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The Countour Design
ShuttlePro™ |
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USING THE SHUTTLEPRO™ WITH FINAL CUT PRO |
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SETUP Deciding on what I wanted each button to do took me a few days. I set it up one way, realized there were a few buttons I never used, and there were a few functions that I did all the time, like turning Snap off and on-so I made a button for that command. I noticed I hit the Home button a lot on the keyboard to start the clip from the beginning, so I made a button for Media Start. I also added Previous and Next Keyframe buttons since I am always having to click those little triangles. Once you decide what you want each of the buttons to do, you need to go to the Control Panel and set them up. This is pretty easy if you just start at the top and work your way down, remembering that the Target Application needs to say Final Cut Pro.THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW The Next Key Frame and Previous Key Frame commands will cause the playhead to stop at EVERY KEYFRAME IN THE CLIP, even if those keyframes don't show up in the current window. This one threw me for a loop. The playhead was stopping at spots in my Effects timeline that had no keyframes. I switched to the Motion tab and saw that there were keyframes here (under Opacity) that weren't in my other window. The playhead was stopping at ALL keyframes in the clip. Another "feature" I found that actually came in handy was that the presets that Contour set up for FastForward and Rewind buttons also work in the Timeline as Prev. Time/Next Time buttons (or as I call them Clip Head and Clip End buttons). This means that if you like having RW and FF buttons, say for Log and Capture, when you switch back to the timeline, you now have Clip Head and Clip End buttons. I actually created button inserts that have both actions on the same button so I would remember this. The Jog wheel by default acts like the forward and back arrows on your keyboard. One really great feature is that the wheel has "stops" that you can feel clicking by at each frame. This way you can actually count how many frames are going by if you turn the wheel slowly. Maybe all editing controllers have this, but since this was new to me I really thought it was a nice touch. The Shuttle Wheel, works like a scrubber by default, moving the playhead across the timeline slower or faster depending on how far you turn it. I did notice that whenever I let it go I get an error tone from FCP. Not sure what causes this yet as I am still learning what all the key commands actually do. Also, I have had trouble using this and the FF-RW buttons when in Log and Capture. Sometimes the video pauses, sometimes it plays , then stops, then plays. There seem to be different modes of FCP when the video is paused compared to when it is playing. I haven't figured out if there is a pattern here, or just a bug due to using key strokes to control the device. Two of the buttons that were preset from the factory were Zoom in and Zoom out. I Don't know why I never thought about key commands for zooming in the timelines. I HATE the way the zoom feature works using the scroll bar tr the zoom icon when you need to get in really close. Having a zoom in and zoom out button has been like a revelation to me. If you hate this as much as I do, get yourself a ShuttlePro™ and make sure you use the buttons. Being able to just hit the zoom in button a few times and close in on a set of keyframes makes all the difference in the world. MY TAKE While I think this unit is not a must-have for me, I do think that many serious video editors are really going to want one of these. It took me some getting used to, but I don't work on these kinds of systems every day. If I did, I'd sure as heck spend the $125 and get myself a ShuttlePro™. It's cheaper than a specialized keyboard mapped with FCP commands, and it has the Jog and Shuttle wheels that the keyboard doesn't. RETURN TO THE REVIEW PAGE |
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