Looks like it still hasn’t been resolved yet. Is there any way we can click on a vst plugin or instrument parameter to quickly show that automation lane?
Hi,
Right-click the parameter > Show parameter_name Automation Track.
It doesn’t work on third party plugins
This is one of my complaints about Cubase/Nuendo. In Studio One you just click a parameter in any plugin and then press a keyboard shortcut and the lane pops up.
@stux.io , there is a little trick in Nuendo - not sure if its in Cubase though, but worth checking
Assign the “Preview” button in the Automation Panel to a keyboard shortcut, let’s say Alt+A.
Any parameter you want to see the lane for, including 3rd party plugins, do this:
1.Press Alt+A first
2.Click the parameter. Automation lane will pop up!
3. Press Alt+A two more times. This turns preview mode off (have to press it 2 times, first time turns it to “locked”, second time turns it off).
It works perfectly. Not as good as Studio One but it only takes like 1 second longer.
Again, not sure if this is possible in Cubase though. Does Cubase have the Automation Panel?
Unfortunately it doesn’t have the preview option in cubase pro 12. What I have been doing is arming write automation, wiggle parameter randomly to get the lane, delete recorded automation but keep the lane.
It does work on some third party, but most of them chose to override the default right click behavior for their own purposes, and then there is nothing Cubase can do.
I guess this is one of those cases where SB says “this is the correct way do do it”, but the rest of the world doesn’t care, because it is not practical or applicable to all the other hosts out there.
The pragmatic approach would be to offer another solution, like the S1 example here.
Hi,
VST3 standard offers this option, but most of the plug-in vendors don’t use it.
Right so if they don’t use the right click option, there should be another way to make it work without relying on plugin vendors to implement. Ableton has it where you just click on a parameter in the plugin and the lane shows.
Hi,
Steinberg prepared this option for the right-click in the VST3 specification. But the plug-in vendor doesn’t use it, so Steinberg should find a workaround in Cubase. Sorry, this doesn’t make any sense.
Let me take it a step back.
Use case is that user wants to automate a parameter on a 3rd party plugin without having to menu dive or having to record random automation and then delete it to get the automation lane.
Vst3 has solution, but requires 3rd party devs to implement it, but it isn’t enforced.
End result is that the use case is, in most cases, not solved.
There should be another way to accomplish this that doesn’t require all 3rd party devs to opt-in to implement something, or enforce it as a requirement so they all have it.
There is nothing they can do specifically for the right click menu, you mean.
All Steinberg has to do to fix this is make a “show last touched parameter” key command where you click any vst parameter, press the keyboard shortcut, and the lane pops up. This is how it works in Studio One and Reaper as well. Seems to me like a simple feature to implement.
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yep! Any plugin - stock, 3rd party, vst2, vst3, etc.
It’s not a workaround, it’s a quality-of-life feature that has existed in other DAWs for forever. You move a knob, press a key, and the lane pops up. Ableton even does this automatically without needing to press a key.
When you move a VST knob in Cubase, Cubase knows exactly which knob you are moving, all they have to do is allow us to be able to see that lane. I can’t imagine it a difficult thing to code (although I don’t know much about coding).
It’s already sort of possible in Nuendo as outlined in my post at the top of this thread…so the functionality is basically already there. They just need to make it 1 step easier.
This is an example of why you constantly see people bringing up Studio One on this forum. It’s so difficult to do simple things in Cubase. Something that should be 1 click or 1 keyboard shortcut takes like 6 steps in Cubase.
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Steinberg can insist on being technically right and having dissatisfied customers or implement a feature that competitors already have and that works very nicely for their customers.
Sometimes you are right but life doesn’t care.
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aka “the story of VST3” 
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Yep that is correct! It’s a DAW feature, not a plugin feature
Might be easier to describe with a short video (Sorry for poor quality had to compress to fit under 4mb). The current automation lane automatically changes to preview the value I click on the plugin UI. Notice how quick it is to set up a few automation lanes and map them to different plugin values.
Uploaded to YouTube. I just opened up a third party plugin that doesn’t support right click, and I can easily see the automation for any lane by just clicking on it, I can quickly populate a bunch of automation lanes by just clicking + then the parameter I want to automate for each lane. I’m pretty sure this feature is very old.
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This is clear DAW behavior expectation that Steinberg has chosen to try enforcing through the VST3 protocol.
Steinberg, VST3 is not the DAW. Stop enforcing behavior like this, including mouse wheel scroll and other functionality this way. Overlapping VST3 and DAW behavior is quickly becoming clearly a conflict of interest when it significantly impacts users in a negative way, and these things clearly have.
It is clearly possible to do these things; others have done it. It is beyond unreasonable to expect every single developer to implement everything your way to get functionality that is clearly possible without you forcing the issue through a plugin protocol that IS NOT THE DAW.
Im going to have to agree and say this cannot be done in vst3 because it’s already possible to compile a plugin without this behavior. It’s too late to enforce all new vst3’s to do this via right click menu, so it must be done in the daw.
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