Macros for actions in Ableton Live only work when Ableton is in full screen?

[samuelpksmith]

Hi all!

I'm very new to Keyboard Maestro/making macros at all. I've made some simples ones to perform simple repetitive tasks that take multiple clicks to speed up my work flow. I've noticed that the macros stop working unless I'm working in full screen, but I have them performing the clicks based on their relative position to a found image, which doesn't change size or anything at all whether in full screen or not.

Below is the image they're searching for, which again, is always the same size regardless of window size.

I'm just wondering why this might be happening as I don't necessarily work in full screen all the time.

[noisneil]

Hi and welcome to the forum!

Start off by posting your macro here. If it's very simple, you can just post a screenshot.

It's always much easier and quicker to diagnose problems when we can see what we're dealing with.

[samuelpksmith]

Thank you for your quick reply!

Find a screen shot attached - sorry for my bad photoshopping!

The whole thing is based off 3 images, which I've labeled. The starred* image is just to show that the other Macro that fails when not in full screen is exactly the same as the one shown here, but the third image is different. I'm not sure if it matters, but there are no hotkey assignments as they're being triggered by buttons on an iPad app (Metagrid) which has full KM integrations as well as other functions for Ableton.

Funnily enough, when I tested it again before replying to you, it actually did work when not in full screen. It seems to only happen occasionally. Is KM just a bit finicky? Is there a much more straight forward and reliable way to do what I'm trying to do? To be fair, I've only been using KM for 2 days now

Thanks a lot!

[noisneil]

The first two things that spring to mind are:

• I'm a Logic user, so I don't know if this is a thing, but... do the greyed out numbers in Image 2 change when your loop length/position changes?
• Have you tried experimenting with the fuzziness sliders? There's only one visible in that screenshot, but I can see it's set to minimum. Bumping it up a tiny bit often helps to solve found image issues.

As a new member, it might be helpful to look this over for tips on how to quickly share your macros to the forum:

How Do I Get The Best Answer in the Shortest Time to Questions on the KM Forum?

Tip: How Do I Get The Best Answer in the Shortest Time? Summary: The better quality and more complete the information you post about your issue, the quicker we can give you a useful answer. Tell us your complete workflow along with your end-objective up front – do not spoon-feed it to us one post at a time -- i.e. don't waste your time or ours. At the very least provide a summary of what you're doing. By having a more complete picture of your task we can often suggest more efficient me…

[samuelpksmith]

Thanks for helpful tips info!

• I'm using KM Version 10.1.1

• I want the macro to:

1. open the MIDI editor tab, and hit alt+2 to get to the envelopes page.
2. click the first dropdown menu and click "MIDI CTRL,"
3. click the second dropdown menu and click "Modulation" or "Pitch Bend" or whatever menu item I need. I figured looking for a picture of the menu item would be sufficient and allow me to reuse the same steps with a picture for each CC I'd like to trigger.

I'm just trying to save myself a bunch of wasted time menu diving.

Screen shot of the found image and menus:

• It keeps failing at "click (40,40) from the Top Left Corner of the Found Image" but the size and proportions never change.
  Show Modulation Macro.kmmacros (170.5 KB)

• I'll try messing with the fuzziness sliders, it just seems strange that that would be the reason it's so hit or miss

[noisneil]

@samuelpksmith Firstly, you don't need to use a condition for whether the front app is Live. Just place the macro in a Macro Group that is only active when the front-most app is Live, like this:

You don't need to duplicate every action in that If/Else group in order to conditionally include one extra action (showing the MIDI Editor). You can just conditionally do that (or not) and move on.

The length of the selected MIDI region is reflected in these values:

Therefore, your found image will not work if it doesn't match. It also won't work if any other values are different, e.g. you have a different Automation Parameter selected.

There are two fixes for this:

1. Capture a smaller found image that doesn't include any values that might change, like this:

2. Don't use found images at all. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that box will always be in the same screen location. If that's the case, you can just click relative to a window corner. I've opted for this method in the macro below. If your screen resolution differs to mine, you may need to recapture the coordinates using the Get button.

Selecting an Automation Parameter:

The macro below comes set to load Pan as the automation parameter, using the keyboard to select it in the list via its number. You can duplicate the macro and change that number to select different parameters, of course, but wouldn't it be nice and neat if the same macro worked for all of them...?

I use a Stream Deck, which can send a Parameter to Keyboard Maestro. I don't know if MetaGrid can do the same thing, but if it can, you can duplicate the button in your grid and trigger the same macro with different parameters. Keyboard Maestro will see these as the %TriggerValue% token, which can be used in a number of ways. Here, we can use it to select an automation parameter. For example, if the parameter is set to "10", this macro will select Pan.

If Metagrid isn't able to send parameters, you can achieve the same thing using MIDI. Let me know if this is something you're interested in and we can adjust the macro.

Select Automation Parameter.kmmacros (58 KB)

Macro screenshot

[samuelpksmith]

Wow @noisneil thank you so much for putting that together! I didn't realize actions could just be put after one another like that - haha. Unfortunately that particular box does move in relation to the screen, but I was able to edit your macro in order to make sure the correct tabs are always opened. And then I used metagrid to do the final step of typing in the parameter number and hitting enter, so I can use your macro to complete all the steps up until that point which is MUCH easier (and neater for organization's sake).

I really appreciate you putting in the time to do that!