After a long day of mousework selecting and deselecting timeline tracks on a 16-audio-tracks sequence... well, having a way to select active tracks configurations via a single click or keystroke would be REALLY nice... something like the color buckets... one click for dialogue, another one for vfx trimming.. 4 or 8 presets...

Well, just ranting,,,

 

ggo

You can do this by using a macro program. I can't recommend one on the PC, but on the Mac I use Keyboard Maestro for this sort of thing. You would have to have the track selector buttons assigned to buttons on the keyboard. Then you can assign a macro to deselect all tracks, then activate the tracks you want. However, since Avid only has 9 track assignment buttons in the palette, you'd have to fake it by using mouse clicks. The way I would do that is to assign a key to open the Audio Mixer (within Avid), then use start the macro by deselecting all tracks and opening the mixer (which you probably have open anyway, but pressing the button will then activate it which is crucial for the rest of the macro). Then have the macro program option-click on the group selector button, and select group one. Then select the tracks you want, and then go to the next group, select tracks, etc. This way, you would always be assured that no matter how your track layouts changed (different size or number of tracks) the macro would always work the same way (assuming it can issue clicks relative to the front window, rather than the whole screen). You could even move your mixer anywhere on the screen and it should work.

It may take some experimentation to get it right. Mainly, you might have to introduce some brief pauses--usually about 0.2 seconds--to let the system catch up to the macro. But once you have it working, it should be a huge time saver. I have about 25 macros set up to do all sorts of things in Avid you couldn't normally do, and now I can't imagine working without them.