Instantly 'expand' (zoom) a particular track

Hola 'bergers,

I accept that to anyone who knows the answer to this, it’s going to be something soooo simple and I’m going to kick myself. However after scouring the manual and the key commands list, I just can’t find what I’m looking for, so would hugely appreciate if anyone can help me out here as this small thing will greatly improve my workflow.

Everytime my prefs were reset, or when starting a new version of cubase ie 5 to 6, there was this ‘annoying’ feature (I’ve quoted that because turns out it’s actually pretty handy), where it would expand a track in the arrangment window to full size. I kept hitting it by mistake and it was doing my swede in having to resize the track everytime I accidentally hit the required combo, something’s telling me it was a similar combo to CTRL + Z. So, being the imbecile I sometimes am, I deleted the key command. Happy days. Until I suddenly realised, hang on, I’m wasting time expanding tracks I need to see in more detail with CTRL + Up / Down, when I could just hit a key and pop it up full-size. A month later and I’m pulling my hair out trying to find this key command so I can create a new shortcut to it!

Any help would be very much appreciated. Cheers!

Hej Hyperstate

Zoom - Zoom Tracks Exclusive

:wink:

Best
Bo

Heya Bo,

Big thanks for that suggestion… unfortunately all it did was make all the tracks tiny! It’s become an obsession now to the point where I’ve sat here all day going through all the key commands again, and think I’ve found a solution… Edit - Enlarge Selected Track seems to do the trick, just need to remember to turn it off when finished with that particular track or it maximises whatever you click on!

Dear Hyperstate,

select the event and press ‘Alt + s’. Is that what you are looking for?

Regards

Trash Prefs :stuck_out_tongue:

One of the mods used to have a sig link to a post that went into about half a dozen different zoom options. I couldn’t find it via google … anyone else remember that/can find it?

Idongo, thanks for that, that’s a killer track zoom that I didn’t know about!! :slight_smile:

select the event and press ‘Alt + s’. Is that what you are looking for?

Regards

Nice. And the command(s) to go straight back to your previous state/view is…? (zoom, position, track height etc…). Please don’t tell me a workspace/screenset type move.

I would like to use Alt+s as you suggest from wherever I am in the Arrange page, but be able to immediately go back to where I was (undo the zoom…?). Possible…? What am I missing…? :wink:

Bob

Hit the ‘Z’ key.

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Thank you for your reply mr. roos… I can hardly believe it mind (something right there and so simple that I’ve overlooked…!). I will be able to check this later.

Well, that didn’t work… Maybe you saw the word ‘Undo’ and just knee-jerked your post out…? sigh…

I’ll investigate the other Zoom shortcuts. I can see that I can get back to a known state, if not exactly to where I was before hitting ALT+S - that would be fab… :wink:

I guess this is not what you wanted. Hm. In my case Alt+s pulls up a huge selected track, and then hitting z compresses every track on the board - which is awesome for my needs.

This is exactly what I also need all the time: a quick way to zoom in horizontally AND vertically on a track and, with the SAME command, go back to the original state. I thought it would be very obvious that this comes handy to edit a track, for example cut the start point exactly or draw the handle a few ms. But I neither have found a perfect way to do so. My workaround are the screensets, but they don´t zoom at the cursor/track center but at the point where you saved them. You have to press “start” first to get to the point you want to edit. But then, with very big zooms, your start point already has run out of the window…:frowning:

Fastest way to zoom into a certain part of the arrange is the zoom tool/magnifier glass thing to me, quickly accessed by “6”. Created a macro to see the complete arrange with a single keystroke (not at Cubase atm, don’t exactly remember what single commands it’s made of but definately nothing too complicated…).

That way I constantly zoom in to whatever I want to see and when I’m done I return to my ‘whole window’ view. All day long :sunglasses:

ctrl-f is zoom to fit by default.

Yeah - thats great an all, and I’m pleased for you… I just couldn’t work like that myself. :slight_smile:

I’m beginning to think no-one really uses ALT+S combo, for this very reason; you simply cannot back out of it to where you were before you hit it.

I never start any work from a ‘full song’ zoom view; for a full top-to-toe playback perhaps… but generally, I like to be honed in on a section of interest at the time. Say a vocal o/dub on a verse. I’ll zoom to a convenient view (horizontally using ‘G’ and ‘H’ keys and set a comfortable number of tracks and height), and do my dubs.

I’m suggesting, it would be nice if I wanted to quickly go to a big zoom-in on say a vocal ‘plosive’ that needs a quick edit, I might use the ALT+S combo to more easily see things (and do the edit or whatever) and then hit a key to return to my ‘dubbing’ view I just had. Sadly, this seems not do-able, so, I don’t use it…

But, I am going to look further at the range/zoom tool behaviour you suggest; thanks for that. Its what happens after that is the important bit; the getting back out of your zoom. Sorry, I just couldn’t be having to deal with any full zoom-out afterwards - that would totally kill my workflow… :wink:

Plus, I don’t want anything thats going to screw up all my track heights I’ve carefully set, as the session progressed, ever… ! Thus, in summary, if something does (i.e ALT+S), I need to know I’ve got a big quick ‘return-to-exactly-where-you-were’ escape clause. :wink:

Bob

I remember seeing an ‘undo zoom’ command somewhere. Never used it, but maybe that’s of some use?

Indeed my method won’t suffice then…

Does the Preference: “Zoom selected track” do it for you?

I’m not at DAW to check …

I suppose you mean

Enlarge Selected Track

in the Edit menu:

To set the track height automatically when you select a track, click Edit > Enlarge Selected Track.