Macro Recorders not working in SAWStudio

[Dave Labrecque]

Never had this problem before. I have a highly repetitive task for a project in SAW that I want to automate with a macro recorder. I've been successful in the past many times doing such a thing. This time, though, I tried five different macro recorders, and none would work. I finally tried recording a macro outside of SAW, and it worked fine. Has there been some change in a recent SAW version that has altered the way mouse and keyboard activity is reported to Windows? Almost nothing gets recorded.

I'm on Windows 10 Home Premium x64, FWIW.

[cgrafx]

Never had this problem before. I have a highly repetitive task for a project in SAW that I want to automate with a macro recorder. I've been successful in the past many times doing such a thing. This time, though, I tried five different macro recorders, and none would work. I finally tried recording a macro outside of SAW, and it worked fine. Has there been some change in a recent SAW version that has altered the way mouse and keyboard activity is reported to Windows? Almost nothing gets recorded.

I'm on Windows 10 Home Premium x64, FWIW.

No changes.

I don't have any clue why it wouldn't work.

[Dave Labrecque]

No changes.

I don't have any clue why it wouldn't work.

So strange. I just spent a half hour manually programming each mouse click and keystroke, and only a few of those commands seem to get through to SAW on playback. I've put plenty of delay time in between each step, too.

[Dave Labrecque]

UPDATE: I appear to be experiencing the same macro recorder issues in Sound Forge (i.e. -- it's not working).

RE-UPDATE: It seems that Windows Defender is blocking recording of clicks. For some reason, it only blocks clicks within programs, not within, for example, File Explorer, which is where I'd done my outside-of-SAW testing, earlier. The solution is to run the macro program as administrator. Found the answer with some googling. Yeah, I guess it's been that long (pre-Windows 10, certainly) since I've used a macro recorder program.

Take note, folks.

Thanks for chiming in, Phil.

[cgrafx]

UPDATE: I appear to be experiencing the same macro recorder issues in Sound Forge (i.e. -- it's not working).

RE-UPDATE: It seems that Windows Defender is blocking recording of clicks. For some reason, it only blocks clicks within programs, not within, for example, File Explorer, which is where I'd done my outside-of-SAW testing, earlier. The solution is to run the macro program as administrator. Found the answer with some googling. Yeah, I guess it's been that long (pre-Windows 10, certainly) since I've used a macro recorder program.

Take note, folks.

Thanks for chiming in, Phil.

Always happy to chime in with useless info..

[aludra]

Hey Dave,

Which Macro Recorder have you found to work best with SawStudio? Thanks!

Mike

[Dave Labrecque]

Hey Dave,

Which Macro Recorder have you found to work best with SawStudio? Thanks!

Mike

Hi Mike,

Sorry -- my use of macro recorders is pretty infrequent. Every few years I have a project where it would be very helpful, and so I essentially start over finding one, learning it, figuring out how to make it work (there always seem to be some kind of hiccups with these things). The ones I used successfully in the last week were Tiny Task (Love it for utter simplicity, but decided to move to the next one because I had to keep returning focus to the TT interface in order to use the assigned hot key to initiate the macro each time. A bit of a PITA.) and MacroRecorder Lite (This one allows you to use the hot key regardless of window focus, but doesn't have the ability to playback the macro faster than the speed it was recorded at -- unless you go in and shorten all the delays in the script, which is a bit of a pain, too.).

Caveat: when I thought SAW was not cooperating (rather than Windows Defender, which turned out to be the culprit), I moved my repeated processing over to Sound Forge (which turned out to suffer from the same issue). Once I solved the issue, I did the work in SF, so I can't say for sure how either of these macro recorders work in SAW, but my best guess is they'd be fine.

Other ones I tried, but didn't like for one reason or another (they seem to be highly respected) include AutoHotkey and Pulover's Macro Creator. Those latter appear to be very powerful, but, alas, therefore pack a bit of learning curve. I was in a hurry.

If you want simple and can be happy with the focus issue I mention, above, Tiny Task is pretty darned cool. My guess is that maybe the focus issue hasn't been addressed by the developer heretofore because the last event in each macro you record is always clicking back on the TT interfaces's REC button to stop the recording. So TT retains focus at the end of each macro you play. It was a problem for me only because I was having to place the cursor in the DAW before initiating each macro loop, which took focus away from the TT interface. Sadly, I couldn't automate placing of the cursor because there was no regularity to where it needed to be placed next each time.

Good luck!