Steve Howell

I would like to request an enhancement to Cakewalk by Bandlab please. Specifically, the ability to be able to assign keyboard shortcuts for the "Minimize Strip" and "Restore Strip Size" features for a track, to avoid needing to mouse click on the small buttons (see screenshot below). I asked if this was possible in the forum (https://discuss.cakewalk.com/index.php?/topic/54233-is-there-a-keyboard-shortcut-for-minimizing-and-restoring-the-height-of-a-track-strip) but no-one has suggested to me that it is possible. After some Googling I found that @synkrotron asked about this in 2019 also (https://discuss.cakewalk.com/index.php?/topic/1401-keyboard-shortcut-for-minimise-strip-and-restore-strip-size/), so it sounds like it has been desired by users for some time. The following features that ARE keyboard accessible cannot be used as workarounds: Auto Track Zoom (only allows one track at a time to be in expanded state, and I may wish multiple to be expanded) CTRL-SHIFT-Up/Down (incrementally changes the height of a track, and if used to "minimize" a track, its desirable expanded height is forgotten, and you must then incrementally increase it back to the desired height The "Minimize Strip" and "Restore Strip Size" buttons are perfect for my needs because, in one operation, they can collapse a track to its minimum height, or resize it back to its optimum, previously set size. Having the ability to do this via the keyboard would be a huge benefit to efficiency of workflow. Thanks for your consideration.

Hi @Larry Jones Just a thought... I have had trouble with certain projects before - not the same as your issue but still a "hang" of some kind. In my case Cakewalk would sort of hang when I closed the project and then quit before showing the Start dialog. If I opened the project in "safe mode" and stopped all plugins from loading, then when I closed it Cakewalk did not hang. Eventually by trial and error I found a plugin which seemed to be the cause, removed it from my project and it has been fine since. So, just wondering in your case - does this happen for every project or just some projects? If you create a super simple project with, say, one empty track only, does it still happen when opening that project? Does it happen if you try opening in safe mode and disabling all plugins? My thought is that perhaps an errant plugin is causing this - but that's a wild guess!

Hi everyone Am loving using Cakewalk by Bandlab for my music projects! However, I suffer from RSI and rely heavily on keyboard shortcuts to lessen my use of the mouse. One thing I do a lot is change the height of tracks. Cakewalk is great in that, if you minimize a track strip and later restore it, it has remembered how high it was - that's cool. However, I cannot find any way to assign keyboard shortcuts to the minimize and restore buttons (see screenshot). Does anyone know if it is possible? I have found shortcuts for gradually increasing and decreasing the height of a track (CTRL-SHIFT-UP/DOWN), but not doing it at once like the buttons in the screen shot do. I have played with Auto Track Zoom, but I often want 2 or 3 tracks at their "restored" height, not just one at a time. Would be very grateful for any help - thanks!

Thanks everyone for your replies! Really appreciate all the background and explanation!

Thanks again @User 905133 - you seem to know a lot about this. So... perhaps this is how it is meant to work then? Just for clarity, which of the two menus below do you have in your current installation? The one with coloured VST markers (the screenshot I grabbed from your linked post) or the one with all-grey regular-looking menus (which I grabbed from a Native Instruments tutorial page)?

Oh that's interesting, thanks. I think I am up to date on the updates, but I will double check

Ever since starting to use Cakewalk by Bandlab last year I have found that, inexplicably, the pop-up menu that opens when you right click on the FX bin for a track is using a different font to the rest of Cakewalk. It's like it's using Arial font instead of MS San Serif. I've always found it irritating, but didn't think much of it until watching a YouTube tutorial video, and noticing the presenter's Audio FX menu looked the same as all their others! I've attached screenshots of a "normal" menu (the "Tracks" dropdown menu) and also the unusual right-click Audio FX menu in my installation of Cakewalk, to show what I mean. Has anyone else had this issue and managed to solve it? I asked Cakewalk support and they just advised me to do a full uninstall, which I'd like to avoid, given the time it will take to restore all of my customisations. Thanks in advance for your thoughts and help!