How to Zoom In and Out in Pro Tools + Zoom Shortcuts - ProRec.com (2023)

In the areas of music production and audio engineering, the expression "Use your ear" is used. It pulls a lot. Given the auditory nature of our work, this is not surprising. However, sometimes audio engineers need to use their eyes. A good example of where this comes into play is when we need to create a slice on an audio track. As any engineer will tell you, it's a good idea to create cuts where the waveform is balanced or at "0" to avoid popping and clicking in the audio. Delicate editing operations like this require the use of Pro ToolsEnlargementspecial feature.

Pro Tools offers several ways to zoom in and out. Bothin the first placeThe ways we can zoom in with Pro Tools are horizontal zoom and vertical zoom.

Zoom in and out horizontally

Horizontal zoom in Pro Tools is achieved usingzoom toolThis tool is accessed from the toolbar and its icon is aLupe.

The Zoomer tool has two modes of operation. These are

1. normal approachIn this mode, the Zoomer tool changes thepointerto a magnifying glass and you can zoom in and out as many times as you like, as long as the zoom mode remains active.
2. single zoomIn this mode, the pointer changes to a magnifying glass, allowing only one zoom, either in or out, before changing back to an arrow, disabling zoom mode.

These modes can be accessed by right-clicking the Zoomer tool icon.

Agetting closerWith the zoom tool, just click once.

In the image below, with the Zoomer tool selected, my mouse pointer has been placed in the circled area.

The image above shows the tracks before zooming in.

An extended mouse click will produce the results in the screenshot below.

From the examples above, you can see that clicking with the Zoomer tool selected zoomed in on my session start. It is becausehorizontal zoom used cursor as focal point to zoom in.However, you can zoom in on a specific area by clicking and dragging while the Zoomer tool is selected.

Azoom out, to holdAlt + left clickI am youOption + left click.You will notice this retentionOption/Optionchange the magnifying glass icon to "+”yet "–“to indicate that the clickzoom out. The following screenshot shows stripes reduced.

Keyboard shortcuts for horizontal zoom

An easier way to zoom in and out is to use keyboard shortcuts.

Ctrl + square brackets "["I am youCommand + "["Ezoom out

Ctrl + square brackets "]"I am youCommand + "]"Egetting closer

Brackets are to the right of "AFTER"key on a regular keyboard.

An even easier way would be to useRYTkey tozoom outYgetting closeror to make them work,keyboard focuswould have to be activated in the edit window.

You can also use the number keys1,2,3Y4on the top row of numeric keys toRetrieving Zoom locations.

Command + Ctrl + "["To put session length into perspective.

To enable keyboard focus, make sure the little"To die"The icon near the top right corner of the edit window is highlighted. To do this, click on the icon.

Zoom in and out vertically

Zooming is possible in Pro Toolsvertical.This has the effect that theSpurhöhe.There are a few ways to do this.

The easiest way to increase track height is to place the mouse pointer on the bottom edge of a track andClick and drag.

If you place the cursor in the area indicated by the red circle and click and drag, the height of the labeled range will adjustFT1_01.

draggingbelowfariaincreasethe track height as shown below. This is aexpand vertically.

Note that the height of this trail is significantly higher than the other trails.

draggingAbovefariareducethe track height as shown below. This is azoom out vertically

Another way to adjust the height of the track is to click on the width ruler.

As shown above, clicking on the amplitude ruler brings up a list of options that will help us determine the height of the stroke. These range frommicro,which makes the trace barely visible, afits in the window,which inserts the track into the edit window.

Alternatively, this list can be accessed via the drop-down menu by clicking the arrow to the left of the track name.

An easy way to set track heightall tracks in the session simultaneouslyis to holdalternative(Possibilityon Mac) and click and drag at the bottom as described above. This adjusts the track height of all tracks by the same amount and so that all tracks are the same height.

Vertical zoom with keyboard shortcuts

To zoom in and out vertically with keyboard shortcuts, you can use the following keys.

no computer

Windows key + up arrowperform avertical approach, which increases the height of the selected track

Windows key + down arrowperform azoom vertical,Decrease track height of selected track

Alt + Windows key + Up arrowperform azoom vertical universaland increase the height of the runwayall titles

Alt + Windows key + Down arrowperform azoom vertical universaland lower the track height of all tracks.

a mac

Ctrl + up arrowperform avertical approach, which increases the height of the selected track

Ctrl + down arrowperform azoom vertical,Decrease track height of selected track

Option + Ctrl + Up Arrowperform azoom vertical universal, increasing the height of the runwayall titles

Option + Ctrl + Down Arrowperform azoom vertical universal, which decreases the track height of all tracks.

Zoom with next mix

Another zoom option that Pro Tools offers affects how channel strips are displayed in the Mix window.

The screenshot above shows the default appearance of the Mix window. Note that not all channels are visible in my session at the same time. If you want to see all channels in the Mix window, use Pro Toolstight mixFunction.

To access the tight combination, clickvistaon the menu bar, then clicktight mix.

This will fit all mixer tracks in the window. As we can see in the image above, the shortcut isCtrl+Alt+Mcan also be used to triggertight mix.

The screenshot above shows the mixing window after clicking ontight mix.

Diploma

In summary, we can see that there are two main zoom modes in Pro Tools;zoom horizontalYZoom vertical.It is important to note that when zooming horizontally, the insertion cursor/pointer acts as the center of the zoom function. We've also seen that there are multiple ways to zoom in and out in Pro Tools, from using thezoom toolabout using different keyboard shortcuts. I hope incorporating them into your workflow will simplify the editing and mixing process.