Live 12 Browser Tags : bug or intended behaviour? (and other questions...)

[whyterabbyt]

Im trying to get my head around the new Live12 browser and its tagging system, and I think I might be missing something; either Live just isnt working how I would expect it to work, or its behaviour is somewhat inconsistent by default. Or possibly broken?
Futzing around with this also raised a couple of other questions, wondering if anyone might know the answers to them.
Im getting a bit frustrated by this as Im trying to sort out all the Max4Live devices I have, and its just... messy.

So this is the crux of it; the Library behaviour seems inconsistent in searching for tags depending on which Library 'section' Im using. There's a big difference between what 'All' in the Library includes, and what the other sections* include, eg Instrument or Max for Live...
(*except Plug-ins, of course, which has always actually been technically different from the rest of Library and sorta still basically is wrt locations etc)

So Ive got a bunch of M4L stuff Ive picked up from various places. The main thing about that though, is that 3rd party content can wind up packaged and installed in rather different ways, so ultimately you wind up with some stuff in the 'Factory Packs' folder like Ableton's own content but with some stuff... somewhere else. Maybe several places else.

Now what I had been doing for the 'something else', was putting them in a folder called '3rd Party Packs', which I'd added to Places. Because that was being clever, right, and there was no obvious other place to put them.
And since the structure of a Folder added to Places is exactly the folder structure, I'd set that up that so it was fairly hierarchic and well organised. All well and good, but of course, not unified with anything that wound up in Factory Packs and thus Places>Packs. Which was kinda annoying.
Until Live12 and the opportunity to use search tags and filters and all that stuff for making things so much better, right?
Nope.

Here's the TL;DR bit, the thing that appears to be an actual inconsistency. if something is in a folder that isnt one of Live's special magic predefined folders, like Factory Packs, then it will only appear in searches of the 'All' section of the Library.
So, for example, no matter how you tag stuff, or where you tag stuff, tagged Max For Live devices in '3rd Party Packs' will not appear in a tag-based search of the 'Max for Live' section of the Library, but they will appear in a tag-based search of the 'All' section of the Library.
Now it turns out that the User Library folder is one of those special magic predefined folders as well, so if you're too smart and create a custom folder for third part stuff, that wont work, but if you put them in the folder seemingly intended solely for your own personal stuff, well that works just fine.

Am I missing something obvious here (which is definitely possible, I'll admit), or just a case of 'WTF, Ableton?'
What's the actual point of custom folders, if they're deliberately not included properly in searches in the all-singing all-dancing new search system? Or is this just broken?
Sigh.

Anyway, any thoughts appreciated.
Also wondering about these:

A. How do I do 'nested' tags like the inbuilt Sounds and Drums have (ie Bass>808 Bass, Bass>Electric Bass etc)
B. How do I copy a tags setup to Live12 on another system?
C. I seem to be able to tag Packs, but searches for those Tags dont include the Packs, or any of their contents as results. So what's the point of being able to do it?
D. The new browser seems to include a massive step-back in functionality for the Plug-Ins section of the Library, which used to be structured as per my carefully-curated-over-20-years plugin folder structure. Now the default is one stupid big list, all structure gone. Appalling. Is there any setting to return to the old behaviour?


Aside. Anyone else find the multiplicity of methods of installing stuff to Live and the difference in where it winds up to be ridiculous?

• 1.All the Live-included packs plus a bunch of other Packs, Ableton and 3rd Party that are sold 'officially' from Ableton are directly installable from within Places>Packs>

• 2. some other Packs that dont come from Ableton come as .alp files, and install automatically into Places>Packs 'properly' (ie they're in the Factory Packs folder)

• 3. some other Packs that that dont come from Ableton come as .alp files, but have to be located 'somewhere' manually and dont get seen in the Factory Packs folder even if you put them there

• 4. some stuff just comes as collections of 'loose' files that have to be located entirely 'somewhere' manually and dont get seen in the Factory Packs folder even if you put them there

How many ways to do the same basic thing is that? Bit of a f**king mess, really. 1 and 2 are fine. Why cant method 3 or 4 use the Factory Folder, though?

[whyterabbyt]

Noone?

sigh.

[nanostream]

I guess we’re all still figuring things out, at least I am. Sorry

Have you tried at Ableton‘s forums already?

[whyterabbyt]

I guess we’re all still figuring things out, at least I am. Sorry

Have you tried at Ableton‘s forums already?

Nah, no problem, my knowledge of Live is admittedly rather shallow, so I was kinda hoping this was obvious to someone who knows it better.

And no, not tried their own forums yet, but will do. Cheers!

[street spirit]

Its really difficult to get an explanation about the tagging system in Live 12's browser. Probably better to see first hand how some of those influencers on Youtube are navigation through the shit storm. Yeah, i still cant vibe with it yet either.

[nanostream]

I can speak only for myself, but it’s not that I can’t vibe with it. Quite the opposite, I love it. In general it works really well and is far better than the old browser.

However, it’s rather complex — or flexible, if you will — and there’s always the danger of trying to impose outdated approaches on a structurally completely different solution. I, for example, couldn’t care less about a „carefully-curated-over-20-years plugin folder structure“. I just switch to Plug-Ins, filter for Instrument (or Audio Effect), Format and Creator, save the search if really necessary, and I‘m done. But what works for me doesn’t necessarily mean it works for everyone or OP (or is even practical).

So far I’ve worked mostly with a combination of Collections and tags. This *seems* to be the best way to organize tagged plugins, m4l devices, presets and sounds, all in one place. It doesn’t seem to matter if those files or folders live in my User Library, my system VST3 folder, in Packs or wherever. And I don’t have to deal with those pesky m4l duplicates, presumably created when using Collect All and Save, which are cluttering my All section when searching. But you can’t save those searches while in Collections, which is a bummer, so I’m reluctant to recommend it as a solution. Again, I’m still in the process of figuring it all out

Anyway, you can create nested tags by using | (f.e. Bass|808Bass), at least I can answer this one. Apparently, as of now it’s only documented at Centercode and not in the manual.

All in all it’s quite obvious it’s still very much work in progress, so I’ve decided not to invest too much energy in it for now. I’ll rather wait until the dust settles, and in the meantime continue using Collections and saved searches, which is working well enough for me.