Customising keyboard shortcuts in Video by Zaweba
Edit > Keyboard shortcuts in Video by Zaweba changes any key, reports clashes, offers ready-made sets and shares layouts as .ozkeys files.
Fast editors rarely reach for the mouse. Trimming, splitting, marking and moving through the timeline all go quicker from the keyboard, and the quickest keys are the ones that suit your own hands. Video by Zaweba lets you change any shortcut, so the app can match your habits rather than asking you to learn new ones.
Opening the editor
Choose Edit > Keyboard shortcuts. The window lists the app's commands with the keys assigned to them, alongside a drawn keyboard that shows which keys are in use. Pick a command, press the key or combination you want, and it is set.
The drawn keyboard is more useful than it first appears. Seeing the layout makes it easy to spot free keys near the ones you already use, and to keep related commands close together under one hand.
Clashes
When you give a command a key that is already in use, the editor reports the clash. You can then decide which command should keep it and move the other one somewhere else. That stops the confusing situation where a key you rely on silently starts doing something different.
Take clashes seriously. It is tempting to accept the new mapping and move on, but the command that lost its key may be one you use daily without noticing.
Ready-made sets
The editor includes ready-made sets of shortcuts. If you are coming from another editing program, a set laid out in a familiar way can make the first weeks less frustrating, because your fingers keep doing what they already know. Start from the nearest set, then adjust the handful of keys that still feel wrong.
Sharing as .ozkeys files
A shortcut layout can be saved and shared as an .ozkeys file. Keep a copy as a backup of your own layout, so a fresh install or a new computer is set up in a moment. Share it with colleagues so a small team works the same way, which helps when people sit at each other's machines or explain how they did something.
Designing a layout that lasts
Change a few keys at a time rather than everything at once. Give each new mapping a few days to settle before moving on to the next. Muscle memory builds slowly, and changing too much at once leads to mistakes.
Put the commands you use most under the strongest fingers and closest to where your hand rests. Group things by job: trimming keys together, marking keys together, playback keys together. Modifier combinations are fine for rarer commands, but the busiest ones deserve single keys.
Write down any changes that differ from the set you started from. A short note is easier to follow than trying to remember months later why a key does what it does.
Shortcuts beside the palette
Shortcuts sit with workspaces and the command palette among the tools for setting up Video by Zaweba around how you work. The palette finds any command by typing, which is good for things you do rarely. Shortcuts are for what you do constantly. Use both and the menus become something you only visit occasionally.
