trying to understand customizing commands

i went exploring the “customize commands” section in hopes of finding a keyboard shortcut (on my MacBook Pro Yosemite) for and often used function when working with audio editing. i am not sure what this elusive command is called but when you use the mouse or space bar to stop playback then click (mouse) on the stop button a second time the cursor returns to the last place you started from. this is a valuable function when working on a specific place in an audio file.

i could not find any items in the “customize Commands” section to add a keyboard shortcut. actually, i couldn’t find anything related to transport functions at all there.

if it is there and i just can’t find it, any help anyone can offer is greatly appreciated.

if it is not there, may i make the suggestion to add these functions into this program.

thanks!

i could not find any items in the “customize Commands” section to add a keyboard shortcut. actually, i couldn’t find anything related to transport functions at all there.

Click in the transport bar, on the preset button. Here you can create any preset for the transport, and assign a shortcut. Read the relative doc.

I would suggest using the markers instead of the keyboard commands. You can open the marker section and use the general (white arrow) for the kind of positions in the audio that you are talking about. When your done with a specific section you can leave the marker or delete it. Hope that helps.

PG, i followed the instructions in the relative doc. i am afraid that i still may not understand how this works. i wanted to create a keyboard shortcut for returning from the previous starting place (the equivalent of clicking on the stop button in the transport bar twice. here is what i did and discovered:

selected save as from the preset button in the transport bar

named the preset “Return”

checked the box for “Create shortcut for selecting the preset”

clicked “Save”

on my Windows 7 PC it worked. i am not sure how it knew what transport function that i wanted since there was no indication that i could see of what function it is assigning it to. but it worked. now after i stop playback with the spacebar, i hit the “0” key on the number pad (the same default key for Cubase) and it returns to the last place i started.

on my MacBook Pro Yosemite it did not work. the laptop has no number pad. in Cubase i customized this command by assigning it to the forward slash / key. when i assigned this in Wavelab, it warned me that this key was already assigned to the Loop function. when i clicked “Save” it asked me if i wanted to clear the loop assignment. i clicked “OK”. but after stopping playback with the spacebar and hitting the / key (which works on my PC) it did nothing on my Mac.

any thoughts?

thank you

when there is a difference mac/pc concerning key commands, this is usually because the key shortcut that does not work, can’t be used on that platform. First thing to try, is to use another shortcut.

From what I can tell, that’s the default behavior on Windows, without any additional shortcut. Spacebar - stops playback. Number pad 0 - returns to last start. Maybe that’s why it’s working on Windows.

I’m not sure if you have a reason for using 2 keystrokes, but you could alternately just engage the “on stop, move cursor back” function (see pic). Then it would return automatically on stop.
wl return to start edited - Copy.png

note: when using 2 key strokes, the first one must not already be used “alone” in a shortcut.

thanks bob99. i think you are right about this on the Windows realm. it may be true too in the Mac realm with a keyboard with a number pad.

i tried the “on stop, mover cursor back” function. but it doesn’t always work for me as i am not always wanting to go back.

PG, the keystroke that i used was the keystroke for the loop function and it did work before i tried to replace it with the stop function that i wanted. i tried a couple of other keystrokes and couldn’t get it to work either.

wondering why there is no assignability for this (or any transport function) in the Options > Customize commands… area?

at any rate, either i am still not operating the preset button in the transport bar correctly or it is not working on the Mac. i suspect that i am not doing something correctly.

i would love to figure this out so any help you can offer will be greatly appreciated.

thank you

timmyboylad, these are the transport commands you have available when you right-click just to the right of the time display in the transport panel, then select “edit shortcuts”:


None of them is going to do what you want from what I can tell. (there’s an “on stop, move cursor back” command in there, but that’s not going to do what you want.). You want an assignable command that emulates clicking the stop button, because when you do that with the mouse after stopping, it does a return, which is what you want. But that stop button command seems fixed to number pad 0, on both Windows and Mac. You can see that number pad 0 shortcut (K = 0) tool-tipped in the following on both Win and Mac:


So I think you’re out of luck on a notebook without a number pad (Win or Mac), unless that stop button command is made programmable to another key in a future version. (that is, unless I’m just totally missing some other way of doing this).

The transport panel Presets, from my testing, saves the current status (on/off and settings, etc) of the function buttons in the transport panel, as you can see if you pull up any of the factory presets (the “play selection” preset, “skip selection” preset, “standard” preset). The presets set modes of play on and off, but don’t generally issue an immediate command like the Stop button command.

thank you so much, bob99, for this thoughtful reply and research.

i think you are right all the way. i have pretty much come to the same conclusion. with PG’s initial response to this thread and the fact that Cubase (another steinberg product) does have a customizable command for this function, it seemed hopeful for a minute that this might be possible. that’s why i was targeting the / key, i customized Cubase for my Mac in this way.

but i believe i have exhausted all the possibilities unless PG has other suggestions.

if not, then i would make a feature request for a future version.

thank you for taking the time to explore this with me