Where are favourites stored?

[Aymara]

Hi,

I use Pigments on two Macs (iMac & Macbook) and would like to synch the favorites ... I mean those presets, that I marked with heart symbol.

Sooo, where get these favorites stored?

On Mac everything is located in ...

/Macintosh HDD/Library/Arturia/Pigments/

... so might it be one of the db.db3 files in the subfolder "Presets" ?

[LBH]

... so might it be one of the db.db3 files in the subfolder "Presets" ?

Hi,

Yes i think that informations about favorite marking (not copies of presets.) is stored in a database file. If you close the applications there should only be one db.db3 file. I think that's the file.
I'm on windows, but it's somewhere in the same folder as the presets are stored.
EDIT: I also believe info about the favorite marking is inside each preset. EDIT END


Precise informations form Arturia about this and how to handle different versions of the file between computers would be nice.

[Aymara]

It would be nice to have a favorites export/import feature.

Maybe it makes sense to have the option to export not only single user presets, but also all user presets, that includes the favorites?

At least, that would be great to synch everything between two computers. It has a reason, that Arturia offers a 5 PC licence, right?! 

[straycodemonkey]

So I've figured this out, on Mini V3 and Analog Lab 4 on Windows 10 at least. It'll be a similar setup for Pigments however as all these products share the same preset file structure.

Say you have an example preset, called Boucin (on Mini V3)

You'll find the preset itself in this folder; C:\ProgramData\Arturia\Presets\Mini V3\Factory\House Chords

You'll find an additional information file in this folder; C:\ProgramData\Arturia\Presets\FactoryEdit\Mini V3\Factory\House Chords

The file Boucin.info contains the following text; 22 serialization::archive 10 0 7 1

The 1 at the end of this example line is an indication of whether it's a favourite or not. 1 for favourite, 0 for not. You can see this changing in real-time whenever you use Mini V3 or Analog Lab 4 to change the favourite status.

For completeness, this information is also held in the db.db3 file, specifically in the Favorite field of the Preset_Id table. My guess is this database is used as a high-speed cache of information for the Arturia software to use at startup which makes loading faster than it would otherwise be by having to scan the file system each time. Without access to their code however, this is just intuition on my part.

Hope that helps.

[LBH]

Yes i've also come to believe the favorites is marked in the FactoriEdit folder too. I can't read the file, so i can't tell for sure. But if you mark a preset as a favorite, then a file turns up in that FactoryEdit folder.
And yes the db.db3 file store preset info, but i think it perhaps only is a kind of index. I can't tell for sure.

It would be great, if Arturia created a FAQ about managing files, and about exchanging presets between computers without using the export/ import, and about what informations the the FactoryEdit folder files and the db.db3 file store.

[straycodemonkey]

It would be great, if Arturia created a FAQ about managing files, and about exchanging presets between computers without using the export/ import, and about what informations the the FactoryEdit folder files and the db.db3 file store.

Just use DB Browser for SQLite at https://sqlitebrowser.org/

This software allows you to examine each of the tables in the database, it seems to be pretty simple and well constructed. It's also seems to be quite straightforward to relate this information to the presets held in the file system.

[LBH]

Just use DB Browser for SQLite at https://sqlitebrowser.org/

This software allows you to examine each of the tables in the database, it seems to be pretty simple and well constructed. It's also seems to be quite straightforward to relate this information to the presets held in the file system.

Yes thanks straycodemonkey.
But it does'nt change, that i think Arturia should inform about all this.

[straycodemonkey]

Yes thanks straycodemonkey.
But it does'nt change, that i think Arturia should inform about all this.

I'd prefer if it we didn't have to know and that the software itself covered all the bases. As technically majestic as the audio side of the software is, the UI side has been geared down for the lowest common denominator I think - they've made it really very simple but lacking some features in the process. I can understand their reluctance to publish this information about the data though as they don't want users poking around in it and quite possibly damaging it while they are there.

If you need any help in interpreting or modifying this data then just ask, I'm happy to help.

[RickStarr]

So to provide complete instructions, I figured out the details here. I moved from one computer to another ans wanted my favorites back.

Indeed the favs are persisted in C:\ProgramData\Arturia\Presets\FactoryEdit folder.

First be sure you are not running AL4.

First copy all folders in this folder by navigating to ProgramData\Arturia\Presets\FactoryEdit and selecting all with ctl-a. I did this by attaching the old drive to my new computer, so in my case the root drive was K:. If you cannot mount the old drive, you can copy these folders to a new folder and zip it up, then copy to your new computer (say desktop) and then select all with ctl-a.

Navigate to the new computer's C:\ProgramData\Arturia\Presets\FactoryEdit and past all of these folders.

Navigate to C:\ProgramData\Arturia\Presets and delete the db.db3 file. Scary yes but it is recreated by AL4 on start-up.

Start AL4 and wait about 3 minutes for the db to be fully recreated. Voila! your favs are restored.

Hope this comes in handy for others, thanks to all for the info to put this together!

[computermusic]

Thank you! This is what I have been looking for.