New Website for Sharing Bitwig Presets

[sth]

lunardigs those were all very good ideas. I had some links setup but they were inconsistent; now they're basically everywhere you'd want them. Also, I didn't launch with the download count because it would be small and discouraging. You could Order By Downloads but that was it. I've shown the Download count on the Preset Detail page now

[aMUSEd]

OK I've uploaded some Treemonster presets I made (as there weren't any that came with it) but I can't upload my Device Panels yet, any way for me to do that?

[sth]

aMUSEd, I haven't started that functionality yet, but it's a bit more complex than what already exists so it will be a little while before it's ready. Simply put, the Presets are a rather flat and uninteresting file structure and you can even drag a Preset file onto Bitwig to use it; whereas the Device Panels require a very specific folder and file structure in order to work. I need to make this very easy for uploaders and downloaders alike.

[aMUSEd]

Yeah, that's why I always save them in a zip with the plugin name that unzips to the correct folder name because the whole system in Bitwig is so untransparent.

[lunardigs]

lunardigs those were all very good ideas. I had some links setup but they were inconsistent; now they're basically everywhere you'd want them. Also, I didn't launch with the download count because it would be small and discouraging. You could Order By Downloads but that was it. I've shown the Download count on the Preset Detail page now

Sweet! You really did make everything clickable.
Yeah, with respect to small download numbers, I think most would understand. I also think it's encouraging for contributors too. It already makes me want to upload more--which I shall surely do.

Btw, are you using a CMS for this site? Just curious.

Also, a Chain preset should be a workable way to deliver a "Device Panel", right? Unless I don't fully understand that term.

[sth]

It's not really a CMS, but building a CMS with the same framework wouldn't be hard. It's pretty flexible but it's all represented in code and structured data, and not a GUI.

A Chain or similar containers could "wrap" something into a nicer custom panel, but it's not exactly the Device Panels that I want to get in Bitwiggers. A better temporary workaround would be to load the init patch of the desired Device/VST, create the Remote Controls in the Preset portion, then save this as a "Default" Preset and upload that. It's not ideal of course.

aMUSEd has coordinated and with the help of others created a large library of "default" Remote Controls for many VSTs (when you edit Remote Controls, these are the ones at the bottom and not the ones that are for the Preset). They could be laid out similarly to the plugin or sometimes they're much different but better to use with Bitwig's interface. When you add the VST to your Track, it will already have the Remote Controls setup which makes them significantly easier to use with a MIDI Controller or through Bitwig's UI.

The thing is, I don't think Bitwig anticipated users wanting to share these files, because you have to dig around to find them. When you create or edit the Remote Controls (for the Device portion, not the Preset-specific ones) and save them, they are saved in your "My Content" library but they're not immediately visible to you. They're in "<My Content>/.settings/<Device or VST Id>/Default.bwremotecontrols" and note the "hidden" settings folder and that the files are named the same but they're inside of specifically named folders.

aMUSEd gets around this by zipping them properly such that you simply unzip them to the right place and it works. I need to automate that in Bitwiggers and explain to users how to properly use them.

[aMUSEd]

The thing is, I don't think Bitwig anticipated users wanting to share these files, because you have to dig around to find them.

Yeah I don't think they did either, but I don't know why because they include device panels for several third-party plugins (as well as of course for all native ones) so they must have expected people to want to make their own for the plugins that don't have one (which they provide the tools to do) but that's a lot of effort so it's natural to want to save them to back up at least for yourself; sharing them just seemed a logical next step from that because it means some of that effort can be distributed socially.

Anyway I digress, don't want to divert from your site, clever way you have made it automatic. I was thinking though, it would be useful to have a way to edit something after upload (eg in one I got the tags wrong on reflection), or do I just re-edit the same preset in Bitwig and re-upload it? How does it handle that, say if I change the tags or preset itself but it still has the same name?

[hrrld]

About a month on, how is this going? Any traffic numbers?

I was just thinking that the home page could have a longer list of 'recent' stuff, with date times, so we could get a sense for how momentum is building for the site.

[sth]

Thanks for your interest! I made logging and analytics a priority shortly before launch, so I can definitely report on that. I made a very "local" and "manual" approach compared to something like Google Analytics, so rest assured that any data is just honestly just used to gauge interest and impacts. I don't make money from this, but I would never compromise user's data or experience (tracking ,ads, etc.) for that purpose.

Anyways... usage in general is very "peaky," where usage means registrations, downloads, reviews, etc. Registrations are roughly two a day, and about 100 happened in the first 48-hours. Uploads are more interesting, because most days they do not happen, but when they do, users are sending batches; so the average is also roughly two a day but it's far more peaky than that. Downloads are far more common and are either someone downloading most things, or just a few here and there; roughly 10 a day excluding the large peaks. Reviews happen the least but that's an involved process so that makes sense; I'm trying to make an effort on this myself since I have more time now

Browsing around is higher than I expected, with roughly 300 pages a day (excluding bots), off from a peak about 2400 from the launch day. I will make this a metric now that I think about it, but roughly from the logs I can see about half/half anonymous/registered browsing over the past few days.

I can show more recent things for sure. I've spent the weeks back making music, but I do have a fairly fleshed out roadmap for this. I want to show more data from the presets, allow uploads of other things (clips, device panels, maybe projects?), make the UI more client-centric (searching and paging in your browser instead of loading new pages each time), and perhaps start emailing (opt-in) when reviews happen for your presets, or digests of new uploads, for example. Totally open to user feedback as well

[u-u-u]

I think what is missing (at least for me) is the ability to preview stuff before downloading. So if I could listen to a quick example of what a preset is capable of, it would help me to decide which one I actually would want to try. Otherwise I would have to download all of them at once. But then I never come to the point to review all my downloaded presets So the way it is at the moment there should be the possibility to download all presets at once/do cloud sync with the database or preview presets directly from the website.

[aMUSEd]

Surprised a bit how little it seems to be being used, maybe people aren't that into presets? I uploaded a bunch of my own Treemonster presets over a month ago thinking since this is a device that can do a lot of crazy stuff but didn't come with any presets of its own they would be popular but almost no one has downloaded them and if I look at other presets often they are just in the 1's and 2's. Since they can't be previewed and haven't been reviewed it can't be about liking or not liking them.

[SpaceCadetOnLeave]

I'm not that surprised.
Things like this are nice, smart and a good thing while inventing it. But the problem is always the people, submitting everything, and I mean everything. The bigger the database gets the more it gets too cumbersome digging through, because of the variations of the variations of the variations and the lack of originality.
Initiatives like this need substantial content from people who know what they are doing. For instance, no experimental DC synths or the like, nobody uses that.

Maybe separate sections could work:
Learn (Learn how stuff works),
Pro (Till now, only seen by a very close to the dev team itself few), maybe 'Learn from the Pro' would be a better name.
Picks (Editorial stuff chosen by people who can and have to much time on their hands),
maybe more? idk.
Ok , maybe,
Community (For people who think there is a community, and that it's waiting for more and more and more),
Nerd (waste your time as a musician on non-musical sound toy-ism).

And it may be wise to act quickly because there is something on it's way that may proof to be a (factory) preset-jockeying heaven. Yup this grid vsti thingy is going to be huge in this context.

Btw I like the idea but I'm passing because I think presets are private, just like templates, they are how I work, compose. I can not imagine they would be of any help to anybody. But that is me.

[hrrld]

Thanks for your interest!

For sure, thanks for building the site. I'm glad to hear you're doing music, that does seem to be the aim of all this, ha!

I'm also glad it's not dead, in my limited experience with tools like this it is about persisting in existence until a kind of critical-mass is reached. I'd say just keep working to make it smoother and more engaging and it could eventually take off.

Regardless, I appreciate the update, wish you luck, and encourage you to keep at it.

Warmly,
-Harold

[sth]

I would rather not get into the syncing business; these presets don't update, and I only like working on Linux which surely does not have as many users, and I'd rather not do any Windows or MacOS development either. That said, the site knows what you've downloaded, so it could be a "download all un-downloaded" presets feature. In that case, I can provide unique zipped files that maintain the folder hierarchy that Bitwig likes!

I've given thought to automating previews. I'd rather not have users upload them (increased barrier to entry), but on-the-other-hand automating them will have pitfalls (ever looked over presets on Splice?). It's the most work of any of these features so it's fuzzier on the roadmap. However... Clips are the most ideal scenario as the user would have already decided on the sound, the upload would be super easy, and the audio preview would be exact.

Curated or well-known content might be king. I still think the rating system enables that, but as we've seen that's at the far, tiny end of a funnel. I'm not opposed to "promoting" users or somehow incentivizing them to review presets. I don't have the effort in me yet to massively review these, but I personally enjoy downloading a few as they come in, try them out in my session, and review them afterwards.

We might be able to solve the "large data" problem with a better dashboard. Showing more items on it, and more types of items (popular devices, users, very descriptive). I don't imagine users browsing all the presets, which is why they're filterable. I only see two types of users: someone who wants to download everything, and someone who wants to see cool presets for the Bit-8, for example.

[brownerthanu]

I think it will take a while to integrate the site into their habits. I still haven’t joined but I love the idea. I just forget about it. Let’s just keep mentioning it and linking from this forum. It might be useful to occasionally update this forum of new or exciting presets that have been uploaded.