Customer Reviews

Bella Advantage Series Keyboard 2.0 for Apple Final Cut Pro - USB Ports

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I'm an aspiring filmmaker. I do TONS of editing work from the comfort and ease of my computer and FCP software... this keyboard is color coded (which is somewhat helpful, showing different types of tool with a different color. eg, mark points yellow, edit and trimming pink, different cursors orange, and so on) but I think the most helpful feature is that it shows all the shortcut buttons on the keys themselves. I've learned a lot of the shortcut keys myself already, but now it's REALLY easy to read... A fairly quick glance at the keyboard will find you your shortcut, saving mouse drag search and click time. (I know a professional editor that can edit an entire feature project without using the mouse once, it's quite impressive.)

What I DISLIKE about this keyboard is that (like many keyboards) it is a slightly different size than the Mac standard keyboard. I belive the keys on this one are slightly smaller. Which isn't a big deal per-se... I'm sure in a couple days I will be used to this one. But I do go for keys based on instinct and spacial relation, so sometimes I hit the wrong key. In particular the command key and some of the pinky keys feel off to me. Another thing that should be noted is the eject/volume keys are not located above the number pad, but instead above the function keys. It's actually nice up there... but the eject key seems to prompt the shut down pop up for me. I'm not sure if this is the case for all systems/settings, but F12 should eject your drive anyway. A set of other buttons such as calculator, www, an envelope are also there that do not seem to do anything for me. The keys (though they do have a nice feel to them) seem to have a tendency to stick if you do not press them firmly and squarely. For me this is a big disadvantage, since my typing is all over the place.

Good teaching tool, but hard to get used to. The standard mac keyboard has a much nicer feel to it.

I bought one of these and returned it. I bought another one thinking that maybe I just got a bad unit, but the same issues occurred with the second one, and I returned that too. This keyboard is of the same physical construction quality as the $14 KB that you buy at Fry's electronics. I have priced them out, so I'm not just making that up. You can twist the keyboard in your hands easily. It's flimsy enough that it won't always lay flat on the desk, so it may rock as you type. That's okay, you can just twist it the other way, back and forth to try and level it out. But do you want a keyboard like that? I didn't. Especially not for $70 used in a professional editing application. The FCP key colors and icons are great. But the actual key strokes would not always appear on the screen. I was constantly backing up to insert a letter that had not been felt by my typing fingers. Most all other higher quality keyboards do not have this issue. The shift key would not register 20% of the time. Very annoying.

I bought this one instead of the Bella Pro with the jog wheel (which I have used a lot in the past) because on that one they replace the area where the up,down,left,right keys are with a silly jog/shuttle wheel that's just a toy, and the direction buttons are tacked on elsewhere on the keyboard not as standard keyboard keys, but as little oval buttons that you have to be very deliberate about pushing. This makes frame-by-frame navigating on a timeline or just through files in the finder very laborious. Otherwise it's a quality keyboard and I'd be willing to pay the higher price for it. So I tried the Bella Advantage 2.0 that I'm now reviewing, but not quality enough. Why don't they put their custom key caps for FCP in a higher quality keyboard? There is certainly room for competition in this market. I ended up returning both and using KBCovers silicon keyboard cover for different editing applications, like FCP and Avid, and using with an Apple G5 style keyboard. Price of new Bluetooth keyboard and silicon cover was $95. Much better.

This keyboard would stop responding on my mac pro. I'd get an error occasionally saying there wasn't enough power supplied to it. I contacted the seller who told me tough luck as I was past my first 30 days. I RMAed it back to Bella who were nice enough to send me a brand new one. But I still got the same problem. Occasionally it would be recognized. But more times that not, I'd boot up and it would act as though it wasn't even there. There's a chance it's my new Mac not supplying enough power. But I've run multiple ext hard drives from the same USB ports with no problem so watch out. It might not be compatible with latest Macs.