Dual monitors and sizing window issues with Cubase 6

Cubase
1

I’m coming from SX3 with XP where I use dual monitors. Of course as a result of using two screens I need to stretch the Cubase program window to fill both monitors. Then, I size the project window to fill the left screen completely and size the two mixer views and the VST instrument rack to fill the screen. Never been a problem with SX3 but with Cubase 6 and Windows 7 when I do this it keeps creating horizontal and vertical scroll bars and it’s rather frustrating. If I place any window (ie. Mixer, VST instrument rack, etc, anywhere near about 1/4" near the edge of the window is creates the scroll bars thus wasting my screen space and causing Windows to shift over at times. I am not in any way going past the window edge and there are no other Windows open that I’m simply forgetting causing this.

Is there a fix or workaround for this? I’ve seen many complaints about Cubases’ windowing online Googling it. I’m still using two 17" screens so this matters greatly to me at this point. Thanks in advance for any help anyone can lend.


Rev.

2

Ok, let me take a stab at this. I run two 20" monitors in C6 but use XPSP3, not Win7. It’s possible Win7 has got something different going but I don’t think so. C6 has a lot of control.

I am with you on the first part, stretching the project across two screens, roger. Then you drop the project window into the left screen, putting the mixer and VST inst.rack on the right screen. Do I have this correct?

Assuming I do, I would suggest you might try something different? Instead of dropping the project window onto the left screen, drag it ALSO across the two screens.

Open your mixer on the right screen like you normally do. Assuming you have your ASIO connections worked out and all connections to inputs and outputs established, phasing etc., close out your mixer. Then press F3, which opens the mixer, and closes it, too. (Get used to using this keyboard command, BTW). Now right click on the mixer and discover a gray option window. Here select ‘Always on top’ (the first line) and the next line says ‘Window’. Here as you hover on ‘Window’ there are two extended options - make sure neither of them are with a check mark. This will shorten your mixer window. If you need to get back to phasing etc., you will need to get back here to put a check on one of those options to open the mixer up, BTW. As you noticed running things like you were, the mixer can step outside the Project box and hide all the vertical and horizontal scrolls. …Er, you are experiencing this, right?

The VST instrument rack opens and closes the same way, but with F11. Set it in your right hand screen like you did, just above the mixer, far right hand side maybe. Remember, if it gets behind the mixer, you need to close the mixer (F3) to find it. Again, get used to opening and closing this as needed with the F11 key.

Did this help? You might want to get into the keyboard command thing, it really helps.

3

Thanks for the reply Roos. That is correct. The project window is on the left monitor with the two mixers and the VST rack on the right. My top mixer is just audio and group channels and my bottom mixer right below it is only VSTi channels. The VST rack is to the right of the bottom mixer. They are all within the boundary of the Cubase window but in Cubase 6 as I size up the mixer towards the edge the scroll bars appear even before I reach the the window border.

But if I do this then the project playback will continue to the right monitor and be in the background underneath the mixers and VST rack. I don’t want to do that nor do I want to close and open the mixer and VST windows all the time. The way I currently have it running in SX3 is perfectly ideal for the way I work, I’d prefer to keep it that way.

It’s just an odd quirk that should have some form of resolution. I’m not losing tons of screen space so it’s not an incredibly tremendous issue, but it definitely is one I would like to resolve as for now I’m not yet buying newer larger monitors.


Rev.

4

OK Rev, I understand, we all have our ways.

What I wonder is, if you like the single screen for tracks, why not open the tracks on one monitor, and pull all your other devices over to the second one? In other words, don’t drag your Project across two screens. This would work, right?

5

Nah, sorry, it would only let you have a mixer and the transport on the second screen. :angry:

But this said, when you said you couldn’t hide or cover the scrolling edges, I can lay the mixer, etc., right over them. Did I hear you right the first time?

6

Well the issue is the scroll bars go on top of the mixer since they basically place themselves on top of the inside content, if that makes sense the poor way I’m describing it. So the mixer, or whatever window, won’t sit on top of the scroll bars as they are inside the window and can’t go on top of the programs master window, at least not that I’ve seen.

I’m going to try something else when I next install Cubase 6, I was about to give up on Cubase 6 but I solved the problem of one of my favorite synths not showing up in Windows 64bit, was a .dll the synth uses that needed copying over to a specific Windows directory. Anyhow, so this weekend I am going to install it again and also try lowering the Windows Border Padding to 1 or 0. Just to see if that helps at all. At the very least I’ll get a pinch more actual workspace. I’ll still be searching for a good solution to this and if I find anything I’ll certainly post it here. But if anyone else has suggestions please keep 'em coming!


Rev.

7

Rev - Hey, are you sure about this? Over here, I can drag and drop the mixer and the transport on a screen that doesn’t have a Cubase backdrop. Know what I mean? Like if I open C6 on one screen, I can open the mixer or transport and drag it into the other screen, independant of everything else.

Now, that’s all I can do this with, BTW, everything else does what you describe. ???

Thinking further, I am wondering why Steinberg did this? I mean, if you could do it with everything, it might be better for people doing what you do. ?? What were they thinking?

8

Reading your post again, you seem convinced that you can’t drop the mixer on the scroll bar. Hm, I can easily. So this means that I have maybe done something to let this happen - but I sure can’t recall what that was. ?? Maybe there is something in the Project Setup window that I clicked on. :confused:

Anybody?

9

Do you have the mixers set to “Always on top”? I’ve read about it but when I right click on the mixers I don’t see that option. That might make this possible. If so, than yes, that would definitely be a solution! I won’t be able to try this again until this weekend when the replacement hard drive and memory show up this week. I will post again after trying this and let you all know how it went. Thanks again for your time looking into this for me Roos! I truly do appreciate it :wink:


Rev.

10

Hm, that must be it now that I think about it, and somehow the transport is included or is just ‘always on top’ maybe.

Keep clicking on the mixer, that window will come up eventually. :sunglasses:

11

Right click in the window in a blank area just under the caption bar to see the option.

Also Plug-in editors Editors “Always on Top” option in Preferences/VST/Plug-ins.

12

Rev - Woah, on another post - on another subject by ‘crotchety’ - that seems to be resolved, you mention a way to ‘loop record’ a vocal part and then use ‘Event to Part’ to pick the best of what you’ve recorded to place in the recording. Man, I am completely blind to this and would really appreciate it if you could explain your process to me - or at least show me where I can learn this feature? I can’t find this in the C6 manual or in the SWA download I purchased and I am sure it would make my process much better.

What I do right now is to overdub a part onto another track until we have something we can use. If it’s not good enough, I take another pass until it is. It seems you are talking about something like the Group Record process, where you end up with a lot of takes, but without stopping the DAW? Did I read this right? No, not interested in the ‘lanes thing’ talked about in the post, or the Group Record process. Your enthusiasm for your method was enough to make me ask you what it is you are doing. Do you mind? :question:

13

Not a problem. What you do is setup your markers and record in loop mode, let’s say Audio Track 1 for this example. Have the singer or instrument player keep singing or playing their part for each loop (or “take”). Then let’s say you did 4 takes and you think you have enough good takes in there to work with you stop the recording. Cubase created all those takes but they are layered on top of one another. You then select the whole audio part within the markers then go to the Audio menu at the top of the screen and choose “Events to Part”. This combines all those takes into one part file. Then you simply double click the part and the audio editor window pops up and you will see all those takes layed out from top to bottom in lanes - not to be confused with lanes in the project window though very similar.

From there you select a track you want to hear - in Cubase 6 I believe you simply click the track whereas the older versions you would mute all tracks and just leave the one you want to hear unmuted. From there you see what parts of the take you think are best and compare with the other takes. you then use the scissor tool to “Cut” pieces of each lane and leave the one’s you want unmuted and the one’s you are not using muted. It’s kinda hard explaining this especially without having Cubase in front of me. So let’s try a different approach.

You take a singer singing, “I want to live forever, see the world as it changes, learn all there is to learn”. You do a loop recording and the singer sings that passage 4 times. Then you select the whole part in the project window and choose Audio → Events to Part. Then double click the part and you see the 4 lanes showing those takes.

In the first take you like how he emphasized “I want to live forever” better than he did in the other 3 takes. So you use the scissor tool and cut at the end of that line and mute what comes after. Now you listen to the other takes and find on the third take he sang the next line “see the world as it changes” best and in the other takes his pitch was off. So, you now cut at the beginning and end of that line and mute what is before and after it so just that one line is heard. Then you find on take 4 he sang the last line “learn all there is to learn” best so you also cut that part and mute before and after it so just that one part is heard.

Now when you playback you will hear a full take that is made up of the best sections of each take. I hope this makes sense. I’ve been working this way in Cubase forever and it works awesome. When my singer comes over with the lyrics he’d just written to one of our tracks he’ll often sing things a little differently on each pass, sometimes intentionally and sometimes by accident, and it leads to some interesting options. So, we usually do a scratch recording so I can point out to him what I feel his best ways of singing each part were. I then give him a copy and we pretty much finalize the whole tracks vocal part and how it’s sang. When doing our final recordings this is also a blessing since he might sing a whole part wonderfully but just mess up one word. Then I can cut the bad word out and use a good one from one of the other takes.


Rev.

14

Rev - Man, thank you! OK, I see the simplicity in your method and also the ease of use. This is brilliant, Rev. This will change my game. :smiley:

Rev, sincerely, thank you for sharing this!! YOU ROCK!!!

15

My pleasure, and thank you as well for helping out with my window issue. I followed Patanjai’s info to finally see “Always on Top” and any window set this way can indeed be brought over to the right monitor window outside of the maximized project window. The thing about always on top that won’t work for me though is the instance you click on the background space it hides all the windows, which I can imagine I would accidentally click often and it would be annoying.

Anyway, I think I’ll be fine with the windowing thing. As mentioned I will be setting up again this weekend so I’ll give it another go.

By the way, I believe with Cubase 6 selecting a cut piece of a take auto mutes all the others so you shouldn’t need to mute all the other takes as like in prior versions. I only briefly played with 6 but I did notice that selecting a part auto mutes the parts in the other takes which greatly speeds workflow. As mentioned, in older versions you had to manually mute the other takes. Cubase would only play one take at a time anyway but it always played the bottom most part I believe so if you were trying to only playback the snippet you cut on take 2 for example you still had to mute the parts below it. Shouldn’t be necessary anymore with 6 I think.


Rev.

16

Rev - Hm, it also looks like you can shorten or lengthen each take in the Editor window, combine them into one take, copy this, and finally paste it in your track. I did this and it seemed to work fine. But do keep in mind I was using three takes consisting of nothing plugged into my mixer - so this was ‘silence’ I was chopping up and putting together.

Well, I may be incorrect then, or this may be something C6 offers that you are not familiar with yet. I will dink with this some more tomorrow. I am now at least in the game. :smiley: Thank you again! :smiley: :smiley: :smiley:

17

So, interesting news. I reinstalled today since my PC stuff came. I only installed the 6.0.1 update since I’d read some complaints about 0.2 and none of the newer fixes really apply to my workflow. I also did the Windows border padding change to 0 and now I have no problems whatsoever with the scroll bars showing up and sizing the windows!! Even if I go past the boarder I’m not even getting the scroll bars. I am VERY happy right now. I don’t know what exactly did it but it’s going great right now.


Rev.

18

I’ve been following this with interest as I am running 2 20" monitors and have updated my computer with W7 (x64) when I went from C5 to C6. Never had these issues. In fact, Had the results Mr. Roos details since adding the 2nd screen. I have tried to make intentional changes as listed here but have not been able to achieve the same results yet. Maybe that’s a good thing?

All I have ever done is to stretch the project screen to the extreme right and it all just falls into place. Every startup opening, it’s all right there

19

Yeah, that’s exactly how it always was with SX3 as well, never was a problem. But anyhow, I don’t know what changed but I am no longer having this issue. It’s behaving perfectly now.


Rev.

20

I don’t have dual monitors yet, but I’m trying to picture what you’re all doing. If I understand correctly, this mostly works because you have two monitors side-by-side, correct?

If one wanted to, say, have one monitor on a desktop and another diagonally up and over from it on the wall, that would make the geometry and mouse movement confusing at least.

And if the monitors were different heights, then when you stretched that main window “across both”, you’d end up with areas that were not on any monitor (and my luck that’s where all the important dialog boxes would decide to pop up).

So given the non-adjacent, differently-sized monitor situation, does Cubase really work all that well in its current form?