Pause Until A Menu Item is enabled in Pro Tools

Questions & Suggestions
1

Hi all,

I'm having issues with Pause Until Conditions are Met. Basically what I want to do is "Speak Text" when the "About Pro Tools | HD" menu item is enabled. The reason for this is that when you bounce to disk in Pro Tools, you don't get a notification when the task is finished. During bounce, that "About Pro Tools | HD" menu is greyed out and enables when the bounce is finished. So I want to use that to know when the bounce is done.

Should be fairly easy, right? Except that I miserably fail.

Sometimes it works, and sometimes (a lot of times actually) it doesn't and I get the "Speak Text" when I switch to Safari. How come? What am I doing wrong?

42

2

Hmmm, it’s been a while for me using PT (switched to logic after PT10) but can it be that while bouncing the focus changes to this bounce window? And because of that the macro doesn’t see the PT menu properly?

You could also try "pause until - the screen - does not contain " and make a screenshot of this bounce window. When it disappears you’ll get a notification.

Besides that you might try “with name containing” instead of “with name”. Maybe the pipe symbol " | " brings forth strange happenings :blush:

3

Thanks for your answer sirherald. Sadly I have tried all that and didn’t succeed so far. The only “working” way so far has been to make a macro to move the bounce window in a particular place and watch if a pixel in that area changes by adding a “Pause until the pixel is not”. Not so elegant I suppose…

4

If only that damn “Bouncing” window had a name…

5

You can also test for a change in window title from something (the current) to nothing, and then take action. Let us know if you need help with this approach.

6

Interesting :slight_smile: But wouldn’t it only indicate when the “bouncing” window is opening and not when it closes though?

7

Ok I think I found a better solution for now inspired by you guy’s helpful contributions. Instead of “watching” that new “bouncing” window, I’ll wait until the Edit or Mix window of Pro Tools is back to the front. It seems to work so far, even when PT is not the front application. :slight_smile:

8

That's great! Would you mind posting your final macro so others can benefit?
See KM Wiki: How to Post/Upload Your Macro to the Forum

9

Sure, this is where I am at this point. It's working for me BUT I need to find a way to cancel the macro if I cancel the bounce (when I do I always use the Escape key). Any idea how I could do that?

09

10

Some ideas for canceling:

  1. Create a Macro that uses Cancel All Macros Action.
  2. Use the KM Status menu
  3. Change the timeout of the Pause Until action to make it just longer than it normally needs to wait
  4. Add a Condition to the Pause Until for ESC key, and then test for ESC key after the Pause Until, then Cancel This Macro if it is down.

BTW, it appears that you only uploaded the image of your macro. Please upload the macro file as well. (see instruction in my above link).

11

I'll do, I'm trying to make it bullet proof first because trust me it's not hahaha

I finally found a way to cancel it if Esc key is pressed. While launching "PT Bounce to Disk", I assign "1" to a variable "Bouncing" and "0" when it's finished.
I created a new macro called "Cancel" that checks this variable. That's the only way I found for "Cancel" to know if "PT Bounce to Disk" is running.

Again it seems to work but:

  1. If I (or whoever uses this) have other macros running it'll cancel them as well, so it's probably not ideal, would probably be better to include that "Cancel" inside of "PT Bounce" somehow.
  2. KM gives an annoying notification "cancel all macros" that I can't remove.

By the way you may have noticed but I know NOTHING about programming so I'm really having trouble doing even the easiest tasks :wink:

55

12

Here's a better method that you can incorporate into your main macro.
Note that I use the condition of "title matches", which means matches using RegEx.
Here's the RegEx:
(?i)Edit:|Mix:|iZotope

This means that it will match ANY of the text between the vertical bars (|).

MACRO:   Pause Until with ESC [Example]


#### DOWNLOAD:
<a class="attachment" href="/uploads/default/original/3X/b/7/b7db3cc00adc43cf4706c71de1ee226e2f3f1e5a.kmmacros">Pause Until with ESC [Example].kmmacros</a> (4.0 KB)
**Note: This Macro was uploaded in a DISABLED state. You must enable before it can be triggered.**

---



![image|463x744](upload://3VOcs53im44OIzLhCAB24r5sNgV.jpg)

Questions?
13

Oh thanks a million, yes it’s much more elegant.

I couldn’t understand at first why it didn’t work though, and finally found out that I actually needed to keep the Escape key down and not just press it. :smiley:

1 Like
14

Your macro only works if you started it using the shortcut, not if you use the menu.

If you always bounce to the same folder, Bounced Files, you could use that as a trigger.
Is that the case?

15

Yes yes I always bounce using the alt-cmd-B shortcut (I use as little menu as possible). It’s Pro Tools default shortcut for bouncing to disk, so I’m just “improving it for my needs”. :wink:
I don’t always bounce to the same folder, each band and songs have different folders. I don’t really understand what it would change though, care to elaborate?

16

There is a trigger that starts a macro when a file is added to a folder.
So, that would mean you can also start the macro when using the menu.
But, as you always use the keyboard it doesn’t ‘solve a problem’.

Fokke

17

Haha ok cool :wink: