Using the Contour Shuttlepro with VT
A tutorial for the NewTek VT[4] by Bill Mills

While this tutorial was created based on using the Contour ShuttlePro2, with the NewTek VT[4], it should be compatible with at least VT[3] and later, if not VT[2] (the scripts may need to go in different directories for earlier versions,) as well as other devices like the original ShuttlePro, Shuttle Express, and other JogShuttle devices that can be custom configured to send keystrokes with a Windows application at the various shuttle positions.

Do It Now Summary:

1. Download VTEditShuttleHotKeys.ToasterScript, then copy and paste it into c:\VT4\Skins\VideoEditor\MainWindow\Main\User Scripts.
2. Download DeckControlHotKeys.ToasterScript, then copy and paste it into c:\VT4\Skins\BatchCapture\MainWindow\User Scripts and c:\VT\Skins\ExternalSource2\UserScripts
3. Install the software that comes with the ShuttlePro2.
4. Download ShuttlePro2 config file and install it in your ShuttlePro2 software.
5. Go forth and Jog/Shuttle.

The Backstory

If you don’t care about how this works, or why there is a need for it, and just want detailed step by step instructions, skip on ahead to the tutorial.

The first time I saw the Contour Shuttle Pro, I knew it was an accessory I wanted for my desktop. I learned to edit on tape based linear editors, and while editing digital non-linear has opened so many doors, there is still something very familiar and comfortable in a jog/shuttle control. I can get to the video I want without having to think about it.

When I purchased the Shuttle Pro2, I set about configuring it, finding a configuration file on NewTek’s support forum. While it worked, I was underwhelmed with the results. Here’s why. The Shuttle Pro as used with the VT is really just a USB keyboard with a different physical interface. As you turn the shuttle ring, at each positon, or change between two positions, it can send a keystroke to the Windows application you are running. Conveniently it’s driver watches what you are running, and swaps keystroke sets accordingly, so you can use it in Vegas, Premiere, VTEdit, etc., which all need different key commands to jog and shuttle.

The trouble with the ShuttlePro and VT[4] combination is that NewTek only provided some basic keystrokes to do jog/shuttle. In VTEdit and for Deck Control in batch capture, pressing L will increase the shuttle speed, and pressing J will decrease it. Press J a few times and playback goes from slow to fast. Press L a few times and it starts slowing, stops and then begins playing at faster and faster reverse speeds. ALT-L jogs forward one frame, ALT-J jobs backwards one frame.

With my initial configuration of the Shuttle Pro, I had it set to press J at each step it detected of turning the shuttle ring to the right, and L at each step of turning to the left. The jog wheel I set to use ALT-J and ALT-L. While jogging worked fine (if you jog too fast keystrokes get buffered and it will keep jogging a bit – something to get used to) but the shuttle control was just hinkey. It worked, but it was kind of like the dancing dog – he dances, but he’s not doing s smooth ballroom number. It wasn't Contour's fault and it wasn't NewTek's fault - they just weren't configured right from the factory for the best performance with each other.

The problem is that the shuttle control would get out of synch. Fast turns of the shuttle to the same positions didn’t always yield the same playback speeds, because it was just sending VTEdit a series of “go faster” and “go slower” commands, not a “Hey, I’ve just been turned ¼ turn to the right, play at two times normal speed” command, which is what a shuttle ring should do.

Brad Loflin came to the rescue by writing CustomToasterHotkeys.ToasterScript. This simple script takes advantage of the extreme flexibility NewTek has built into the VT. What it does is assign new keystrokes to execute commands in VTEdit. Brad’s script makes use of function keys F1 through F11 with both shift and control to tell VTEdit to playback at precise speeds. After installing Brad’s script, my VT[4] would now accept exact speed commands. For example SHIFT-F2 plays forward at 50% speed. SHIFT-F6 plays forward and normal speed, while SHIFT-F7 plays forward at 4x speed. Conversely CTRL-F2 plays in reverse at 50% speed, CTRL-F6 reverse at normal and CTRL-F7 reverse at 4x speed. A few minutes of reconfiguring the ShuttlePro2 to use the new keystrokes, and viola – VT[4] was jogging and shuttling like it should - nice and smooth with precise speeds.

You can download Brad’s script from the NewTek forums here.

I was in happy-land, shuttling old-school style through my videos. Happy until I went to batch capture that is. Here’s the catch – Brad’s script only added new keystrokes to VTEdit, not to deck control or batch capture. Brad's script didn't work with Batch Capture because the SetSpeed Toaster Script command it relies on doesn't work with external decks. Now that my ShuttlePro2 was set up with the function keys for shuttling it didn't work with the stock keystrokes for Batch Capture. I wasn’t alone in facing this problem – one solution suggested by GregGerlach in the forum was to configure the ShuttlePro to use the J and L keystrokes for deck control, and assign one of the other keys on the ShuttlePro (it has 15 other keys in addition to the jog/shuttle) to change between keysets when you go from deck control to VTEdit in the VT software. While that works, it still has the same issues of not being exactly indexed.

Unfortunately, the public documentation for the ToasterScript scripting language isn’t complete, and among the things missing are external deck control commands. After asking in the forum came up with no results, I started digging through the system configuration scripts in the VT[4] and found exactly what was needed – the VCRSetShuttleSpeed and VCR_GetShuttleSpeed commands – the video deck version of VTEdit’s SetSpeed and GetSpeed ToasterScript commands. In short order I cranked out a script to add the same function key hot keys to Batch Capture that Brad’s script added to VT-Edit, and viola – the ShuttlePro2 shuttles smoothly and accurately in both VT-Edit and Batch Capture without needing to swap keystroke sets, and I really am in happy land.

The Tutorial

OK, know that you know why the ShuttlePro2 isn’t just plug and play, and why custom hotkeys for the VT make the two sing in harmony, lets get down to making it happen.

First up, let’s install a script to allow VTEdit to use the function keys to control playback speed.

Brad Loflin’s CustomToasterHotkeys script can be found in this thread on NewTek’s forum along with his instructions for installing.

Or, you can download my script, VTEditShuttleHotkeys.ToasterScript by right clicking HERE and saving the file to your hard drive.

Either script will do the same job for you, so take your pick. Next you will need to copy that script to the right directory with your VT software. Assuming you have a standard VT[4] installation, this will most likely be c:\VT4\Skins\VideoEditor\MainWindow\Main\User Scripts.

Just find the file where you saved it after downloading, highlight it and hit CTRCL-C to copy. Then from the Windows Start Menu select My Computer, then the drive on which you’ve installed your VT software, and progressively work your way through the path of folders from Skins down to the User Scripts folder for the Video Editor’s Main Window. With that window open you should see a ReadMe.txt file that tells you that’s the right folder for user scripts affecting the VT Edit module. Now hit CTRL-V and viola, a copy of the script is installed and will be evaluated by VT-Edit the next time it is run.

To add the same keystroke functionality to the DDRs, also place a copy of VTEditShuttleHotkeys.ToasterScript in c:\VT4\Skins\DDR2\MainWindow\UserScripts.

Now our next step is to basically the same thing for the Batch Capture module. Download DeckControlHotkeys.ToasterScript by right clicking HERE and saving the file to your hard drive. Just like the script for VTEdit, copy the file, and then paste it into c:\VT4\Skins\BatchCapture\MainWindow\User Scripts, or the equivalent directory if your installation of the VT uses a different path. Also, as John Perkins pointed out in the NewTek forum, the script can be installed in c:\VT\Skins\ExternalSource2\UserScripts as well. This will add the same hotkeys to the Deck Control Module for use when a deck is being remotely controlled for live switching, or for non-batch capturing.

Now you’re ready to try it out and make sure both scripts are working. If either the VTEdit or batch capture modules are running, close them and then re-launch them.

In VTEdit you should now be able to playback your project at various forward speeds by pressing SHIFT-F2 through SHIFT-F11. You should be able to play the project at various reverse speeds with CTRL-F2 through CTRL-F11. CTRL-F1 should toggle between pause and normal play, while SHIFT-F1 will pause playback. You should see the same effects for controlling your deck in Batch Capture, though the playback speeds for any given function key will probably be different. That’s OK, we’ll get to that later in tweaking, the important thing for now is that the function keys are controlling playback speeds in both VTEdit and Batch Capture.

Next up, configuring the Contour ShuttlePro2.

First step, if it isn’t already done, is installing the ShuttlePro software. Do so following Contour’s directions. If you’re using a shuttle controller other than those made by Contour don’t sweat it, as long as you can configure it to issue custom key commands at each position of the shuttle ring, just apply this same info to that controller’s software.

Once the ShuttlePro software is installed, it needs to be configured to send the jog/shuttle keypresses that VT[4] is now expecting for speed control. In the System Tray (the little icons next to the time usually in the lower right of the WindowsXP desktop) there should now be a little jog/shuttle wheel for the ShuttlePro software (the one on the right in the screenshot above.) Give it a right click and a menu will pop up, with one of its options being “Open Control Panel.” Click that to access the Contour Shuttle Device Configuration.

Since the ShuttlePro isn’t configured to work with the VT[4] out of the box, we need to start by creating a profile for the VT[4]. The first tab in the ShuttlePro software has everything we need to deal with. In the upper left is a section labeled Settings Management. Under Application setting is a lengthy dropdown list of all the configurations loaded into the ShuttlePro software. It automatically recognizes which application you are running, and uses the corresponding keystrokes, so we need to add VT[4] to the list of applications. Just click the Options button and select Create new settings > Create Empty Settings.

This will result in a file requester asking for the target application, so just navigate to where you have VT[4] installed and select it. In the case of a standard install, that’s going to be C:\VT4\VT[4].exe. I also hit Options again and selected Rename settings, to change the drop down menu from VT[4].exe to VT[4], just to make it more tidy.

OK, now we need to program the jog/shuttle. The right hand side of the Shuttle Configuration window covers “Device Events Control.” At the top is a pulldown menu letting us choose which button or action on the ShuttlePro we want to edit. It will show the top left button by default, and that button will be highlighted in the picture on the left side of the window.

For each button you can then define what action the ShuttlePro software will take when the button is pressed. The “Computer Response” pulldown gives a number of possible options – the one we will be wanting is Type Keystroke.

Below that, we simply enter the keystroke we want entered. The ShuttlePro2 even includes labels for its top row of buttons – so you can go through the hotkey menus in VT, and program these buttons to suit your own tastes, what we’ll focus on in this tutorial are the jog/shuttle controls.

Pull down the User action menu and choose JogLeft. For Computer Response make sure Type Keystroke is selected, then click in the Keystroke box to bring up a text cursor. Then just press ALT-J. The software will display “Alt+J” in the box. The frequency should be once only, and it’s a good idea to explain this keystroke in the Comment box – “Jog One Frame Backwards.”

Now lets do the same thing for Jog Right, but program it to use ALT-L. Viola, we’ve now programmed jog functionality (which didn’t need the Toaster Scripts.)

Now it’s time to get to the meat and potatoes – the Shuttle ring. The shuttle ring has a total of 15 positions. There is the centered position, positions 1 though 7 to the right and 1 through 7 to the left. In addition to sending a keystroke from any of the left or right positions, the ShuttlePro software can send one when we transition from one position to another. Because of this there are a number of ways we could program the Shuttle Ring to work with our keystrokes – here’s what I’ve been using that works well for me.

And of course if you’re lazy, and don’t want to take the time to actually program those ShuttlePro2 Settings, you can download my ShuttlePro2 VT[4] configuration file by right clicking here. Save the file to your hard drive. Create a VT[4] setting in the Shuttle Pro software just as described above, but this time select “Import settings” from the Options button, and load shuttlepro_VT_config.pref. I started initially with the button layout Jim Capillo uploaded to NewTek’s forum in this thread and use most of those same buttons, except that I toggle play/pause with CRTL-F1.

You are now ready to roll – smoothly jogging and shuttling your way through VTEdit and Batch Capture. Make sure you save the two ToasterScripts somewhere, as well as the names of the directories in which you need to install them, because when a software update for the VT comes along, it will probably overwrite those directories, requiring you to reinstall the scripts.

Tweaking

One thing you may find while using this set-up is that the playback speeds of your deck don’t match the playback speeds of VTEdit. The same function key or shuttle position will yield a different speed on the deck than in VTEdit. With each different deck, there will be different capabilities in terms of playback speeds, so you may want to adjust the speeds that DeckControlHotkeys.ToasterScript sends for each keystroke.

This does mean editing ToasterScript, but it’s pretty easy to do. Just find the script, most likely WindowsXP will show you a notepad document icon for the file, if it does just double click on it. If not, you can load it into notepad or any other text editor, just make sure when you save it, you save it as text, not into a word processing format. Worst case scenario, if you make a mistake that causes a script error when VT evaluates the script, just remove the ToasterScript file from the User Scripts folder, and VT will be fine and dandy again when it is restarted.

Assuming the easy route, just give it a double click, and you’ll now see the text of the script in Notepad.

The lines that start with // are comments to help you understand the script and are ignored by the VT. The important lines we want are the CreatShortCut commands – for each one, you can see which key it is creating the shortcut for, and in the middle of the line it will issue a command like VCR_SetShuttleSpeed(0.5). That tells the deck to move forward at half speed. The higher the number, the faster it will move, and negative numbers tell the deck to move in reverse. To command the deck to move faster or slower at any given position of the shuttle ring, just change the ShuttleSpeed value for the corresponding hotkey in the script. When you are done, save the script, and it will take effect the next time BatchCapture is started – congratulations you just hacked a ToasterScript! Don't forget you'll want to make the same changes to the copy of DeckControlHotkeys.ToasterScript that is in the External Sources directory, so that both the batch capture and deck control modules get the same speed settings.

There you have it - now Go Shuttle!