Mouse goes to a color

Hi,

I need your help, this is what i want to do :

In Ableton i'm browsing files with up and down key and once i highlighted the file i want, the mouse moves to specified file, drag it and release it.

So the last part is easy but my question is : since the highlighted file will never be at the same position, how can i make understand bome that i want the highlighted file ? As you can see in the attached image the file i want is 0003.wav . So i thought it could be a good option to make bome understand i want the blue thing. But how can i do that ? Or do you have any other idea ?

Hi stst,
I think Max4Live (in association with Midi Translator) might be the right tool to use for these actions, though there would probably be a very steep learning curve.
On the other hand, I've done quite similar things within MT using the cursor positioning function.
Something like this might work:

First you have to open the file browser, then open the library of your choice, and then open the folder that contains the samples you're interested in. This would be straightforward if you are willing to use the mouse, but in that case, I think there's not much more "mousing" to be done in order to select the sample you want and then click and drag it to your destination.

So, I guess what you are after is much more "automation". You could use an endless encoder or as you suggest, the up and down keys to browse your samples. But in that case, you'd still need to open the browser and correct library and folder first. That could be a challenge if you have your samples arranged by type, in different folders. Not impossible to do, but you'd probably have to devote some controller buttons or computer keys (qwerty) to the task of guiding the cursor to the correct points on your screen in order to get make the samples visible. For example, pressing "A" on your keyboard could:
- move the cursor to "Current Project"
- left click
- move the cursor to "Samples"
- left click
- move the cursor to the folder with the desired samples
- left click
- move to the first sample
- left click
At which point, the up and down keys could take over and start to browse (and highlight) the various samples.

OK... next challenge. Each time the next sample (down) is chosen, you'd have to move your cursor by a set amount. You'd need to determine this, and it would be different depending on your screen resolution. (There are tools within MT that would make this merely tedious instead of absolute torture!) I think it's do-able, but it's also possible that there would be no cursor movement that would move the cursor to the exact center of the text of the sample that's highlighted. After many moves, the cursor may have moved incrementally away from the center of the text, and ultimately position itself over the wrong sample. On the other hand, with perseverance, you may ultimately succeed.

Next challenge. I doubt you're intending always to drag the clip to the same cell within Ableton. How could you possibly communicate the correct place to drop the sample. If you're going to do this with the mouse...once again, you might as well do the whole thing with the mouse.

Can you be a bit more explicit about exactly what you intend to do?

I'll probably be embarrassed when someone comes up with an elegant and simple solution, but still, even that clever person will need a bit more information about what it is that you're intending to do.
Gabriel

This is for a dj set, I will only have 1 folder, what i set up for the moment is that i move my mouse 19pixel up and down to search for my file, so only the mouse is moving, then i click a button that will take the sample and move it where i want ( 3 different button for 3 different places ), so this is working quite well, the cool thing about this is that my mouse is always on the file i want, but the problem is that with only moving my mouse it can't scroll down so i can only access to the limited number of samples i can see, and if i scroll down with an other button then the files are not at the same exact pixel so the mouse is offbeat.

And if i highlight them with up and down keys it scrolls down by itself but i need to find a solution for my mouse to go to the specific file but it will never be at the same place.

And if i highlight them + mouse over at the same time well it's working as well but once reached the last file it will begin to scroll down with the down key but the mouse will continue going down as well so the mouse will be offbeat.

Thanks a lot for your help, I didn't understand all your explication since i'm a beginner in this so there's a lot of terms i didn't understand :/ , i think your idea is to always set the file i want at a specific position using the cursor ? I thought about that too but how would i have access to the first and last files ? The scroll will be blocked.

That's why i thought about setting the mouse to detect a color, can't we do that with apple script ?

Edit : I may have an idea for the cursor thing, i could add a lot of useless files at the beginning and end of the folder so i can always have access to my files at the center of the cursor, i will try to do that.

EDIT 2 : ITS WORKING f*ck YES, i set the cursor movement at 1

Good to hear you got it working. Don't hesitate to follow through on this thread if you find there's something still not quite as you want it.
Gabriel

oh, great to hear it's working! and as you have guessed: it is not possible for MT Pro to detect the color under the mouse.
So is the solution now to move the mouse in units of 1 pixel instead of 19 pixels at once?
Do you use mouse wheel emulation for scrolling?
Would you mind posting your project file? Could be interesting for other users!
Thanks,
Florian

The solution was to not move the mouse anymore, but just the wheel, i've been lucky enough that moving the wheel value 1 was exactly the amount i needed.

So i still got my init moving my mouse to the point i want, but now when i want to select another track i just move the wheel up and down and the track i want is always where my mouse got init.

However i still have the problem that when i click on the " load the track " button (what i set up to just click and drag the track i want and move back to init) my mouse is still going back to where it was before the teleportation to init, that results that the track is getting dragged at where the mouse was before, and there's 3 point i want to drag track to so yea ... i still have to restart my computer everytime to solve the problem.

That problem is occurring after a while of using it -- reported separately, right?
Thanks,
Florian

Yea it's a separate problem, but it's not after a while using it, sometimes i'm using my computer for hours then i decide to use bome and it's directly not working, i can only use bome if i use it directly after starting up my computer and being careful to not use my mouse too much.

ah thanks for the clarification. Weird!
Florian