The lack of padding is not the only potential problem with resting your palm straight on top of the ShuttlePro. If I were on the ShuttlePro team at Contour, I would be looking at some nice rubber cushioning for the next version. Rest your hand on that for a few hours and you, like me, might experience some discomfort. Not so the ShuttlePro, which is made from what feels like cold textured metal. Most ergonomic devices are designed with cushioned surfaces and sometimes nice resting pads. Potential ergonomic issues No comfort cushioning The jog and shuttle wheels are more intuitive for pan and zoom than their corresponding mouse controls, and are particularly useful when I’m working with a graphics tablet. With the ShuttlePro resting under my left hand, its functions mapped to the things I need for designing, my secondary hand can relax and still remain on call to help out with the work. If I rest it on the desk, the keyboard is out of fingertip reach. If I float it in the air the wrist can get tense and start hurting. This is great for typing, but not so great when my left hand is in standby mode. Today, however, I use the Kinesis Freestyle with a V3 kit, meaning the center of the keyboard floats up about an inch from the desk. Back when I used a Microsoft Natural Elite keyboard (ask your grandfather) this worked pretty well. Traditionally I have worked with one hand on the mouse or stylus, and the other resting by the keyboard to help out with modifier keys and shortcuts. I don’t currently do much with audio and video editing, but I do have occasion to do a lot of design. Tools at your fingertips, no keyboard required For me personally, this gets confusing pretty fast – but for efficiency freaks with elevated intelligence, the capability is out there. This “infinity” comes from the fact that you can create multiple behavior sets associated with one program, and switch between them using – you guessed it – other buttons. The ShuttlePro has a theoretically infinite number of buttons (with no need to warp the time-space continuum). Have more than 15 things to shortcut in a given program? No problem. If you play computer games, this functionality could be particularly useful. You could, for instance, use the jog wheel for its intended purpose in Audacity, and automatically switch it over to being a scroll wheel the rest of the time.
#Contour shuttle control panel problems software#
The ShuttlePro software monitors which program you’re using and can change the shortcut set accordingly. You can use the ShuttlePro with as many different programs as you like, and you’re not stuck with just one set of shortcuts for everything. The included software gives you tremendous flexibility for programming the ShuttlePro Customizable for each program The ShuttlePro software comes with what amounts to a macro programming system, so you can take this line of thinking as far as – and probably further than – you want. The benefit gets bigger, of course, as whatever action you’re replacing gets more complex. One keystroke instead of two may not sound like a big deal, but repeated many times a day, almost any efficiency gain of this type is significant. On a ShuttlePro, you could set the same function to a single-touch button.
For instance, most programs map Undo (a function I use frequently!) to Ctrl + Z – two keystrokes. (But then, ergonomy isn’t a real word either, so it all comes out even.) When you can accomplish more work with less effort, most types of stress are reduced – and thus, the likelihood of injury in the long term.
While that may be a slight exaggeration, video editors really do like and use this thing – some to the extent of buying a second one for the extra wheels. Just put one hand on the ShuttlePro, Contour advertises, the other on the mouse, and you’ll forget why you needed a keyboard. Nine of the buttons on the ShuttlePro even have removable clear plastic caps so that their functions can be labeled for those with less-than-perfect mental recall. These are surrounded by an array of programmable buttons, which video and audio people commonly assign to things like playback and skip. In the middle you have the jog wheel and shuttle, which are much more intuitive to use than their corresponding keyboard shortcuts. The ShuttlePro’s wheels and buttons are all within easy reach.Įnter the Contour Shuttle, neither mouse nor keyboard, but a fully programmable human interface to put commonly-used functions at the user’s fingertips.
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