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

Need a Macro Button? Here are Fifteen!
The Shuttle Pro also includes 15 programmable macro buttons. Each of the buttons can be assigned to a specific key sequence to automate common tasks in your favourite applications. The default mappings for Premiere Pro are great and include functions like: forward/reverse, play, stop, skip to next/previous, edit, and insert or overlay. These are all available as keyboard shortcuts in Premiere Pro as well, but by grouping them next to the jog wheel your left hand can again offload some of the work from your right.

To help you remember what each of the macro keys do the Shuttle Pro comes with a set of pre-printed labels. Using a pen or a paper clip you pry off the key covers from 9 of the 15 keys and insert the label underneath. This is much nicer than a stick on label, as it allows you to change the mappings down the road and prevents a gummy sticker mess as the devices gets pounded from daily use. A set of blank labels is also included so you can add your own custom mappings.

In practice, I didn't bother adding the labels underneath as it doesn't take very long to memorize what the buttons do. I also found that I didn't use the macro buttons as much as I'd thought I would. I was already pretty familiar with the keyboard shortcuts for Premiere Pro, and had already trained my left hand to do all the commands. When I was already using the jog wheel to move through clips I did occasionally make use of the macro buttons, but if you wanted to save a few dollars you could probably go for the Shuttle Express (see conclusion for more details) and still be happy.

Not Just a One-Trick Pony
Even though I only intended to use the Shuttle Pro for video editing it actually comes with presets for an exhaustive set of applications. While I was writing this review, for example, I discovered that the jog/shuttle wheel can be used to arrow through Microsoft Word documents. The same scrolling behaviour works in Internet Explorer, and gives you a nice way to roll through a document while pointing with your mouse. Some macro buttons and the jog wheel do zooming in Photoshop, too, and other macro buttons are mapped to common image transforms. The Shuttle Pro driver automatically detects the active application and adjusts its settings accordingly, so you never have to swap settings through a control panel.


Figure 1: The Shuttle Pro v2 control panel.

If you're not happy with the button and wheel mappings you can use the Shuttle Pro's control panel to set up custom behaviours for each button in specific applications. For example, I changed the default Shuttle action in Word to map to the mouse wheel movements rather than up/down arrow key presses. The control panel is pretty simple to use: select the application settings you want to change, press the button on the Shuttle Pro to modify, and then assign the key stroke or mouse command. Unfortunately, however, there is no help integrated into the control panel to explain some of the non-obvious options. It would be nice to include a help button somewhere so you don't have to go load up the manual from the CD.

Conclusion
At $115 the Shuttle Pro v2 is a steal for anyone who does video editing on a regular basis. If you want to spend a little less you might consider the Shuttle Express which provides a jog/shuttle wheel and 5 macro buttons for a mere $38. Either one will be a valuable addition to your video editing workflow!