Logickeyboard PC Designed for Avid Media Composer | 'Classic' Layout | USB Wired | Two Built-in USB2 Hubs | Compatible to Windows 10/11

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This is very unfortunate as it 1) breaks the keyboard mapping for the built-in Avid shortcuts, and 2) severely limits the power user. Please reconsider and enable us Avid users the ability to go between systems without breaking a 20-year-old muscle memory. There are lots of different shortcut combinations that work with Pro Tools, but first, let’s start with the basics: The venerable Avid Media Composer recently updated to version 2022.7. This in and of itself might not be big news and I don’t always cover every NLE release as there are so many of them (and it depends on what I’m working in at the time TBH). But this Media Composer release had one addition that I thought was quite surprising.

Overall since Resolve uses a similar mode-based way of working as Avid does it might be an easier keyboard adaptation. I’ll have to use it more to make a judgment. The keys to being a successful professional editor come down to two things: precision and speed. Precision is a skill honed over time, with hundreds of hours of practice and experience finding the perfect way to cut and combine clips to tell a story. Speed comes down to how well you know your tools. Another thing, I wonder if the official release of Davinci 15 enables having two shortcuts doing the same tasks in one tab? (for example number 4 and Right Arrow can both do Step One Frame Forward in the tab Edit). I have always thought that this keyboard layout was a thing of beauty. It was well thought out with what an editor has to do for much of an editing job which is watching media, making edits and then finessing the story. It was designed with two hands on the keyboard, the right doing a lot of playing of media with the JKL keys and the left marking and modifying IN and OUT points. I’ve always found this base idea to be the best for craft/creative editorial so I’ve made it my base keyboard layout as best I can in other NLEs. This was outlined years ago in my Keyboard Manifesto.It's actually the thing that keeps me from moving from Premiere Pro and Avid to edit in Davinci Resolve. I use the number rows for shortcuts a lot in those two NLEs and since I want to migrate as much of my shortcuts from other NLEs, I can't afford to lose a whole row for just typing timecode to jump to. I'd rather having the number pad on the right for that purpose. I believe it can be. Adjusting audio gain via a dial and not a keyboard combo is very fast considering you often have to implement the key combo multiple times as you change an audio level. A twist of a dial is a very natural way to do this and it beats mousing it with the Audio Mixer by a mile. This can be a big downside for editors who are used to a certain workflow or just want to change things around because of personal preference (for example, you prefer to use the [fn] key instead of the control key before commands).

I was curious so I fired up Media Composer to see what these shortcuts looked like as Avid kinda by its very design isn’t really a “tool” based editor. Meaning you often work in different modes and you don’t have a lot of tools like you do in Premiere that get keyboard shortcut. If you want to slip a clip you don’t grab a slip tool and drag but rather you enter Trim Mode and do a slip trim which is a far more effective way to do it anyway since you can play the media and not drag. But I digress. This will still take some self-educating and setup time to get comfortable using, but once you do you can fine tune your Pro Tools commands to your hearts content, along with pretty much any other program.If you’re doing a lot of editing, these will be the keys with the most wear and tear. Now, let’s get into some more complex shortcut combinations for different uses. Also, I couldn't find a way to set the keyboard shortcut for the Auto Align Clips by Waveform on the Timeline. Hope it is included in the next update. But this has never been a thing in the Avid world so I was surprised to see this. It’s also the first time I remember seeing Resolve as a competitor keyboard shortcut option. 🤔