I have assigned Ctrl-End to the Cubase function “Go to Project End”. When I press this key combination, the cursor goes to the beginning.
I also created a macro that uses the same command and assigned that to the keys and got the same result.
If I create an event on a track at the end of the project, “Go to Project End” DOES work as expected.
It appears that with a fresh project, if I immediately create a Cycle Marker with the Locators at their default position, then “Go to Project End” does work.
It seems that this creates a bit of a catch-22 situation if the locators are moved from the default positions before creating a Cycle Marker. It appears that the only way out of this situation is to create an initial Cycle Marker at the start of the project BEFORE changing the Locators positions.
It seems that there should be a “Go to” command that moves the cursor to the end of the project as defined in the Project Setup dialog.
There is a workaround to this confusion by simply ensuring that a Cycle Marker is created BEFORE moving the Locators. That said, it’s not a showstopper after discovering this. However, I did spend significant time figuring this out.
Essentially, “Go to Project End” is actually “Go to End of the last Event/Marker.” In a fresh project with no events, “Go to Project End” actually goes to the beginning.
If there are no events in the project, then it technically isn’t a project. It is a blank slate. That is why it takes you to the last event. So I don’t see the problem?
I honestly don’t think the tape metaphor fits for projects.
A “project” wasn’t really an identifiable object on tape. In tape based studios, we had to keep meticulous external notes/documentation for any metadata (projects, track names, location of parts, etc).
Tapes are simply a storage medium.
And a project is not a storage medium, but a collection of data.
So the end of an empty data collection being the same as the start makes considerable sense to me.
It’s all down to how you define “End of Project”.
Right or wrong, Steinberg obviously take it to mean “End of the last piece of data”.
Another reason to use Templates - one with Markers, if nothing else.
It all boils down to the way how Steinberg defines these functions inside the DAW, not so much how it translates to real world scenarios. That’s where a proper documentation would be highly appreciated.
Also, there’s the possibility to define tbe project time in Cubase’s project setting dialog. I am not sure, though, if Cubase is prepared to track John Cage’s classical masterpiece Organ2/ASLSP with an estimated duration of over 600 years. Might get tricky when it comes to adjusting the fade out. @Googly_Shakespeare , you have these ultrawide monitors, right?
It was the act of working on creating templates and some integration with Companion that led me to this conclusion. I generally do create an initial cycle marker. In this case, I was deleting and moving around markers and locators while testing some mapping to the controller emulation.
I spent a fair amount of time working through preemptively what was happening to discover difficulty accomplishing the task of a macro that would create my initial marker.
I suppose another way one might approach the thought: perhaps if a project initially has the same or no beginning nor end, then why is there a “length” definition in the Project Settings and why are there locators pointing to that end?
As I said, not critical and has “workaround”, but unexpected when discovered. Had there been a function/key command for “Go to ruler end” or some such, we wouldn’t be having this discussion.
So far, it seems more philosophical, and perhaps humorous discussion over how one might choose to abstract logical data in reference to the ancient ways of data containment.
Length is called Duration. It serves a couple of purposes. The most important is of a graphical nature: it defines the scrollable area (horizontally). If you set the duration to 10 seconds you can navigate the screen on the length of 10 seconds. If you set it to 10 ours… just observe the length of the horizontal scroll bar of the project window.
Another purpose is that any playback of Cubase will be halted if the playhead cursor reaches the project duration’s end.
NB: I don’t want to get involved in the discussion whether the “End” command should move the cursor to the last event of the project or the end point of the project duration. Just replying to a question.
I think that’s the more interesting question - also since that particular piece of metadata seems to be ignored by Cubase upon opening a project with any events after the time entered there. That issue has been a somewhat regular source of threads in this forum over the years.
My best guess is that it’s a leftover from an earlier design, that never got properly cleaned up as Cubase functionality grew over the decades.
And that kind of historical inconsistency is pretty normal in long lived large pieces of software - kind of analogous to a large old building, where renovations don’t re-do the whole building at once, resulting in inconsistencies.
That’s fair! I wasn’t actually expecting this much discussion. I discovered an unexpected behavior and somewhat proposed a solution, fully prepared for the “works as designed” end result. I was more interested in the fact that there was no existing command to solve the discovery.
