Premier Pro CC jog/shuttle dial

I (for fun not profit) do video editing on Adobe Premier Pro.   It is a very powerful program...and I am terrible at keyboard shortcuts, so I mouse everything.

One important part of editing video is finding where you want to start and end a clip, then copy/cut and paste it somewhere.

The cut and paste of PP is pretty straight forward, a chop then drag and drop.

The finding the start/end is the hard part.  And it is a pain with the mouse.   I had a Griffin Powermate Jog shuttle dial that plugs in to USB and you can program it to simulate key presses.

Unfortunately they softare stopped being supported with WinXP, I could run it in Win7 but it would occasionally cause the computer to crash, and completely died by the time Win10 came out...so it was a USB powered paperweight.

BTW it was not recognized natively by any version of windows, it REQUIRED it's software to be running.

So for the last few years I have done without a jog shuttle dial, and continuously scoured the internets for a solution, there are a couple of $1000 solutions...and a $99 one, but the $99 dollar one does not have the ergonomics I wanted...it was too big...about 3 times the size of my Powermate.

Just a couple of weeks ago I was again looking for the J/S and found this article...I was sold, I order parts and soldered them up...then I realized that the parts looked like they might just fit inside my old unused dead Powermate.

So I undid my soldering and got to fitting.

The rotary encoder was a loose fit at the top, but that was fixed with a rubber o-ring.   It  was also a bit long to be centered, but I was able to trim off some of the rotary encoder board so it would fit.

The Arduino Leonardo board was just slightly to big for the spot I put it, however I was able to use a Dremel to cut a bit off the metal Powermate and it tucked right in.

 

 I also needed to remove the micro USB port, and I direct soldered the original PM USB cord.

In fact the install looks almost identical to the original PC board that was in it.

So with hardware done, I did the normal Arduino stuff to load the authors code into the Arduino, fired up PP and the new J/S worked right away.  

The Arduino program simulates keypresses, so you have to choose which code to install.  

I used the "PremierProDialDIY_LEFT_RIGHT_SPACE.ino" file...the space button in PP is the playback start stop...push down on the rotary encoder to activate that.

Another choice is "...LEFT_RIGHT_CTR_k..." in that case CTR_k is the hotkey to cut...I am afraid I would make accidental cuts.

The author has a new software that cycles between the Lightroom setup and the PP setup, software for the Sony Vegas hotkey...I am only using it with PP.

BTW after looking at the original Powermate pictures...I realize I removed the bottom at some point to try and fix it...I now need to find that piece...