Solution: Kensington Trackball zooms in reverse...

[skylar_battles]

So is the "issue" the control and shift modifiers on MacOS combined with scrolling? Just uncertain why it wouldn't be unanimously the experience then. I'm only hesitant to use a third party app, because even with the Kensington app, just trying to change the top 2 buttons on the mouse to forward and back on the internet also works for zoom in/out in PT. Pretty strange, so I imagine there could be some bugs as most just leave the settings default that people wouldn't know about.

[nednednerb]

Originally Posted by skylar_battles

So is the "issue" the control and shift modifiers on MacOS combined with scrolling? Just uncertain why it wouldn't be unanimously the experience then. I'm only hesitant to use a third party app, because even with the Kensington app, just trying to change the top 2 buttons on the mouse to forward and back on the internet also works for zoom in/out in PT. Pretty strange, so I imagine there could be some bugs as most just leave the settings default that people wouldn't know about.

Well, having similar but not "unanimous" problems in different apps with different scrolling behaviours affects different "minds" differently.

It's not that one way works, and one way doesn't, but if a bunch of modifiers connect a wheel to functions, there are many ways to mess up a bunch of users, especially cross app and cross function.

Think of these examples: I have a Kensington Trackball. The circular scroll wheel, imagine moving it "clockwise" vs. "counter-clockwise"...

Sure, "natural" for me seems to be clockwise for "horizontal scroll to the right" in PT edit window, while counter-clockwise is natural for horizontal scroll to the left.

A really common one, on the other hand that many apps do differently, certainly not just Pro Tools or a certain mouse, is zoom in and zoom out, as you mentioned there.

In some apps, clockwise pulls the timeline longer or shorter, and counter-clockwise does the opposite. I got messed up in Adobe Premiere's latest update with this (as they put a 2023, 2024 on the end of the app name, so settings do not transfer automatically,) so going back and forth between PT and Premiere, I needed the opposite motion to do the same thing.

One of the whole reasons I did get SteerMouse was complete control over the modifier and scroll direction per app. (There may be alternatives, but I like it.)
Also, it gives complete control over the top left and right buttons and you can configure chord operations (plus modifiers). Now again I switch them up depending on the task, or if I go a span then forget some.

But the scroll direction stays "personally intuitive be damned with the reversal of what's natural" hahaha.

I just like doing it how IIIII want it to run. "Natural or reverse" always requires a qualification between some users, but using the computer how the user wants to is more straightforward (or looped on the beat~).

[skylar_battles]

If it really is possible to get the desired behavior using SteerMouse I'd be tempted to try. Still curious to test the clip gain vs waveform zoom direction a different computer and same PT version to see if the issue is consistent, but maybe all of the settings at play make it not so simple to evaluate? I'd still think scroll for everything should be "consistent" PT regardless of the reverse or natural concept and unrelated to which modifiers are used but maybe it's super deep!