Macro Question - Detecting Physical Keyboard Keypress

Discussions about Macros for DTouch for Cubase and DTouch for Nuendo
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clonewar
Posts: 76
Joined: 21 Feb 2016 04:57

Macro Question - Detecting Physical Keyboard Keypress

Post by clonewar » 29 Apr 2017 22:05

Is there a way to determine if a key on the physical keyboard is being pressed? There are functions to detect modifier keys, but I don't see one for regular keyboard input and feel like I'm just missing it.

What I want to do is create a macro that will first move the mouse pointer to a certain location on the screen, then drop into a while loop that stays true as long as a certain key is being pressed. Inside of the loop it'll issue a mouse scroll wheel command. When the key is no longer pressed it'll exit the loop and exit the macro.

That macro will get assigned to the physical key that gets detected.. So for example, to lower the velocity of the selected midi note you'd have the macro move the mouse to the Velocity setting in the Info line and then assign the macro that will scroll the mouse wheel down to the 'z' key, and to raise velocity assign the macro that scrolls the mouse wheel up to the 'x' key.. Then just hold down one or the other key to raise and lower the velocity (which isn't available in Cubase key commands). I'm able to get this to work as a one-shot, so I have to keep pressing the key over and over again. What I want to do is be able to hold down that key and have the mouse scroll event repeatedly triggered.

BTW.. I have a variation on this idea that uses the modifier key functions.. The macro first moves the mouse pointer to the Velocity setting, then the CTRL key lowers the velocity, and ALT raises it, SHIFT exits the macro. I've assigned that macro to the 'v' key. You can hold down CTRL and ALT keys and it works great, the velocity settings goes up and down, but it'd be a quicker process if they were just assigned to two keys without having to first launch the macro with a different key. Combined with other Cubase key commands it gives you full control over the most important midi editing functions with just a few physical keys!
Michael Nazari

DTouch for Cubase Walkthrough:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-26Ca9Pyb4Y

DT_bettinzana
Posts: 772
Joined: 21 Feb 2016 12:05

Re: Macro Question - Detecting Physical Keyboard Keypress

Post by DT_bettinzana » 30 Apr 2017 00:09

Hello, at the moment I can say that in the current macro engine implementation, each macro is almost "atomic" (I use this term because I know that you are a developer). You can "pause" it waiting for a value from the user, but not as you have described.
A lot of things are changing (yes, we are doing an incredible job!) with the new update of DTouch for Cubase. I will discuss about this with our developers to check if we can do what you have described (in the update, not in the current version) and eventually changing something to make it possible.
Silvano Bettinzana
Devil Technologies

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