Sleek innovative design, pre-configured for many of today’s popular applications, advanced programmability, and ease of use… in short, the perfect marriage of form and function.The ShuttlePRO V.2 is a powerful productivity enhancement tool for video and audio editors. The ShuttlePRO V.2 even comes pre-configured for many of the leading audio and video applications. You can also easily customize the ShuttlePRO V.2 for virtually any application.The ShuttlePRO V.2 is designed for ergonomic integrity and maximizing productivity, allowing one-hand access to the fully programmable buttons and jog/shuttle knob. Nine (9) of the buttons have removable keycaps for easy labeling and referencing. The inner ring or ‘jog’ rotates through 360 degrees and provides precision frame-by-frame control. The outer black ring or ’shuttle’ is rubberized and spring-loaded. It facilitates fast forward and rewind. You can also use the jog and shuttle for many other purposes such as scrolling, volume control, and sequencing.
User Ratings and Reviews
5 Stars Excellent Controller
Purchased the ShuttlePro for use with my home studio running Digidesign Protools 8. ShuttlePRO was a snap to get up and running – the default templates work well. The basic templates are easy to modify as needed for your specific application. I was able to set up the ShuttlePRO for my preferred functions/set up for Protools in a few minutes. I had been looking at more expensive controllers – have to say for the money the ShuttlePRO provides very good capabilities. Highly recommend it for home studio use.
2 Stars Shuttle Pro
I seems to be a great product but it only works with earlier versions of Sony Vegas software. It doesn’t work in Ver. 8.1
5 Stars Not just for video editing
I’ve owned one of these for years and recently bought another one (to use with a laptop). While the “shuttle” part of the unit is definitely useful, to me the best aspect of these is the ability to assign functionality to any of the 15 keys on the unit.
There’s hardly a program out there that won’t benefit from the assignment of hot keys. Often a program will have hotkeys that require you to use your right hand and thus you need to take your hand off the mouse (assuming you’re right-handed — reverse this for you lefties). With the Shuttle Pro you can move all hot keys so that your left hand can stay on the Pro and your right hand can stay on the mouse. This alone can make you so much more productive it’s incredible.
I use it for animation (2D as well as 3D) and am able to create about 300% faster this way. It’s also great for sound editing (it comes with a great keyset for Sony’s Sound Forge) and, of course, video editing. Unless the program you are using requires a lot of typing (like Word) I can’t think of anything that wouldn’t benefit from the use of the Shuttle Pro.
(And as for the gentleman who got two “bad” units — I can only say that mine are practically indestructable. I’ve banged around one of my units for over a decade now and aside from losing one keytop it still works perfectly — and even *that* key works).
3 Stars Potentially great, but…
It may be unfair to dock the hardware for what is essentially a software problem, but…
On the mac, at least, this acts as a keyboard wedge (is this the term I’m looking for?), meaning it sends a keystroke, a combination of keystrokes (through a nifty macro writer) or a few mouse functions (scroll wheel, click). So if you can do it on the keyboard, you can do it on the ShuttlePro.
This works great for the buttons, but can be problematic in the shuttle and jog functionality. I was hoping for a driver that would treat the shuttle ring as a unique piece of hardware; instead I need to assign keystrokes to 15 shuttle positions (-7 to 0 to 7) and potentially 28 transitions (-7 to -6, -6 to -5, … 6 to 7, 7 to 6, … -6 to -7). To be fair, I’m not certain how or if the transitions are ever used, the documentation is super vague on this.
You then assign the frequency of keypresses per position – from “hold down” to “ten times a second” to “once every thirty seconds”. (Or, if simulating a mouse scroll, assign the frequency AND the number of lines/pages you want to scroll.)
Problem is, the effect of sending these keystrokes can overwhelm the software and make it unresponsive – you release the shuttle wheel, the ring snaps crisply back to zero, and the video keeps zooming forward or backward, making accuracy (in some software, at least) impossible.
The laborious nature of tweaking the settings (14 or more tweaks to, say, see what happens if I change the frequency from “Hold down” to “As fast as possible”). Thankfully, these tweaks do take effect instantly, no restarting.
This is likely an unfair gripe for something like final cut pro, which has well implemented keyboard equivalents for shuttling (which the shuttlepro can utilize) and so doesn’t suffer from this bogging down. But in my case, it made me still need the mouse… It would be a five star product darn it all!
If I figure a way around this, I’ll definitely update my review and give it the deserved bump.
5 Stars An excellent piece of gear for your video editing suite
I’m making one of my periodic forays into video editing and came across this device. I was dubious, thinking that operating this with my left-hand and the mouse with my right would challenge my manual dexterity skills. Wrong. Within a minute or less, everything felt comfortable and two-handed operation was a reality – and a wonder. This gadget really makes video editing a lot more efficient and fun. (As a hobbyist, I suppose I can see as fun what might be tedium for someone who does it day in and day out.)
The ShutlePRO V.2 is well made, surpassing my expectations. The unit is fairly light, but six well placed pads on the bottom keep the unit in one place. The unit has a very low profile and fits easily under the palm. The nine upper buttons are arranged in two rows and fall naturally under the fingertips. There are four additional buttons below the job and shuttle controls. Two of these fall nicely under the thumb, but my little finger isn’t dexterous enough to deal with the other two. Maybe with some practice.
There are two other buttons, one on either side of the jog, usable with thumb and middle-finger.
In all there are 15 buttons, all of which can be programmed by the user. Talk about power! Presets are provided for many popular packages. Labels are provided for common functions and I presume, but have not confirmed, that the caps on the upper two rows of keys are removable. One small drawback: only one set of pre-printed labels is provided and no mention is made on the instruction sheet of how to get more, including blank ones for your own sets. Small item which I suspect a call or email to tech support will resolve.
The jog and shuttle wheels are marvelous. The jog wheel, in video editing gives you frame by frame control. It has three indentations for your fingertip. For my fingers, I would have preferred slightly deeper indentations, but that might make the jog wheel feel like a bowling ball for others. Anyone who done any video editing with pro equipment knows that a jog wheel is indispensable. The shuttle wheel is spring-loaded and has seven positions on either side of center. Depending on your video package, this will speed up your forward and reverse scrolling through your video material. The jog and shuttle controls are also programmable giving the daring (and perhaps mad) the opportunity to program up to 45 more functions.
Programming the keys with the included utility is simple and straightforward.
So far, I am definitely the kid with a new toy. Some of the tedious parts of video editing, such as single frame navigation using the keyboard are banished hopefully forever. I still have to decide what functions to assign to the buttons and which buttons to use.
The ShuttlePRO V.2 is not limited to video editing. It can be used with audio programs, Photoshop, even Outlook, Word and whatever else you have on your machine. It is a very powerful adjunct to your mouse. (I don’t think it would replace a mouse or tablet.)
On the whole, I am very pleased with the purchase. I bought for use in video editing and don’t know if I will ever use it for any other purpose. Doesn’t matter to me since it does what I want and more within the confines of video editing. A very nice product.
Jerry
