Hello ardourians,
i have a problem with the zoom-in shortcut (shift =) in ardour 4, it just doesn’t work. I have tried to change the shortcut under key-bindings (setting the playhead zoom to something else also doesn’t work), have had no success. What am i doing wrong?
Thanks
Hi. I’ve had some similar issue long ago but i didn’t even know what Ardour was back then. Long story short - system was confused whether shift and = should be interpreted as shift and = OR shift and +, since shift suggests using the upper sign, right? I don’t remember any details, it had something to do with global keybinding conflict. Maybe you’ve changed something in the very system lately? And if it comes to Ardour, I use mousewheel constantly - ctrl and mousewheel - horizontal zoom, alt and mousewheel - vertical track stretching. It’s comfortable, fast and you don’t even have to move your hand from the mouse.
Hello ototto,
ctl+mousewheel was a great hint! I’m gonna use that. With the keys now i have noticed the zoom-in was not the only matter, for Loop there is similar thing, how do you make loops? I do “r”, select a region and then hit the “l”, it doesn’t work (even hitting the Loop button on the edit menu doesn’t), this works in ardour 3 but not in 4. I am confused
If you ask about MY habits 
I use ‘Grab mode’ with the ‘Smart’ option checked (the hand with index finger button, and ‘Smart’ button next to it, both checked). It lets you manipulate regions while you hover your mouse on the bottom half of the track/region, and while you hover over the top half of the track/region, the cursor automatically changes into regions manipulator. That’s sooo friggin convenient, I’m constantly mind-blown that Ardour creators keep making their job almost for free.
And your very question: check the ‘Region Mode’ or use my favourite method as above, mark a region, rightclick on it and pick ‘Loop region’ from the menu. If you want to loop a region, then rightclick on one (or more, you can mark as many as you want clicking on them while holding down ‘Ctrl’ or ‘Shift’, just as you click file and folder icons in your system), then pick region’s name from the menu on the top of it (or ‘Selected regions’, if there are many marked) and then click ‘Loop’ from the sub-menu that pops out. And then the ‘L’ shortcut should work with no problem.
Well, that’s my way of doing this, but I’m sure that there’re some other. But everything I say works fine for me in Ardour 4.4 and I strongly, strongly advise you to update. It’s much more stable (if you ask my hardware, ha!), there are more veeeery useful, small things that make your job comfortable and elastic, and you can still work on your old sessions created with older versions, so you won’t loose your current materials… at least I didn’t have any trouble with that. Maybe if you worry about your old gear, if you have one - Ardour itself doesn’t seem to require much of a processor and RAM, but the plugins do and you’ll get them all the same.
Hope my elaboration’s helpful 
Cheers
And one more thing to avoid confusions: If you want to loop a region to create a continuous beat, that’s a completely separate thing. Then you rightclick on the region, pick region’s name, then from pop-out menu pick ‘Duplicate…’, and then another pop-out menu and pick ‘Duplicate’ (creates one copy of the region next to it), ‘Multi-Duplicate…’ (creates as many copys as the number you enter, one after another) or ‘Fill Track’ (creates enough copies to fill the entire session, until it reaches ‘END’ marker).
Last thing - I’ve made a mistake:
There is: And your very question: check the ‘Region Mode’ or use my favourite method as above, mark a region, rightclick on it and pick ‘Loop region’ from the menu.
Should be: And your very question: check the ‘Range Mode’ or use my favourite method as above, mark a Range, rightclick on it and pick ‘Loop Range’ from the menu
Keyboard bindings on almost all programs are always made for people using the US keymap. If you use another keymap then the default keybindings might be very inconvenient to use and sometimes even impossible. I use the FI keymap and some of the default Ardour keybindings won’t work for me, but they are quite easy to change.
The zoom keybindings can be found from the menu: Window / Key bindings
(Scroll almost to the bottom)
Editor / Zoom In
Editor / Zoom Out
Wow! This was very helpful, thank you so much for your comprehensive help. However Fill Track didn’t work for me! I selected a range and go to Range > Duplicate > Fill Track, but nothing happens. Maybe its a version matter?
@mhartzel Thank you, i am using a german keyboard, so i just can confirm what you say. I changed the key bindings and every thing works just great!
@amir, so we both mistook some words and I’d like to be clear 
Range - a selection over tracks and regions, light grey
Regions - objects of different colours with waveforms in them
So what I had in mind was to select a region and then multiplicate it. Is that what you did? If yes, then everything’s fine. Remember that ‘Fill track’ goes to the end of the session, so mind where is your end (visible in the markers section over the tracks section). Maybe it’s just at the end of your region? Then nothing will happen and that’s good; In that case you’re supposed to move the end marker to the right to extend the session’s lenght and try again.
And if that’s not the reason of the ‘Fill track’ not working, then I can’t come up with any other.
Have you upgraded? };->