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Issue link: https://digital.macdirectory.com/i/1436922
Location, Location, Location But, as mentioned earlier, the Editor Keyboard is much, much more than the keycap labels. What surrounds the QUERTY section makes it clear that the keyboard was designed by and for video editors. The bread-and-butter tools all have dedicated keys that are grouped with impeccable logic. Those under the left hand are all related to setting and adjusting edit points. The most prominent, of course, are large, white In and Out keys. Below those are a set dedicated to trim functions and transitions. Many of these work in conjunction with the jog/shuttle knob, as do a number of others on the device. For example, the knob adjusts trim and transition. A row of keys at the bottom of the group assign transitions as a cut, dissolve, or smooth-cut (a very fast dissolve to mask jump cuts). The keys above the In/Out buttons let you assign how the edit goes onto the timeline: append, overwrite, Smart Insert (inserts at the nearest transition), etc. The function-key row is a potpourri of utility commands and is the only bank where their functions don’t have a lot in common beyond the fact that they are all frequently used. They, for example, will let you insert black, add a freeze frame, or insert video or audio only into the timeline (the latter, as well as some others for some reason, only function on the Cut page and not the Edit page). The numeric keypad, as you would expect, is all about entering numbers, timecodes, durations, and the like. It’s worth a trip to the extensive Davinci Resolve User Manual to learn the program’s shortcuts for entering timecode with combination of periods and numbers (not that dissimilar from the way CMX did things in days of yore). And there’s also that ever-useful double-zero key. The keys above the numbers serve functions such as selecting between frame, timecode, and duration entry. The key at the top left calls up Davinci’s great Trim Editor screen.