Timeline view keeps zooming in by itself

Look, it's like this: There is no mention anywhere at all in the Preferences>Playback and Recording section of any zoom control function, so any mention of zooming has to be in the context of scrolling - as I mentioned before. Upon further investigation, it appears that the only Preference function at all that has any effect on zooming is in General, in the Mouse Wheel  Zoom section, and I suspect that won't alter what you are after, although it might... Fundamentally, if you start to record in Waveform view, the screen will automatically zoom further out as you progress. It's this behaviour that the General setting will alter - it lets you select a view window width as recording proceeds, if it's set to Zoom at Playhead. But you have to select the window size as it progresses; you can't preset it. I'm not claiming for one moment that this is entirely intuitive; it isn't. But this is what it does, consistently, here.