New solution: Continuous pinch to zoom for Cubase on macOS

pnoqable · January 24, 2023, 3:39pm

Hi Guys,

I’m a longtime Cubase user, switched to a Macbook Pro last year and - like many others - immediately missed touchpad support from Cubase on macOS (see: pinch-to-zoom-with-a-touchpad/129419 and pinch-zoom-please-vote/137074). I did some research but didn’t find a satisfactory solution, only an outdated workaround requiring commercial software and producing bad user experience in Cubase (see: how-to-pinch-zoom-in-cubase-8/59411)

As a software developer, I have now taken care of this issue and programmed a small tool. It’s open source, free, and foolproof to use after a very short setup. It works great on my Intel Macbook and I’m now looking for testers with Intel and/or Apple Silicon Macs with a touchpad (both internal and Magic Touchpad are supported). If you belong to this group and also want to smoothly zoom with your trackpad in Cubase, take a look at PinchBar on GitHub:

It provides very smooth continuous zoom to the mouse pointer for all Cubase versions and supports modifiers (cmd and alt) for vertical zoom and waveform zoom. I am currently extending it for other use cases as well, e.g. support for more apps besides Cubase and a general zoom function for macOS with Magic Mice.

I’m looking forward to your reactions and maybe also from Steinberg, whom I suggest to integrate these features into the next macOS version of Cubase (I live near Hamburg and would like to present this project to you in-house).

Kindly,
Lutz Häußler

PS: Maybe somebody could make a short Youtube clip how to install and use PinchBar and link it here. It is pretty simple but I can imaging not every Cubase user is familiar with installation of software from outside the App Store…

steve · January 24, 2023, 5:12pm

please, post away. You’re authorized.

pnoqable · January 24, 2023, 5:13pm

thx

ozinga · January 26, 2023, 5:42am

Hello Lutz,

This is great!
Seems to work without issues on my M1 Max MacBook Pro in Native mode.

Thank you so much for your work.

pnoqable · January 26, 2023, 6:32pm

Glad to hear that! You sir are officially my very first tester Thank you very much, especially for the confirmation of Apple silicon compatibility (which I previously just claimed without really knowing xD)!

One more question: Do you use other Steinberg products as well? I wonder if lacking trackpad support is a thing in Nuendo, Wavelab and the like, too. I just don’t have no license to test…

ozinga · January 26, 2023, 10:38pm

I just have Cubase but should be useful for Nuendo as well.
I suggest to move the thread to Cubase 12 forum, which is more active so more people can see it

kroger · January 27, 2023, 2:59am

Works like a charm on my MacBook Pro M1 Pro. Thanks for developing this tool!

samirelborno · January 27, 2023, 11:43pm

Thanks for doing this.
I found it through vi control today. Will test it with Nuendo 12 on m1max as soon as possible.

pnoqable · January 28, 2023, 12:10pm

Hi@all, thank you for your kind feedback! And @ozinga thank you for promoting PinchBar on vi control! I’m pretty much a complete outsider to all daw/vi communities and really do appreciate every single contribution to advertise Pinch Bar!

As much as I like to further promote PinchBar here on other Steinberg forums, I think this thread would not fit well in Cubase 12 forum as it does not depend on Cubase’s version at all and users of all versions of Cubase shall know about this.

That said, maybe somebody can create a new topic in Cubase 12 showing how to “activate pinch to zoom in Cubase 12” or whatever. I can imagine many potential users don’t have no idea about how to add such a tool to their macOS and might feel a bit insecure about installing open source software on their beloved (proprietary xD) Macs. I tried to make the hurdle as low as I can, but I know how reluctant users can be to trying out such solutions…

The strongest argument for those I can imagine would be said short youtube clip, showing how easy PinchBar is to integrate, similar to how Andrew Goodwin did back in the days of Cubase 8. Compared to his clip the new one should be much shorter and clearer as PinchBar does not need to be configured for standard Cubase keybindings.

I’m currently busy with other stuff and never spoke to a microphone explaning things to youtube audience. I also think that ‘real inside users’ are better at explaining how to integrate a tool like PinchBar into their workflow than a dev can for his own bizarre use case… :'D

So, anyone with even just a bit of YouTube experience, plz feel free to jump in here if you can spare the small time investment!

Looking forward to your result

samirelborno · January 28, 2023, 2:59pm

Wahnsinn Lutz! Danke dafür

It works flawlessly on my m1max MacBook Pro and intel systems.

Can I donate you something? A coffee maybe?

I’ve tweeted it and might do a quick insta story if I find the time.

samirelborno · January 28, 2023, 3:01pm

would it be possible to get the vertical zoom of all tracks with command or option + two finger swipe up/down like in Logic or Studio One?

Thank you

pnoqable · January 28, 2023, 5:33pm

Gerne

Really very nice of you! I’ve only just released PinchBar, so I don’t have a donation account for supporters of my open source efforts yet. Right now the only thing I can link to here is my band’s merch. We offer our albums digitally for less than 10€. With this you can support me effectively and maybe it even suits your taste in music

Do mean something like CMD/ALT + Scroll to zoom vertically? I don’t know Logic’s or Studio One’s workflow. CMD + Scroll is Cubase’s default behaviour to zoom horizontally, so I’m a bit confused (not really by you rather than by not knowing other DAWs’ conventions…).

With PinchBar you can hold down CMD or ALT while pinching for vertical or waveform zoom as suggested in this feature-request. All modifier modes and their sensitivities are customizable via Terminal, but I haven’t documented that yet.

If your aim is to remap Scrolling behaviour of Cubase: I’m currently working on this open feature request for a completely different use case where somebody asked me if it was possible to add a preset to PinchBar that inverts its current program logic. He wants PinchBar to map scrolling (+ modifier) to pinch gesture. His goal is to trigger Apple’s standard continuous trackpad zoom (e.g. in Safari or whatever) but using a Magic Mouse. I can certainly do so and already have a working prototype running on my MacBook. The tricky part is to make PinchBar flexibel enough so that the user can choose between all kinds of possible usecases.

ATM I don’t have time to write a full featured GUI. But I can add presets and documentation, how to configure these via Terminal. So if you have a feature request for something that’s not yet possible with PinchBar, I suggest creating an issues on PinchBar’s github page like the one I linked above. I will definitely read and answer them and investigate how much effort is needed to implement.

samirelborno · January 28, 2023, 7:27pm

I mean I would like to hold command + scroll to do what Pinchbar does when you hold command + pinch = shift + G/H

kroger · January 28, 2023, 11:07pm

With PinchBar you can hold down CMD or ALT while pinching for vertical or waveform zoom as suggested in this feature-request . All modifier modes and their sensitivities are customizable via Terminal, but I haven’t documented that yet.

Pinching for horizontal zoom is working fine, but CMD or ALT while pinching for vertical zoom is not working on my system (macOS 12.6.2, Cubase 12). Do I need to do something to configure it?

pnoqable · January 29, 2023, 1:45am

ok, i see. when i’m finished generalizing PinchBar’s logic for the current feature request, your feature request will be straightforward to implement, so I will release them together in the next version. I guess it’ll be in the form of another preset with pinch to zoom like in “Cubase”, but with CMD/ALT+Scroll for vertical/waveform zoom. I will not make that the default preset for Cubase though as that overwrites Cubase’s default zoom behaviour.

Hi kroger. CMD/ALT+pinch are mapped to Cubase’s default keybinding for vertical/waveform zoom, i.e. SHIFT/ALT+G/H. When this does not work for you, I suspect you’re using non-default keybindings for that in Cubase. If you don’t want to set SHIFT/ALT+G/H for vertical zoom and prefer other key combinations, you can alter PinchBar’s presets via Terminal. This is not documented yet, but if you tell me what keys combinations to trigger I can tell you what to enter into Terminal for PinchBar.

That said, I also use other key combinations for vertical and waveform zoom, but additionally to the default ones. If you don’t use SHIFT/ALT+G/H for something else, I would suggest adding these back to Cubase keybindings, as this is easier to configure at the time being.

This is what my keybindings for vertical zoom look like in Cubase:

kroger · January 29, 2023, 2:04am

ah, indeed! I have Zoom Out Vertically mapped to Control+Up and Zoom In Vertically mapped to Control+Down. Could you tell me the command to enter into the terminal?

pnoqable · January 29, 2023, 3:01pm

I’ve zipped and uploaded a plist file of PinchBar’s settings with the changes you asked for. To import those settings into PinchBar:

close Pinchbar
unzip the zip file, e.g. by double clicking it (if using Safari, this was already done automatically)
open Terminal.app and navigate to the plist file (e.g. cd Downloads)
import the settings: defaults import com.pnoqable.PinchBar PinchBar.plist
you can now close Terminal and remove the zip and plist file
open PinchBar and test, if vertical zoom now works for you

You didn’t mention keybindings for waveform zoom, so this won’t work yet.

If somebody wants to have a look at PinchBar’s defaults structure, this is what Terminal prints out for the plist from above:

➜  Devel defaults import com.pnoqable.PinchBar PinchBar.plist
➜  Devel defaults read com.pnoqable.PinchBar
{
    appPresets =     {
        Cubase = Cubase;
        Xcode = "Font Size";
    };
    presets =     {
        Cubase =         {
            0 =             {
                flags = 1048576;
                replaceWith =                 {
                    wheel =                     {
                    };
                };
                sensivity = 200;
            };
            1048576 =             {
                flags = 262144;
                replaceWith =                 {
                    keys =                     {
                        codeA = 125;
                        codeB = 126;
                    };
                };
                sensivity = 5;
            };
            524288 =             {
                flags = 524288;
                replaceWith =                 {
                    keys =                     {
                        codeA = 5;
                        codeB = 4;
                    };
                };
                sensivity = 5;
            };
        };
        "Font Size" =         {
            0 =             {
                flags = 1048576;
                replaceWith =                 {
                    keys =                     {
                        codeA = 44;
                        codeB = 30;
                    };
                };
                sensivity = 5;
            };
            1048576 =             {
                flags = 0;
                sensivity = 1;
            };
        };
    };
}

As you can see, every key combination is saved in the form of keycodes and modifier flags. These are Apple’s constants for keyboard events and can be googled (keycodes and modifier flags). The process of editing these settings is another thing, one has to figure out somehow.

If you gonna try altering the settings for your Cubase’s keybindings, note that modifier flags (6/7 digit numbers) appear on both sides of equal sign: Left of = means Filter for pinch events with this or these modifier keys held down (e.g. 0 means with no modifier key down), right of flags = means replace modifier flag(s) with this one(s). For multiple simultanious modifier keys simply add their modifier flags, e.g. CMD + ALT = 2^20 + 2^19 = 1048576 + 524288 = 1572864.

So all in all, I’m not sure if documenting this kind of process for users of Cubase is worth the time as I could invest the same time into a first version of a GUI for configuring PinchBar. But for now, I don’t have time for this, so this post here will be pretty much all of documentation I can give right now.

pnoqable · January 29, 2023, 5:05pm

Btw. @ozinga: What exactly did you mean by “Cubase 12 forum”. Originally I suspected there was another distinct Cubase 12 forum here at steinberg.net. But now I know, “Cubase 12” is just a tag here, that I certainly could have added in the first place. By now, I can’t edit my original post and therefore the title and tags are fixed for me.

Or have I misunderstood you and there really is a dedicated forum for Cubase 12 elsewhere? Googling around I did find a couple of subforums where one could promote PinchBar, too, assuming already having an activated account. As I said: I’m pretty much a complete outsider to all daw/vi communities.

So: Which one did you originally mean by “Cubase 12 forum, which is more active”?

ozinga · January 29, 2023, 7:51pm

Yes, I meant the Cubase 12 tag, which is more active

https://forums.steinberg.net/tags/c/cubase/6/cubase-12

kroger · January 29, 2023, 9:26pm

Thanks, it’s working! (I had to swap the values for codeA and codeB, though)

My keybindings for waveform zoom are option+G and option+H. From the following code it should be working with option + pinch no? (but it isn’t):

524288 =             {
                flags = 524288;
                replaceWith =                 {
                    keys =                     {
                        codeA = 5;
                        codeB = 4;

Although waveform zooming it’s not that import to me right now