By Mike McCarthy
How do you control your editing application? Whether you are editing in Avid Media Composer, Apple Final Cut, Adobe Premiere, Blackmagic Resolve or even Vegas, you are basically trying to communicate with a piece of software and make it very precisely alter a group of video clips. The more efficiently you can get the ideas from your mind into the software, the better time you are going to have editing your project.
The primary way that most people communicate with a computer is through the mouse and keyboard. The mouse has analog input in the form of a motion and scroll wheel and digital input from the buttons. Keyboards offer a wide selection of digital options through their numerous labeled keys.
There are several ways that this human-to-machine interface can be improved on. The first is through keyboard improvements, either by better labeling the keys with whatever functions have been assigned to them in each application or by adding customizable keys. Many editing environments are relatively dark, so backlit keyboards could be beneficial as well. A mouse can also be improved by adding a scroll wheel for a third axis of analog control and by adding buttons in various places.
I use a Logitech mouse with a variety of features that help me edit. I just recently replaced my G602 with a new G604, which added back the scroll-wheel side-click left and right, which I map to previous and next cut. My all-time favorite was the MX1000, which had a rocker around the scroll wheel that lent itself to zoom in and out of the timeline, which I now map to the plus and minus buttons on my G604.
There are also six buttons on the side, which I think borders on too many for effectively finding them by feel, but I map functions like enable/disable clip, C, V and modifiers like CTRL, alt and shift to them. Mapping the spacebar to one makes my mouse into a wireless remote for playback control when I sit at the couch and watch the NLE output on my TV. I think a good mouse, with customizable tactile controls that you can feel and memorize, is probably the best interface investment you can make. But there are other options for improving efficiency beyond that.
Tablets, Jog Shuttle and More
A digitizing tablet is an alternative that many artists prefer, but it offers no unique editing capabilities over a mouse other than better ergonomics for some. A touch screen is the primary input for mobile “NLEs,” but most desktop applications are not optimized for that. No one I know of is doing much with voice command, although that is a potential input. But there are several other physical devices designed to facilitate the communication between an editor and an NLE.
While colorists have traditionally used sets of trackballs for the analog input needed for color correction, control over timing and navigating through time are the main tasks of an editor. The most popular physical interface for that task is the jog shuttle wheel, which was how linear editors navigated tapes in VTRs. Usually, the inner spinning jog dial is for small frame-by-frame movements, while the outer spring-loaded shuttle wheel is for moving through time much more quickly but with less precision.
Contour has made the Shuttle Pro for over 10 years, and it is compatible with most editing and VFX applications. The jog dial is primarily designed to improve navigating through time, helping find or select the exact moment you are looking for in a clip. The buttons can be programmed for simple or complex operations via its driver utility. I have had one of these for many years, first using it when reframing every shot in Act of Valor at three different aspect ratios. (Lots of navigation with small amounts of work.) Its initial appeal was probably to users moving over from linear editing systems who were used to navigating content on tapes in a similar fashion. It is still a very effective way of navigating time, but it doesn’t offer much else in the way of controls that couldn’t be replicated with a keyboard.
A couple of years ago, Blackmagic developed the Editor Keyboard and its scaled-down version, the Speed Editor, which offer similar jog and shuttle navigation functionality and a variety of other buttons. These are more editing-focused variations of Blackmagic’s existing line of interfaces for color correction, which is a task with a longer history of physical interfaces due to its analog nature. But these devices are limited to use with Resolve, compared to ones from third-party vendors that work with many different NLEs.
Loupedeck offers two options worth considering for editors not working in Resolve — the Loupedeck+ panel and the newer Loupedeck CT. The CT has the benefit of dynamic, fully customizable LCD labels that show what the fewer physical controls are mapped to do. But you have to look down to read them and see what page or mode is active.
The Loupedeck+ is more tactile in that it has more physical controls, but they aren’t as easy to label or keep track of. It is designed more for analog tasks, like color and sizing adjustments, than for navigating a timeline, although it can do that as well.
What’s Best For You
The best tool is going to depend on your workflow, application and the way you think. I recommend starting with a high-end mouse and then moving on from there once you have effectively memorized the functions that you have mapped.
Physical interfaces are most useful if you can use them without having to think about them. It is going to be harder to adapt to more complex interfaces unless you spend all day doing the same thing. So the wider the variety of tasks you do, the simpler the interface you should try to use.
Mike McCarthy is a technology consultant with extensive experience in the film post production. He started posting technology info and analysis at HD4PC in 2007. He broadened his focus with TechWithMikeFirst 10 years later.
