Application Blocking AutoIt?

[Scintillaterich]

Hello

Autoit seems like an amazing application and if I can get it working it will save me a lot of time. I'm trying to automate a process in an application (Pro Tools) but it doesn't seem to be working. It works for notepad etc, but not this application. Could it be that Pro Tools is somehow blocking AutoIt? Is there any way that I can determine what the problem is?

What I'm trying to do (This is the task I'm trying to automate):

I'm using Pro Tools 7.4 to make music

I'm trying to "Convert" an drum audio file into a MIDI file. There's a snazzy way of doing this called Tab To Transient.

I put the cursor at the end of the audio track and press "ctrl+tab". This causes the cursor to jump backwards to the beginning of the most recent note in the audio track.

Then I press ":", which makes the cursor jump down to the track below (a MIDI track).

Then I press "ctrl+V" to paste a MIDI note into the MIDI track.

Then I press "p" to move the cursor back up to the audio track.

I repeat these keystrokes until the cursor gets back to the beginning, and voila! Every time there's kick drum (for example) there's a MIDI note on the track below.

This is really really snazzy, but it takes ages and requires so much repetitive typing. I takes hours to do a whole song. It's the kind of thing Autoit is perfect for!

The script I've written is:

WinActivate("Pro Tools 7.4cs10","The Werewolf3")

sleep (5000)

$x=1

Do

$x=$x+1

Send("^{TAB}")

Send(";")

Send("^v")

Send("p")

Sleep(10)

Until $x=50

If I run this script and quickly switch to Notepad, I can see the keystrokes! But even if I click in the Pro Tools Window to activate it, there are no keystrokes.

Could it be that Pro Tools is somehow blocking AutoIt? Why would it do that? I can understand games wanting to block it, but not this! Is there any way that I can determine what the problem is?

If anyone has any thoughts about this I'd really appreciate hearing them.

Thanks very much in advance

Dicky

Edited April 7, 2011 by Scintillaterich

[bwochinski]

Are you on Vista or Win7?

First thing that comes to my mind is to try adding the #RequireAdmin option on the first line of the script to see if windows UAC is blocking autoIt from interacting with the other application.

[Richard Robertson]

It's also possible that the program resists automation. I've actually written a program that AutoIt cannot "send" to.

[Scintillaterich]

IT WORKS IT WORKS IT WORKS!

Guys, thanks so much for your help! And bwochinski, I could kiss you now! It was the #RequireAdmin option that fixed it! THANK YOU!

Dicky

Are you on Vista or Win7?

First thing that comes to my mind is to try adding the #RequireAdmin option on the first line of the script to see if windows UAC is blocking autoIt from interacting with the other application.

[bwochinski]

Glad that's all it was

Out of curiosity, how long does it take to go through a song for you with the script now?