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4.5 Smileys - 1 Smiley Poor, 5 Smileys Excellent
Platforms: Mac OS, Windows 98/ME/2000
Here Comes Desktop Video...
Video editing has gotten a lot more popular lately, especially since the introduction of the iMac and iMovie. Everyone is a budding videographer, documenting their children's birthday parties, weddings, or other events. It seems that Andy Warhol was right, if a bit off the mark: His famous quote should have read, "In the future, everyone will get their 15 megabytes of fame." Not to mention that schools are using iMovie to inspire students to create video reports. I wish I had an iMac when I was in school -- book reports weren't all that much fun! I have to admit, I'm not immune to the lure of iMovie -- it's one of the coolest programs to come along in a long, long time. Even though I don't have a DV iMac, that hasn't stopped me. You can use iMovie to create slide shows of your favorite pictures, complete with a laugh track and appropriate music. As an example, here's a movie I did for a friend, who has several cats she dearly loves. But professional video editing is an art, and even though iMovie makes it easier, it can be easier still. That brings me to the ShuttlePRO from Contour Design. Designed to give users professional level control in programs like iMovie, Final Cut Pro, and Adobe Premier, it delivers fingertip control over your great film project.
Welcome the ShuttlePRO The ShuttlePRO is a USB device that gives you 13 programmable buttons and shuttle and jog dials to speed up your video editing. It has 9 buttons across the top in two rows that are easily reachable with your hand resting on the shuttle/jog knobs. Below that are four more elongated buttons that you can reach with your thumb or little finger. Ergonomically, the device "fits" my hand well and the buttons are well-placed. I tended not to use the two lower buttons on the right (I'm right-handed) because I didn't have fingers over there!
The beta version of the control panel included iMovie settings, but the recently released version 1.0 does not include iMovie presets with the main control panel download. However, they are offering 2 sets of "presets" that you can download and add-in to the control depending on what programs you use. In addition, it's a fairly easy matter to set up the buttons and knobs to do your most frequently-used commands for other software. The installer also adds an item to the control strip to make access to the ShuttlePRO control panel quick and easy. That's a nice touch, and I appreciate programs that make use of the control strip - it's much easier than rummaging through the control panels folder!
The controller made video and audio editing much easier, even for a novice "wannabe Spielberg" like me. So easy, in fact, that I wound up creating three movies during testing! You can use the jog control to exactly position the marker at the time slice you want music to begin, then import at exactly that spot. The shuttle made searching through the movie for scenes easy and quick.
Presets... Between the time that Contour Design released the final version of the control panel and the release of the iMovie preset, I created my own set of iMovie settings, and it was interesting to see how similar they were - the device is fairly intuitive. I kept my settings even after I imported theirs, just because I had gotten used to them, but both of us set buttons for save, import, play, etc. and their shuttle settings were a bit faster than mine (the further you turn the shuttle, the faster you move backward or forward through the film). Contour has created presets for the following programs: Set 1- Apple Final Cut Pro 1.2.5 and 2.0, Adobe After Effects 4.1, Premiere 5.1 and 6.0, Artel BorisFX 5, BorisRED, and BorisGrafitti, MOTU Digital Performer 2.72, Emagic Logic Audio, Media 100i, and DigiDesign ProTools 5.1 Set 2 - Media100i Settings, Adobe Photoshop 5.5 and 6.0, Illustrator 8, Acrobat Reader 4, Apple iMovie and iMovie 2, and Steinberg Cubase VST/32 5.0 Set 3 - Macromedia Director 8 and Flash 4 and 5 Set 4 - Apple CD Player, QuickTime Player, Apple DVD Player, Internet Explorer, Netscape Communicator, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Sherlock 2, and QuarkXpress 4.1 I tried out the Illustrator and Photoshop settings, also, but am afraid that I've used those two programs too long -- I found myself naturally gravitating back to the mouse and keyboard out of habit, not through any fault of the controller. But someone who has less years of experience with those programs would doubtless benefit from the presets much more than I did. Because you can create settings for other programs, there is no limit to what you can do with the controller -- I created settings for Internet Explorer so I could scroll down through web pages quickly. Granted this isn't what it was intended for, it was still interesting to see how well it worked. OK, I'll admit it - I even tried it in games. I've been struggling with my Gravis gamepad in Nanosaur, and the keyboard has always won as a better input device, honestly. I was a bit disappointed that, for a device requiring GameSprockets, it didn't even show up in the list of available devices in Nanosaur. But I got past that by creating some settings for the game through the ShuttlePRO control panel. Once there, I found that the jog and shuttle wheels didn't work, only the buttons. The buttons worked well, but I had programed the shuttle for turns and could only move forward and backward!
Conclusion
I was very pleased with the attention to detail in the device -- it sits flat on your desk, with very little wobble to distract you while working. The top rows of keys have removable key caps so you can label the buttons with functions you use frequently. And of course, as you've seen from the photos within this review, it's very slick looking too. Overall, I have to give the device 4.5 Smileys. It's solid, and the software performs well -- I never had any device conflicts with other USB devices or within programs. With the exception of Nanosaur, applications recognized the input signals from the ShuttlePRO as if I was typing commands from the keyboard. If you're into video and audio editing or just getting into it, I highly recommend this device -- it's a great time saver and gives you more precise control than what you can get via a mouse.
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