Past Multiple Copies- No Key Shortcut? Really?

WaveLab
1

I’ve been using Wavelab 6 for years. I bought Wavelab 2 when it was current, and I have upgraded every time since then, through 6. It still works beautifully for my purposes, with few exceptions.

Here’s one of 'em- this one thing is driving me nuts:

For Cut and Paste, on the Paste side of things, there are keyboard shortcuts for Paste, Overwrite, Append, Prepend, Mix…

For example: you have already copied a section of audio to paste. To Paste it where your waveform window cursor is, you do the following, REGARDLESS of where your mouse cursor is:

  1. Press Ctrl+V.

  2. Press Enter.

Done! BUT- if you want to paste multiple copies at that same spot, the only way to get to the Paste Multiple Copies dialog (where you simply type the number of copies you want pasted, then hit Enter) is to:

  1. Move your mouse cursor to up to the top of the page, to Edit.

  2. Click Edit.

  3. Move your mouse cursor down to Paste Special.

  4. Carefully move your mouse cursor over to the right, then down to Multiple copies.

  5. Click on Multiple copies.

Now you’re at the Multiple copies dialog, where you can then type in the number of copies, then hit Enter. WHY, on earth can’t there be a shortcut that simply pulls up that dialog? Hey- like, say, Ctrl+M - then type a number, then Enter. Boom. Done!

Here’s why I’m so stumped at this unbelievable omission-because, if you’re doing a pasting multiple copies-type of editing, chances are, you’re going to be doing a LOT of this repetitive pasting. It really slows things down to have to navigate cursor positions MULTIPLE TIMES, for EACH instance of pasting multiple copies. I’m sorry, but this is ridiculous.

[I’m making practice files for my trumpet practice, playing song sections over and over again, each section followed by empty space, each song having enough of these repeated sections to fill up an entire CD. Per song.]

In making these valuable practice audio files, this one operation, getting to the Multiple Copies paste dialog, just getting to that one little dialog, is what makes this whole process take so long, as it happens 20 to 30 times per song. Why on EARTH, in the Paste Special pull down menu, were ALL the paste operations given key shortcuts, RIGHT THERE in the pull-down menu…EXCEPT THIS one? I just don’t get it.

Steinberg programmers are obviously brilliant. How in the world did they commit such a ridiculous oversight? A simple key shortcut should be right there in that pull-down, just like all the other paste commands. In fact, it looks weird that this one command has no keyboard shortcut, even though all the others in that pull-down menu do.

So: IF there is indeed a shortcut to the multiple paste dialog hidden elsewhere, way off by itself in the manual or help files, I haven’t found it, nor have I found a way to customize a key command for that particular operation, if that’s even possible. Any help on this would be really appreciated.

2

I don’t see any way to do it in Wavelab 6 either. But you can do it with “customize commands” in Wavelab 8. There’s still no default shortcut key(s) in the menu for paste multiple copies, but the command does appear in customize commands so you can create a shortcut there. Maybe try the Wavelab 8 Elements demo to try it?

Or you could try to find a third party menu shortcut program, but I haven’t found an easy one since Quickeys for Windows stopped developing, although the version they still sell might work for you. Haven’t tried AutoHotKey yet, but I’ve heard there’s possibly a steep learning curve with that.