Enhanced editing with keyboard

Sonar supports advanced editing via the numeric keypad on standard QWERTY keyboards, which allows you to edit clips without a mouse and from control surfaces such as the Mackie Control. It's also very useful if you're doing a lot of repetitive operations on clips, as it can save you from constantly jumping back and forth from keyboard to mouse.

You can perform the following operations:

Navigate (see Navigating with a keyboard):

Scroll

Zoom

Select (see Selecting with a keyboard):

Clip select

Time select

Edit (see Editing with a keyboard):

Trim/crop

Fade

First time setup

 

Note: As of Sonar 2020.03, the default keyboard shortcut (0 on the numeric keypad) to enable/disable Enhanced Keyboard Editing Mode has been removed. In order to use enhanced keyboard editing, you must first assign Enable/Disable Enhanced Keyboard Editing to any unused keyboard shortcut. For details, see Key bindings.

1.	Go to Edit > Preferences > Customization - Keyboard Shortcuts.

2.	Under Area, select Global Bindings.

3.	In the key list, select the shortcut that you want to use to enable enhanced keyboard editing.

4.	In the Function list, select Enable/Disable Enhanced Keyboard Editing, then click Bind.

5.	Click OK to close the Preferences dialog box.

To enable/disable editing with a QWERTY keyboard

1.	On your QWERTY keyboard, press the NumLock key to enable NumLock mode.

2.	Press the keyboard shortcut that you previously assigned to Enable/Disable Enhanced Keyboard Editing (see First time setup).

When Enhanced Keyboard Editing mode is enabled, a white cursor appears at the edit location. You can reposition the cursor with the numeric keypad arrow keys.

3.	Select the desired mode:

Zoom/Scroll mode. Press 1.

Select mode. Press 3.

Edit mode. Press 9.

The keys on the numeric keypad are mapped as follows:

Figure 177. Numeric keypad (NumLock mode).

 

Key	Function
1	Enable Zoom/Scroll mode
2	Down
3	Enable Select mode
4	Left
5	Center edit cursor
6	Right
7	--
8	Up
9	Enable Edit mode
Volume knob (if keyboard has a rotary encoder)	Zoom/scroll/trim/crop depending on current mode
PLUS (+)	Crop or fade right in Edit mode
MINUS (-)	Crop or fade left in Edit mode

 

See:

Navigating with a keyboard

Selecting with a keyboard

Editing with a keyboard