The recent release of the Contour ShuttlePRO v2 has been hailed as the perfect productivity accessory for video, audio or photo editing applications on PC or Mac. Wanting to see just how well it functions in the hands of expert video editors, we asked Creative Director Greg Brand from Travizeo to give it a whirl. Travizeo creates awesome campaigns for forward-thinking travel brands, and help those brands show their content to the world.
“Before I begin this post, I feel like I have to preface this by saying that this is not a quick fix option for editing faster. If like me, you have been editing with keyboard shortcuts for the last 14 years, you will find that it’s pretty hard going at first, getting your hand to stay on the shuttle. I often found myself during an edit, automatically going for the space bar and J, K & L keys, even when they were right there on the shuttle and much closer together. I definitely recommend spending at least 1-2 weeks re-training your brain and fingers to join the party, before trying to smash out edits at lightning speed.
Ok, so with that now out of the way… This is an amazing little piece of kit. I Say little cause it’s designed to take up the least amount of space on your desk. I have a tiny apartment so need to be quite stingy with the size of my desk and my desk real estate, and the Shuttle fits perfectly next to my keyboard and Wacom Bamboo.
On arrival, the packaging looked great with some sleek photography and minimal design, the inner packaging was a little less impressive. You get the ShuttlePRO v2, a small instruction booklet and a page of perforated and printed buttons to place under the shuttle’s remove able plastic key covers.
The unit looks great at first sight, with a lovely black matte finish, and a solid build on the first touch. The buttons feel nice and big and protruding and the main jog wheel has a nice grippy rubber finish and offers a good amount of resistance.
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Contour Multimedia Controller Pro£108.00 (incl VAT) -
Contour Balance keyboard£135.60 (incl VAT)
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Contour balance keyboard wrist rest£25.00 (incl VAT)
It’s pretty straightforward getting the unit set up with the supplied URL and welcome page where you can easily find all the necessary drivers for installation. The Contour Shuttle Pro v2 application you install takes a little figuring out at first, but once you get the hang of it, it’s easy to set up your own shortcut keys, which you can assign to any button on the unit. As a default, the Shuttle comes setup with certain keys assigned to different functions, but I soon found myself comfortable enough to assign my own keys for a more intuitive layout.
You need to remove the plastic covers on the top 9 keys in order to use the printed buttons for an easy visual reference. I found this really useful when trying to re-train my left hand. It’s pretty straight forward getting the buttons in place, but removing them without damaging the pieces of paper will be another story when that time comes. Luckily it’s easy enough to find the supplied printing template, so you can re-print all the buttons as and when you need them.
A nice little surprise was that the Contour Shuttle PRO v2 works with pretty much every single application I have. From Photoshop to Mac Mail, Lightroom to Google Chrome, every window I open, I now have the ability to program any type of shortcut key right into the Shuttle.
Overall this is a great little piece of kit, and after spending around 2 weeks with it, I’m starting to already notice a faster pace in my editing. It might just be something as small as a few milliseconds saved, due to the shortened travel time of my hand not needing to stretch across my keyboard… but when you spend as much time editing as I do, every little millisecond counts.”
