Second Keyboard

[mark hansen]

I thought share a little tip that has made it easier to edit. I have a second keyboard placed so my right hand can get to it easier. I use my left hand for my mouse.

Here is a link to it. the link is a review, but it also has a picture of it half way down.

http://gear.ign.com/articles/363/363648p1.html

(Other links with pictures were crazy long. You can Google Thrustmaster Tactical board to get lots of pictures.

OK, as you can see it's not a real keyboard, but a gaming keyboard. I had it left over from my flight sim days. I'm not using any drivers for it, each key is already programmed to be a letter, so I just set up a different keyboard preference profile. When I plugged it in, the computer recognized it as a keyboard.

I set up the most commonly used features I use such as clear, Cut, shuttle back and forth, Save, save As, page up, page down, play/stop, zoom, in zoom out, undo (my favoriate), get files etc - all on keys right under my finger tips. I even put commonly clicked buttons on the second keyboard to speed getting to the button.

Now I have to most commonly used features right at my fingertips. Why not use the keyboard? Well on my desk the keyboard is on a drawer that pulls out, (lower than the work surface) but most importantly centered on my chair, great for lots of typing, but not good for video editing. I can stretch out my arms in a more comfortable manner for those long editing sessions using the second keyboard. Often I need to type numbers. I was going back and forth to the keyboard until I saw an external 10 key - keypad for laptop computers. Now I have both of them setting to my right, and the mouse to my left and very seldom need the keyboard for editing.
Being able to do most functions with the mouse or keyboard makes editing more ergonomic and comfortable.

Does anyone else have a special video editing keyboard?