VSL Needs A Professional Installer

[primadonna]

As a seasoned programmer and computer user for many years, I've seen some very nice and smooth installation systems and I been privy to some of the worst. Interesting however is the fact that, for such a high-end software product, the VSL comes with NO installation software whatsoever.

I almost cannot believe that the good folks who publish this library of such exquisite sounds could not find it appropriate to include at least a simple extraction/copy installation routine.

It's like a offering a perfectly cut diamond with a glaring carbon inclusion.

While it seems normal for sound libraries to not come with installtion routines, the VSL should be an exception as its sheer size and scope necessitate a more streamlined "unattended" installation method.

While I cannot believe how wonderful these sound are, in the future, please do not waste the time of your precious customers by making then manually install such a huge piece of software.

[tattie]

Primadonna,

Personally I could not disagree more.

Whilst it is time consuming to manually Load these samples you get the real advantage of putting what you want where you want it.

Maybe as a programmer you could write an Apple Script or what ever the PC uses these day which would be suitable for your own needs.





[:D] tattie

[primadonna]

I completely fail to see your point(s) of disagreement.

First, people have better things to do than sit down and write a script to install a high-end piece of software -- software that should have come with its own installer anyway. Most don't have those skills.

Second, a high-end software package with an equally high-end installer would allow you to place exactly what you wanted, where you wanted it -- all without having to wait around for the thing to finish installing. Most people have better, more productive things to do than sit around and manange their software installations for the better part of a day.

And the process has not been without complications. On a Mac G4 dual processor 1.2Ghz with 2 GBs RAM, I was not able to unstuff the files. Stuffit expander kept throwing out error messages. So, I have been forced to unstuff the files on two PC's and drag them across the network to the Mac. Fortunately, I have the computer resources to do this. But it shouldn't have to be this difficult and time-consuming.

It is a legitimate failing of this software package. Fortunately, the sounds make up for this failing. But still, for the sheer size of this package, an installer would be appreciated. [:(]

[tattie]

Sorry to hear that you had a problem un-stuffing - we have more or less the same basic set-up and I had no problems at all.

Clearly this is a personal thing - the 5 hours or so I spent un-zipping the EXS Performance Set was well used reading the manual and sketching out some test ideas in Sibelius.

I also caught-up with some email and editted some photographs. You dont have to sit and watch the process [:D]

Software driven un-stuffing (as far as I know) would not allow me (easliy) to put the Violins on one array and the Bones on another.

All of us will have different set-ups and preferred ways of working. The last three studios I have set up have each had several hundred Gigabytes of samples and these days we RAID array these over a number of discs - manual load in this case is much better all around.

Any how as you have pointed out the first notes produced from the Library (once it has loaded) will sooth away the frustraition of a long load time.


tattie

[cm]

hi primadonna,
sorry to hear you had troubles extracting the files - which expander-version did you use?
although i would agree in principle, there are several requirements, that do not match. besides expander 5/6/7 unfortunately behave different (also on os9 and osX) and MacRAR is no longer supported we have to take into consideration, logic for windows _might_ get also updated somewhen.
so after a lot of research and testing the current solution simply was the common denominator.
even if an installer would allow you to choose the location for each instrument, this would still not be unattended, because you need to change DVDs (although it would be possible for every single DVD)
of course we are listening to our users suggestions and meanwhile it turned up that japanese macOS has troubles expanding files at all - so a modified solution has to be determined anyway.
christian

[primadonna]

Chrisitan,

Thank you for your explanation regarding this. My posts were definately made in frustration of the whole process.

First, we attempted to use the latest version of Stuffit Expander 7.03 and received error messages when attempting to expand the files. Okay, no problem, we'll just expand the files on a PC and migrate them via the network to the Mac. Well, guess what. The DVD's could not be read on our PC's -- any of them. We had to copy all of the files to the Mac HD, then move the files to the PC via the network because the Mac was the only system that could read the DVD's. We have state of the art DVD-R's on the PC's, mind you, and they read every other DVD in the office except VSL's DVD's. The process went a bit faster since I used two separate PC's to expand half the files on one machine and half on the other. What I wouldn't do now for gigabit ethernet!! Guess who's gonna upgrade soon!

Anyway, what should have taken a few hours turned into practically a whole-day project that lasted nearly 18 hours. Fortunately, we have a quarter terrabyte of space on one of the PC's RAID arrays so at least we didn't have to worry about space issues too!

Anyway, I hope no one else has this much trouble. Installing VSL or root canal, hmmm ... [*-)]