Using the El Gato Stream Deck & Orbweaver with the Resolve Mini Control Surface

Speed-Boosting Resolve’s ‘Mini Panel’ With Gaming Keypads

June 14, 2018

Are you looking for ideas on programming your El Gato Stream Deck or Razer Orbweaver to speed up color correcting? Get some tips about focusing your efforts to reduce 'mouse travel' - increasing your productivity.


Working to massively reduce mouse movements across the screen

You’ve seen quite a number of articles, podcasts, and video Insights about colorist control surfaces here on Mixing Light. The over-arching theme is how they speed up your work by allowing you to work with two hands – and avoiding the limitation of working solely with the tip of your mouse (doing one thing at time). Plus, control surfaces let you develop muscle memory – pulling up menus and executing commands while focusing the image, rather than on the user interface.

On Mixing Light you’ve also seen how we categorize gaming keypads (such as the Stream Deck, Razor, and X-Keys) as control surfaces. Again, it’s a simple concept. You map keyboard shortcuts to these gaming keypads – minimizing the time your hands spend on the keyboard, maximizing their time on the control surface (and your eyes on the final image). In this Insight, my focus is on minimizing mouse travel time using a gaming keypad to maximally enhance the Resolve Mini control surface.

Programming the El Gato Stream Deck to minimize mouse travel time

Think about it – how much time do we spend pushing our mouse to the outer edges of the user interface to do common tasks? Answer: All the time. And how many of these at-the-edge tasks have assignable shortcuts? Answer: Very very few.

I didn’t realize until I was done with v001 of my Stream Deck programming that my approach was driven by one thing: Minimizing mouse travel time. After watching both of Joey’s Insights on the Stream Deck – and how he was using the Auto Hot Keys (an open-source Windows macro scripting program) to push the mouse around – new possibilities opened up to me.

I ended up modifying Joey’s scripts for my own purposes – which you’ll learn how to execute.

Along the way, I figured out a clean solution to a big problem I wanted to solve – dealing with right-click contextual menus, reliably. But in this Insight you don’t just stop with the El Gato, you learn how I’m using the Razor Orbweaver Chroma left-hand keypad as well.

Supplementing the Stream Deck with the Orbweaver

In reality, the Stream Deck is powerful enough that I could ditch the gaming keypad I’ve been using for a few years. But I’ve decided to keep it. I’m going to use it for what I call my ‘twitch commands’. It’s similar to how the Resolve Advanced Panels duplicate useful commands on both the left and right panels. In other words, there are a few commands that I find useful for quick left-hand access, even if they exist on the Resolve Mini panel. I describe my thinking on this in the video.

Premium Members: Download the scripts and settings

Just remember, you’ll have to adapt many of the Auto Hotkey Scripts to your screen resolution (I’m running at 3840 x 2160). Don’t forget about the Window Spy app that installs with Auto Hotkey, for easily figuring out your mouse X/Y coordinates.  Also, as I show in this Insight, if you want to run with Icons Only in the top and bottom of the Resolve User Interface (a new feature in Resolve 15) then almost every Auto Hotkey script I provide will need to be modified for those ‘edge-of-the-page’ mouse triggers (even if you’re running at my screen resolution).

Mapping my shortcuts to your keyboard

If you download the assets in this Insight (for Premium members), the quick HSL Presets that I talk about early in this Insight need to be manually mapped to your keyboard if you want to match my Stream Deck profile. Add these keyboard shortcuts to your layout – in this default Resolve 15 menu order (G, Y, R, M, B, C, L, D, L+D):

Windows: Cntrl+Shift+… 2, 6, 1, 5, 3, 4, 7, 8, 9
Mac: Cmd+Shift+… 2, 6, 1, 5, 3, 4, 7, 8, 9
Which is in this button order: R, G, B, C, M, Y, L, D, L+D… 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9

Share your comments or ideas for scripts down below!

We can never say it enough: Comments energize us. We love hearing from you – your kudos, your jeers, your ideas, and your suggestions.

Enjoy!

-pi

Member Content

Sorry... the rest of this content is for members only. You'll need to login or Join Now to continue (we hope you do!).

Need more information about our memberships? Click to learn more.

Membership options
Member Login

Are you using our app? For the best experience, please login using the app's launch screen


Additional Downloads

Sorry... downloads are available for Premium Members only.

Become a Premium Member

Comments

Homepage Forums Speed-Boosting Resolve’s ‘Mini Panel’ With Gaming Keypads

Page 1 of 2

  • Willian Aleman
    Guest

    Hi Patrick,

    Thanks for the insight and for making the Auto Hotkey scripts and Stream Deck settings available for download.


  • Patrick Inhofer
    Guest

    You’re welcome.

    Note: For my Presets you’ll need to add these keyboard shortcuts to your layout in this default menu order (G, Y, R, M, B, C, L, D, L+D):

    – Windows: Cntrl+Shift+… 2, 6, 1, 5, 3, 4, 7, 8, 9
    – Mac: Cmd+Shift+… 2, 6, 1, 5, 3, 4, 7, 8, 9

    Which is in this button order: R, G, B, C, M, Y, L, D, L+D… 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9

    I’ll add this to the post above.


  • Willian Aleman
    Guest

    Great. Thank for the heads up.


  • Alex Winker
    Member

    Hi Patrick,

    I have a similar set up to yours in this video (with a DM240 instead of DM250), and I see that your keyboard is underneath your Mini. Do you have a mechanism for it to live under there and slide out? If so please share what you’ve done because I’ve been trying to accomplish that for a while now! I don’t have enough room for both on my desk!

  • Great inside, thanks Patrick! I have been using Pulover’s Macro creator ( http://www.macrocreator.com/ ) to write little shortcut macros (mainly for Avid Symphony). It’s like a development environment for AutoHotKey so I find it easier to program in that. It also allows you to search the screen area, so if there are buttons or dialog boxes that move you can find and click them wherever they happen to be.


  • rneil@rneilphotog.com
    Guest

    Patrick, I love the clarity of your thought processing on these workflow issues. Very useful to spur my own efforts.


  • Jose Santos
    Member

    Great Insight and thank you so much for maiking your Streamdeck Profile and scripst available! But Patrick, you can add a custom shortcut to toggle between color and all, I simply defined F1 for Color. You can save some steps by doing it in the Keyboard shortcuts menu and then just adding it to the Streamdeck, instead of going through all those mouse movements 😉


  • Jose Santos
    Member

    Hi Patrick the StreamDeck Profiles folder is empty. But thanks for everything else

  • Patrick,

    One little question. As far I can see while you don’t touch mini panel, lcd panels are turned off and when you touch it, they start to work… I’m using the same product but lcd panels are on all the time…

    How you done it? Is that something comes with Resolve 15 B3?


  • Patrick Inhofer
    Guest

    Guido – awesome share. Searching the screen area is friggin’ brilliant. Thanks! If you ever think you want to do something in the Insights Library on how you’re scripting for Symphony, let us know (use the contact page)! It would be a great addition to the Library.


  • Patrick Inhofer
    Guest

    The kind words are much appreciated.


  • Patrick Inhofer
    Guest

    Hi Jose – Brilliant! Thanks. I didn’t realize (or forgot) that those pull-downs became keyboard shortcuts! I’ll be sure to update my programming to simplify it and add reliability.


  • Patrick Inhofer
    Guest

    Yes – in the most recent Public Beta BMD shipped v1.2 of the Mini firmware. That update adds ‘sleep mode’ to the Mini. It goes to sleep after X minutes of inactivity. I’m not sure what that precise X is, but it feels like around 10 minutes. It’s a little short for me, since the first button push is ignored and used to wake the panel – and when I’m grading it annoys me to wait. I’d prefer it go to sleep after 45 minutes or so (or make it user-definable).


  • Patrick Inhofer
    Guest

    Alex, I’m using laptop feet. I bought two sets of these and only use the tall ones under the Mini. I used them with the Tangent Elements as well, to counter those panels natural forward tilt: https://www.amazon.com/Practical-Cooling-Skidproof-Reduction-Notebook/dp/B0747QSX25/ref=sr_1_1_sspa


  • Robbie Carman
    Guest

    I’ve machined some new feet that screw into the base raising the panel (where the rack mount points are) by about 1/4 in (I could make that variable). If I get enough interest I’ve been thinking about making sets and we could sell them here for $10.

Page 1 of 2

Log in to reply.

1,000+ Tutorials to Explore

Get full access to our entire library of over 1,100+ color tutorials for an entire week!


Start Your Test Drive!
Loading...