Editing Liveslice in Ableton Live

[5trackMind]

When using key commands to edit the arrangements I am also pasting tracks into Ableton. Is there a way of getting round this?

Thanks

[GilJ]

If you have a track selected in Live, and then you copy/paste events in LiveSlice, it will also copy/paste the selected track in Live.

You must deselect the track in Live (click somewhere else, for example click on "Drop Files and Devices Here")

May be its a problem with Live that doesn't handle keyboard shortcuts correctly (I think that it is impossible in Live to have native keyboard shortcuts to act only on a VST - and not affecting Live)
Thus, if you hit on the space bar in order to select "Play" in LiveSlice, it will also start Live's sequencer, because it is the native keyboard shortcut to do so

Can anyone using Live + LiveSlice confirm here please ?

[5trackMind]

That's helpful thank you. I knew it wasn't happening the first time I started using LiveSlice, but I couldn't figure out why. I don't think there's a way of only sending key commands to VSTs in Ableton due to its live nature, the programmers always want you to have control of its functions. It would be nice if you could have a toggle though, or maybe the ability to choose your own key mappping in LiveSlice so that you could avoid such clashes with hosts.

Thanks again GilJ and also to Ohm for his fine bit of software.

[SenatorAdam]

Yah, I have the same problem.. Just gotta click somewhere else.

[ohm]

customizing keyboard shortcuts in LiveSlice would be the most flexible, but time consuming to implement, but a simple toggle to disable keyboard shortcuts in liveslice is pretty easy to add.

[ohm]

and now - after a short delay of 17 months - the option to disable keyboard shortcuts is in the latest (as of now unreleased) beta Trying to investigate if there's a super hacky way of intercepting the keyboard events before they reach Live - it is a big problem on energy xt on osx - the backspace key deletes the plugin without a warning! no fun when I just mapped that key in LiveSlice...

[DarkStar]

... and Reaper won't pass on the keyboard shortcuts to LS either

[ohm]

I can work around the problem in Reaper by
1) reading keystrokes even when LiveSlice does not have the keyboard focus and
2) stealing the keyboard focus before reading the keyboard state - this one's a bit of a hack, since it prevents all other windows from having the focus - even the menus.
I've implemented it so that when caps lock is on, the the focus is stolen, and I'll make the whole thing optional in settings, defaulting to off.

If you could remap the conflicting keys in Reaper there'd be no need to steal focus - I could just ignore the focus state - Unfortunately that does not seem to be the case.

This does not change anything in ableton live - I'm guessing they are reading the keystate by polling - it's the same approach I use in liveslice - which is why both respond to the same keykstrokes...

[DarkStar]

Is it possible for LS to grab the keystrokes ONLY when it has the focus?

[ohm]

Is it possible for LS to grab the keystrokes ONLY when it has the focus?

that's not possible because in reaper the plugin window is not allowed to have the focus - I have to steal the focus manually.

I could try some unconventional way of detecting if liveslice has the focus, such as detecting if the mouse is hovering over the window after a mouse click or something - I'll contact the Reaper guys, and I think the guy who wrote ReViSiT has solved issues like these too, since ReViSiT relies heavily on keyboard shortcuts.

[ohm]

it works in reaper now.

I've added two settings:

one to read keyboard when the window has the mouse focus (ignoring keyboard focus)

and another to steal the keyboard focus from the host (to disable host shortcut keys when LiveSlice has the focus)

It won't make any difference in Ableton Live unfortunately.

[DarkStar]

looking forward to that

[edisoncurse]

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I believe I've found a solution to this problem, at least in Live 7 (7.0.12 is what I'm using).

This allows your VSTs to steal keyboard focus in Ableton Live as long as its window is up and you've clicked on it to activate mouse focus.

1) Go into your preferences folder and open (or create) the file options.txt. Ableton has a page about how to use options.txt (http://www.ableton.com/pages/faq/options_text).

2) Add the following text to options.txt

-_EnsureKeyMessagesForPlugins

3) Save the file.

4) Restart Ableton!

After doing this I was able to use all of the keyboard shortcuts I wanted to in LiveSlice without affecting Ableton Live. Once I clicked off of the LiveSlice window, they affected Ableton again.

A good, quick test of this is the arrow keys. If you are on the LiveSlice window and you hit left and right, nothing in Ableton should move.

If something does, click on the LiveSlice window again, the blue part at the top where there are no controls works.

Hope this helps!

eC

ps. This may have been posted elsewhere on this forum, but seeing as this is always the first page to come up about the issue in Google, I figured it wouldn't hurt if it was here.

pps. I believe this affects all VSTs, so this may screw up some peoples' workflow. If you delete the line from options.txt, everything should revert back.

[ohm]

Thanks a lot for posting this info. I'll add it to the manual imediately

[edisoncurse]

Thanks a lot for posting this info. I'll add it to the manual imediately

Wow! Glad I could help!

LiveSlice is amazing, keep up the great work!

eC