Digital Home Thoughts: Jog Your Way to Editing Bliss: Shuttle Pro v2

Overview
Jog/shuttle wheels are a staple of the video editing industry. Watch any show on TV that cuts to a fancy control room and you're bound to see editing boards with lots of switches, buttons, and a jog wheel. The big win with a wheel is that it lets you use your otherwise useless left hand while editing. The left hand takes up the job of moving through video clips at various speeds, and your right hand can drive the rest of the application UI (lefties shall, of course, reverse this!). Couple a jog/shuttle wheel with a few macro buttons and you have a powerful tool to speed up tedious video editing.

Installation
The Shuttle Pro comes in a box with a CD (for drivers and the manual), a quick start card, and a set of button labels. Setup is pretty much like any other USB device: plug the Shuttle Pro in then install the drivers from the CD. After the installation is complete you get a small icon in the system tray to let you know the device is active and to access the control panel if necessary.

The device installation was relatively smooth, although I did have a few hiccups. The first came when I realised that the driver included in the box did not support the latest version of Premiere Pro. It took me a few minutes to realise why the Shuttle Pro didn't do anything when I was trying to edit video! An updated driver from the Website solved the problem, however it wasn't clear from the site that this support was added to the driver I downloaded. It would be nice if the site were updated to provide a complete list of the supported applications in each download.

The second problem appears to be a bug in the CD. The link to launch the manual didn't work, and I had to browse the CD to find it instead.

Jogging for Something Other Than Health and Fitness
In day-to-day use for video editing the Shuttle Pro is everything I wanted it to be. The Shuttle control is very responsive, snaps back nicely when released, and really helped me power through video clips looking for just the right moment. I never noticed any lag time between when I released the wheel and when Premiere Pro stopped moving through footage. The jog portion was equally useful at moving frame-by-frame to pinpoint the exact location for a cut. The device as a whole is very comfortable to use, even with my big hands.

When I first put the Shuttle Pro on my desk I was worried about its weight. To be honest it isn't very heavy and I was concerned it would slide around while I was using it. It turns out this wasn't a problem at all, and it stayed put through all my editing tasks. The nice thing about its weight is that it's actually very easy to slide out of the way when I'm done with it to make more room on my desk for papers and such when I'm doing real work. My only real complaint with the hardware is the depth of the finger dimples on the jog wheel. Maybe I just have big fingers, but I did find that if I was jogging too quickly my finger would occasionally slide off the wheel.