next version maybe.
 
Same URL as before.

Reg file will save everything, including fields that aren't user-editable; it's perfect for a backup.  But if you want to edit "safe" fields such as names or transfer settings to another computer (or user), the XML is probably safer.