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== OSARA Key Map ==
=Preferences=
When installing OSARA, there is an option to install the OSARA Key Map. All keyboard commands described in this Wiki, unless specifically noted, will assume that you have this installed. A number of the OSARA bindings use actions that are from SWS, this is another reason to install SWS when installing Reaper and Osara.


Most of the Wiki content will include the Windows mapping, if you use Reaper on the Mac, then the below conversions will assist in finding the Mac version.
Below are some of the options in the preferences dialogue (control + P) which are commonly changed from their default values.  Useful to review when learning Reaper or after a reset to factory defaults.


=== Windows to Mac ===
Note that changes to preferences are sticky from one load of Reaper to another.  There are other options in Reaper, such as metronome settings, which are part of the default project settings and only persist once the Save As Default button is used in project settings (alt _+ enter).




*  Windows Control is Mac Command
* Windows Alt is Mac Option
* The Windows Key is Mac Control
The vast majority of keystrokes are mapped as per the above conversions. There are a few exceptions to this though. In some cases commands on Windows when converted to Mac, run into system commands or are problematic for other reasons.
For example, the action "Unmute all tracks," is Control+F5, on the Mac, this is Command+F5 and toggles Voice-Over off an on. In these situations, the Mac Command Key is replaced with the Mac Control key. Another class of actions that have slight differences between Windows and Mac are those for adjusting the boundaries of time selections and item edges. To adjust the left boundary of these you use the Control key as the modifier on Windows and Option as the modifier on Mac. The right boundary uses Alt as the modifier on windows, and Command as the modifier on Mac.


As many of the actions in Reaper use the F-Keys, you may wish to change the default behaviour of these keys under System Preferences for your Mac. For example, by default F11 and F12 control volume.  Go into  System Preferences, Keyboard, and find 'Use F1, F2, etc. keys as standard function keys'. After checking this box, you can now use these keys as described, as standard function keys rather then controlling the hardware. If you still want to be able to use them to control hardware, add the FN key.
*General
 
** There are tick boxes for what creates an undo item.  Untick to shorten the undo history.
== The Actions List ==
** Option to preserve undo history when saving a project.
A really great aspect of Reaper is the Actions List. Essentially, anything that Reaper can do can be assigned to a keyboard shortcut or a button, knob, slider, pad or key on a midi keyboard or controller. This is excellent news for blind users. Even better is the fact that many of Reaper's actions are already assigned to keyboard shortcuts, and OSARA and the Sws extension extends this even further. We covered how to download OSARA and SWS in the [[Getting_Started|Getting Started section]]. You will need OSARA in order to make Reaper accessible.
** Several options on how Reaper behaves when starting up such as load last project, start a new project or prompt. Also can check for new versions of Reaper and an option to allow multiple instances of Reaper to be run.
 
*Paths
All possible actions, along with information about associated keyboard shortcuts, can be found in the Actions List. The way to immediately get to this is to press F4. The Actions List is a very powerful tool. The first thing you land on when you press F4 is an edit field that allows you to type in order to filter down your results. If you Tab a few times past the edit field, you will get to a list of actions, preceded by the associated shortcut. The keyboard shortcut, if there is one assigned, is read first, followed by the description of what that shortcut does. If there isn't a shortcut assigned to an action, but you would like there to be, you can easily assign one, but we will cover that in a moment. If you press enter, the selected action will be carried out and you exit the Actions List, if you press escape you will simply exit the Actions List.
** Option to set a specific folder to store peak files (reapeaks). Can then clear this folder out from time to time.
 
*Keyboard / multitouch
=== managing shortcuts ===
** Recommend ticking Allow space key  to be used for navigation in various windows
 
*Projects
To assign a shortcut to an action that does not have one, first locate it on the list of shortcuts by selecting it with the up or down arrow keys. If then the tab key is pressed once, another list will be announced, which contains the shortcut or shortcuts that belong to that action (there can be more than one indeed). Tabbing once more will place the focus on an add button, tabbing one more time will place the focus on a delete button.
** Option to define a default project template
 
** Prompt to save on new project. Tick this if you want to be forced to define a path for all your projects which means you know where your media is going.
==== adding shortcuts ====
** Options to autosave project backups into a defined subfolder.  Suggestion is to store to a subfolder called Backups every 10 or 15 minutes. Backup files are generally small.
 
** Option to save the undo history.
To add a shortcut you can tab to the add button, and press enter or space on it. You can then press the desired key combination and then press enter. If the hotkey is already bound to another action, reaper will alert you of this fact and will ask you if you wish to override the mapping. If you answer no, changes are discarded and you are back on the actions dialog. If you answer yes, whichever action it is that had that key combination already in use will have it removed and the new assignment will be valid for the action for which you just added a shortcut.
*Media Item defaults
 
** Default fade in and fade out time is 10ms. Can reduce to 3ms to be less obtrusive. Is If looping and splitting samples may want to reduce this to zero to avoid dips in volume between samples.  Alternatively, can raise these values to get modulation effects when splitting an item at grid lines.
If you tab inside the dialog in which you add a shortcut instead of typing in a hotkey or moving a midi controller to assign to an action, you will find a button called special key, enter, tab... You can thus press enter on that button, press shift enter for example, then press enter once more, and your shortcut will be assigned to shift enter and you will be taken back to the actions list dialog.
*Audio
 
** Recommended to turn off tiny fade in and fade out on start and stop.
==== deleting assignments ====
*Devices and MIDI
 
** Fundamental section specific to equipment set up for input and output of audio and MIDI
To delete a hotkey combination that has been assigned to a particular action you first have to select the action, then the assigned hotkey from the list that is before the add... button, and then you can press enter or space on the delete button. There is no confirmation dialog!
*Buffering
 
** Can reduce Default Media Buffer size from 1200 to around 100 for more responsivness on playback.
=== what about the other buttons on the actions dialog? ===
*Playback
 
** Recommend ticking Stop playback at end of loop if repeat is disabled. This links with other settings in Edditing.
There are two new... buttons The first one of them will create a custom action and another one will be for making a new ReaScript. The "load..." button will open a dialog that prompts for a reaScript file, and the import/export button will let you import and export reaper key maps. The menu editor will allow you to customize every aspect of the menus in reaper, including which actions will apear or disappear! from what menu and the order in which they appear, their names, titles ETC. And you can import and export all of those menu sets as well.
*Recording
 
**  Recommend disabling Show preview of recording items while recording
==== creating custom action macros ====
** Options to prompt to save or discard newly recorded material on stop.  Often easier to disable this and use control + Z to undo recorded media if new material isn't wanted.
 
** Option to define the name given to newly recorded items
A custom action consists of a series of actions, bundled together into one single keystroke. There is no limit into how many actions you can have assigned to just one key. For example, one of the actions already present in the osara key map is assigned to the letter A, and its called
*Rendering
 
** Option to override the default buffer size when rendering which can speed up render times e.g. Can set to 1024.
Custom: Select and split item under edit or play cursor
** Options to set a tail duration  and when it is applied to capture effects like reverb.
 
*Editting
Which uses two different actions:
** Can set Move edit cursor to start of time selection on time selection change.  So when ending a time selection with right bracket edit cursor moves to the start of the time selection.
*Xenakios/SWS: Select items under edit cursor on selected tracks
** Option to set moving edit cursor to end of item when pasting. Useful if pasting multiple copies of an item one after another.  Can also cause confusion though as means have to rewind to hear newly pasted content.
*Item: Split items at edit or play cursor
** Link loop points to time selection.  Set this to on so that option in Playback section  works effectively. Can unlink loop points and time selection in the options menu if needed for a particular workflow.
 
*Envelope display
When you press the first "new..." button in the action dialog you will come to the screen that lets you create custom actions.
** Options here to change the range of volume and pitch envelopes.
a description of this dialog follows
*Media
*the first edit box that you will encounter as soon as you open the dialog is for the action name.
** Option on copying  media to project directory
*consolidate undo points: this checkbox lets you group all of the performed actions into one if you wish. Useful when you repeat one action several times  and do not want your undo history to be cluttered.
** Options for rendering tails on item FX.  Defaults are quite short.  Values of 5000 to 10,000 more useful.
*filter: enter here actions to search
** Can untick Show status window when generating peaks as this is just annoying.
*the OK and cancel buttons save and discard your changes or new actions
*MIDI
*the first list. Here, you will have a list of every action in reaper. if you used the search filter, you will see your results here
** Some default options for how to treat MIDI files being imported
*list two, or second list: here is where your sequence of actions go, in order.
*Plugins
*Show in actions menu: this option lets you toggle the visibility of this custom action in the recently used actions menu.
** Numerous options on how to display FX windows. Typically do want to auto-resize, uncheck auto-float newly created windows, don't want to dock, and tick display only one window at a time but this last doesn't really work very well.
 
*Compatibility
So, how to add actions from the first list to the second list?
** Options in here on how to treat 32-bit plugins by default but can also do this each plugin at a time using the context menu when highlighting a plugin in the FX search dialogue.
What you will have to do is to select the desired action on the first list, and then use your screen reader's cursor routing functions.
*VST
*For jaws this is routing the jaws cursor to pc using jaws plus numpad minus (desktops), jaws plus left bracket (laptops) and then performing a double click.
** Fundamental option to define the paths that Reaper uses when searching for and loading VST's.
*For NVDA, you have to move the mouse to the current navigator object insert plus numpad dash (desktops), alt shift M (laptops) and then use the keystroke that performs the default action on the current navigator object using NVDA plus enter. However if your navigator object follows your cursor, you just press NVDA plus enter without having to route the mouse.
*External editors
*to do: how is this done using voiceover?
** Define the path of external editors
 
After you have double clicked the action it will show up in the second list. If you need to remove an action from that list, you first select it and then tab five times to find a button called remove action.
 
One obvious use case for custom actions would be to create two actions to navigate to the top of the track list, and then speaking the track name. Same for navigating to the bottom of the track list, then speaking the track name as reaper does not have such actions yet. To do this
#open the create custom actions dialog, and then give the action a name
#use the filter to search for the action Track: Select track 01
#tab to the list containing the results, and add this action to the second list.  
#go back to the search filter and search for Track: Select last touched track
#tab to the list containing the results, and add this action to the second list. There should be two in this exact order.
#go back to the search filter and search for OSARA: Report track/item/time selection (depending on focus)
#tab to the list containing the results, and add this action to the second list. There should be three in this exact order.
#press the OK button, and you are ready to assign a shortcut as described above.
 
To create an action that will go to the bottom of the track list, you will need to bundle all of the following:
*Track: Select all tracks
*Xenakios/SWS: Select last of selected tracks
*OSARA: report track/item/time selection (depending on focus)
 
There is also an [[Special:MyLanguage/Useful_Links_and_Resources|audio tutorial available]] which describes how to make custom actions.
 
==  Shortcut help ==
One very effective way to learn Reaper is by using shortcut Help. When in Shortcut Help, press any key or combination of keys on your computer keyboard to hear what action is associated to that key or key combination. For instance, if you press down arrow, you will hear, “go to next track.” If you press up arrow, you will hear, “go to previous track.” If you press control space, you will discover that this is to play and pause. You can enter and exit Shortcut Help by pressing F12. If you have a midi controller or keyboard and actions are assigned to any of its buttons, faders or knobs then pressing, fading or turning any of them will also read out the associated action.
Lastly, there is a neatly compiled [[Reaper shortcut key list by headings]] which includes every reaper keyboard shortcut and lists them in terms of function.

Latest revision as of 15:23, 8 June 2023

Preferences

Below are some of the options in the preferences dialogue (control + P) which are commonly changed from their default values. Useful to review when learning Reaper or after a reset to factory defaults.

Note that changes to preferences are sticky from one load of Reaper to another. There are other options in Reaper, such as metronome settings, which are part of the default project settings and only persist once the Save As Default button is used in project settings (alt _+ enter).


  • General
    • There are tick boxes for what creates an undo item. Untick to shorten the undo history.
    • Option to preserve undo history when saving a project.
    • Several options on how Reaper behaves when starting up such as load last project, start a new project or prompt. Also can check for new versions of Reaper and an option to allow multiple instances of Reaper to be run.
  • Paths
    • Option to set a specific folder to store peak files (reapeaks). Can then clear this folder out from time to time.
  • Keyboard / multitouch
    • Recommend ticking Allow space key to be used for navigation in various windows
  • Projects
    • Option to define a default project template
    • Prompt to save on new project. Tick this if you want to be forced to define a path for all your projects which means you know where your media is going.
    • Options to autosave project backups into a defined subfolder. Suggestion is to store to a subfolder called Backups every 10 or 15 minutes. Backup files are generally small.
    • Option to save the undo history.
  • Media Item defaults
    • Default fade in and fade out time is 10ms. Can reduce to 3ms to be less obtrusive. Is If looping and splitting samples may want to reduce this to zero to avoid dips in volume between samples. Alternatively, can raise these values to get modulation effects when splitting an item at grid lines.
  • Audio
    • Recommended to turn off tiny fade in and fade out on start and stop.
  • Devices and MIDI
    • Fundamental section specific to equipment set up for input and output of audio and MIDI
  • Buffering
    • Can reduce Default Media Buffer size from 1200 to around 100 for more responsivness on playback.
  • Playback
    • Recommend ticking Stop playback at end of loop if repeat is disabled. This links with other settings in Edditing.
  • Recording
    • Recommend disabling Show preview of recording items while recording
    • Options to prompt to save or discard newly recorded material on stop. Often easier to disable this and use control + Z to undo recorded media if new material isn't wanted.
    • Option to define the name given to newly recorded items
  • Rendering
    • Option to override the default buffer size when rendering which can speed up render times e.g. Can set to 1024.
    • Options to set a tail duration and when it is applied to capture effects like reverb.
  • Editting
    • Can set Move edit cursor to start of time selection on time selection change. So when ending a time selection with right bracket edit cursor moves to the start of the time selection.
    • Option to set moving edit cursor to end of item when pasting. Useful if pasting multiple copies of an item one after another. Can also cause confusion though as means have to rewind to hear newly pasted content.
    • Link loop points to time selection. Set this to on so that option in Playback section works effectively. Can unlink loop points and time selection in the options menu if needed for a particular workflow.
  • Envelope display
    • Options here to change the range of volume and pitch envelopes.
  • Media
    • Option on copying media to project directory
    • Options for rendering tails on item FX. Defaults are quite short. Values of 5000 to 10,000 more useful.
    • Can untick Show status window when generating peaks as this is just annoying.
  • MIDI
    • Some default options for how to treat MIDI files being imported
  • Plugins
    • Numerous options on how to display FX windows. Typically do want to auto-resize, uncheck auto-float newly created windows, don't want to dock, and tick display only one window at a time but this last doesn't really work very well.
  • Compatibility
    • Options in here on how to treat 32-bit plugins by default but can also do this each plugin at a time using the context menu when highlighting a plugin in the FX search dialogue.
  • VST
    • Fundamental option to define the paths that Reaper uses when searching for and loading VST's.
  • External editors
    • Define the path of external editors
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