Моддинг DaVinci Resolve Speed Editor // шумка, смазка, и ещё кое-что
Hi guys! Two events coincided: At first I was fascinated by mechanical keyboards, and after a month I magically get this DaVinci Resolve Speed Editor, which I've known for a long time is also mechanical keyboard. Which is not surprising, because if you are a big company, like Blackmagic Design and you need to release something like that controller, then it is quite logical to make it on a ready-made component base. But it's not that simple. In general, the first contact with Speed Editor happened to me at the end of 2022. At that time I was working as a producer in a small but mighty production by a YouTube channel about luxury watches. I had three editors, one of whom was Nick, which you saw in the last video about Ursa, somehow dragged into the office with the newly purchased Speed Editor and says, “Look, what a fucking great thing."
Of course, I knew it existed, but this was the first time I had the chance to touch it. Nick immediately showed me what she could do, although he I hadn't fully mastered the functionality yet. But we quickly realized that in production on a sequence of weekly two-three-hour podcasts this will come in very handy.
Our boss was in Italy at the time and we asked buy another one of his, because Ginny, the third editor, said that she is fine without Speed Editor. I don't need him for fuck's sake, the fucking thing! And a week later we had a second one in production brand new Speed Editor. Nick and Romario editors told me that he really speeds up the work, that's a fucking cambo thing when sorting b-rolls and multicams editing, and I was drowning in organizing shoots and constantly filming trips. And as is proper for a producer, my hands was don't interfere with the editing at all, i only occasionally showing the guys some technical tricks. A lot of time has passed since then, more than half a year of this There is no production anymore, Romario works as an editor in a big channel, where he also has a Speed Editor.
Nick freelances at cleanup, but sometimes takes on work editing, which is done precisely on Speed Editor. I a lot sit on the postproduction a lot and occasionally shoot ads and podcasts, sometimes I remember that it would be nice too buy yourself Speed Editor. And so, a month and a half ago, my wonderful friends, including Romario and Nick given to me on birthday a brand new Speed Editor. My happiness knew no bounds, and I was finally able to tightly I used it and immediately understood that modding was needed. Of course I needed time to use it as is, but it as is - it's a complete fucking absence lube in switches and on a single stabilizer.
Well, as befits a high-speed performance car, there is absolutely no noise reduction. My NuPhy Air75v2 already had 200 grams of car noise insulation at that time and tapemod, and it sounded much nicer than in stock, which in turn was much nicer than Speed Editor in stock. I watched the Speed Editor disassembly video in advance and stocked up materials that I will need for modding. This is what came to me.
Paint for silicone (never needed), in which the seller thoughtfully put gold glitter as a gift. Platinum based silicone for molds, two-component, hardness 10A by Shore. Although I wanted 0A, I screwed up when ordering and in the end took 10A. However, this is not bad at all.
Mechanical keyboard lube kit consisting of Christoube MCG-111 for friction pairs plastic-plastic, Oil Krytox GPL105 for springs, and Krytox Molycote for plastic-metal friction pairs. And special thin brushes for spreading all this shit. The next package contains the most interesting stuff. I'm afraid you'll have to think for a few seconds about what else i can buy this to modify a mechanical keyboard.
Okay, relax. You still won't guess This is 30 meters of tungsten wire with a diameter of 0.6 mm. Its peculiarity is that it is 2.5 times heavier than steel its similar diameter and long And this is important when the task is to make something small very heavy.
In this case, Keycaps. I've already weighted them in the NyPhy Air and I liked how their kinematics and sound changed This time I decided to go further and got the densest material that was easily accessible - the density of tungsten is 19.25 grams per cubic centimeter, and it is also the most refractory metal, and the second hardest after chromium Overall, great material with an equally awesome name.
I'm kind of fucking bored, let's listen to how the Speed Editor sounds out of the box on Kailh Red CPG 1511 switches. Disgusting, isn't it? However, there will also be lovers of this kind of oldschool. As a spoiled techno-wanker with a keyboard that is not oiled enough but is denoisy as hell, I didn’t like this at all, and I realized And I realized that I needed to mod both the controller and the content.
make some good content out of it Besides, as far as I understand, I was the first in the world to think of making a video about this. How did this happen - I don't know, but right now you are watching the world's first video of modding Speed Editor as a mechanical keyboard. Transforming the Speed Editor into a turbo hulk with a built-in Stream Deck does not count, although this can also have fun with this. So, I started with research. The first thing I learned, of course, as soon as I got it, was that it turns out that there are configurations on different switches, although this is not stated in any way. I have Kailh Red, Nick has Cherry Red MX.
These are linear switches, the most classic of the modern ones, and in general it is very logical that they are the ones installed in such a controller. mechanical keyboard switches come in a variety of kinds: Linear - the most common, have a uniform force throughout the entire pressing distance, a neutral sound and almost always a red stem color Tactile - have non-linear resistance at the beginning or middle of the stroke, after which they are pressed more easily, really interesting to the touch, basically brown stem color Clicky - they click very loudly at the moment the contact closes somewhere in the middle of the stroke Usually blue. Silent - everything is obvious here, they are designed to be practically silent Naturally, each manufacturer has its own models. Linear with early response, clicking tactile simultaneously, toctile silent. Clicks, tactility, and actuation depth can also vary from model to model, and all of this can also be found in a low-profile with a shorter travel. In general, there are a great variety of switches, not even mentioning magnetic and optical ones.
And in most cases, switches can be changed on the fly, without even turning off the keyboard, which gives fantastic possibilities for variability, customization and repair. but Blackmagic didn't give us this, and in Speed Editor the red linear switches are soldered to the board with contacts, just like in the cheapest keyboards for a couple tens dollars from Amazon. This is very disappointing, because almost all keyboards over 50 bucks have hotswap - the ability to quickly change switches with a tool that comes with such keyboards. So, I opened the case, unscrewed 6 screws, carefully disconnected the battery connector, which, by the way, is also the most standard of all that can be expected in such a device - one 18650 cell at 9.6 watt/hours.
Naturally, I briefly thought about either inserting a 13-15 watt/hour flat pack there instead, or replacing it with a 21700 that is almost twice as capacious. flat pack would be located under the board, and the 21700 would fit into the stock place even with a small margin, except that it would be necessary to dismantle the fasteners from the 18650. But the Speed Editor has no issues with energy efficiency overall, and with heavy use I only had to charge it about once every 4 days, which is fine with me, so I decided to leave the battery stock. All components are spread across three boards, but that's not the most interesting thing.
Everything here is very large, you could say, cargo-like: The front panel plastic is as much as 3 mm. The heavy steel frame in which the switches sit is 1.5 millimeters. By the way, the weight of the whole device is 801.6 grams. Let's see what happens after the operation I also weighed the keycaps, there are 4 types: 1-Unit .64-.65 grams. 1 Unit Shinethrough .72-.76g
1.5 Unit 0.94 and one 4 Unit at 2.41 grams. Here's the plan: Cut the tungsten into pieces 11-12 mm long and place 16 pieces in 1U keycaps. 1.5U and 4U – as much as will fit or as much as is left of first 10 meters of tungsten wire The interior of keycaps is not square, 12.5 x 11 mm on the bottom, and due to the profile the long sides are deeper, which is very convenient for me The round center has a diameter of 5.5 mm, which means I have 2 areas of 2.75 x 12.5 mm, where 4 pieces
of tungsten 0.6 mm thick with some extra will fit. By placing the second row on top, I will be able to lay out those same 16 pieces that will be fixed inside the keycap with silicone. I have quite a few tools by the standards of a 30-year-old handyman, and a fuckton by the standards of a male alt of the same age.
Having put the dick to my nose, I realized that it was worth trying to clamp a piece of tungsten with pliers with a jaw width of 10 millimeters and bite them off with nippers. Considering that I have to bite off about a fuckload of times, I don’t plan to spend a lot of time aiming each time, and I’m mentally prepared for some variation in the sizes of the resulting products. Of course, I already knew then that tungsten is hard, and that I can’t just bite it with anything, and behind the camera I tried these nippers, the color of the metal of which told me that it was chrome vanadium steel. Of course, I bit off the tungsten with them, but not right away, and besides, the nippers immediately became dull at the site of the bite. It became obvious that they weren't fucking chrome vanadium.
There was an idea to bite with a Leatherman, who, by the way, did it really easily, but his grip after 900 bites would most likely have raped my hand until it bled. After all, this is an EDC tool, and it is not even close to being designed for this. I also had a pair of wire cutters that looked like they had seen a USSR. They bit more or less consistently and relatively easily, but the hardened handles made of what was once, perhaps, a softer plastic cut the hand really badly.
I did these tests out of curiosity, and ended up taking the most powerful nippers I had. It's enough to waste time on bullshit, there's a lot of monotonous work ahead. Surprisingly, they weren't all that good at it: I had to press quite hard on the handles, and at the moment when the tungsten was slowly compressed, it would split very badly, like split hair ends.
I got fed up pretty quickly, realizing that I needed a more serious tool. Not wanting to wait several days for delivery from the marketplace, I went to the nearest tool stores in search of fierce biters. Confused by metal shears for 7-10k roubles ($83-118) in two stores, I bought these lever side cutters for 1600 roubles ($19) rubles and went home with hope to conquer tungsten. The tungsten obeyed and even began to flake much less often, and I dealt with the remaining bites in a little less than 3 hours.
While laying tungsten into keycaps for subsequent filling with silicone, I had a simultaneously brilliant and dangerous idea: what if the bottom layer is soldered into the keycap? There is just such a protrusion there, reminiscent of a stiffening rib, but in fact, of course, it is not one. The idea was to heat up 4 pieces of tungsten, perpendicularly located on this ledge, with a soldering iron, and solder them into the keycap. There are two advantages to this action: the bottom layer is fixed in the keycap, the flowing silicone envelops these pieces, receiving additional adhesion, and also this whole structure, although a little, still sinks deeper into the keycap. In the shinetrough keycaps, the transparent plastic has a very wide mount, and it took me a while to figure out how to melt it, but in the end I had to do just that.
I loaded the 1.5U keycaps to the maximum, and they each held as many as 44 pieces of tungsten. In the process, I overheated several keycaps, to the point that the rough texture on the outer part became glossy in places. In general, this is the main mistake that I made in this whole operation, and I soldered the remaining keycaps in packs of 3-4 pieces First, I soldered one side of each pack, and then, when they had completely cooled down, I soldered the other. Through trial and error, I found that the temperature on the soldering iron is 230 celsium degrees, but you should not keep the soldering iron on the tungsten in the keycap for long; it is better to wait until it cools down and then solder it, than to overheat the keycap.
t's a pity that I realized this when several keycaps were already damaged. However, it’s my Speed Editor, and I’m the one who’s going to ruin it, so I don’t regret anything. I only had a large 4-unit start/stop keycap left, I had to approach it in a special way Of the first 10 meters of tungsten I had about 80 centimeters left, and I decided that was enough. The distance between the edges of the keycap and the stabilizer mount is exactly the same as for one-unit so 4 pieces of tungsten were immediately soldered in there on each side, and subsequently the same number will be laid on top.
I used 2mm car noise insulation as the main vibration-absorbing material, then removed the foil and symmetrically pressed the remaining tungsten into it. After these manipulations, the keycap weighed 8.58 grams. Next I diluted with a reserve of 80 grams of silicone In the process, I remembered about vibration to displace air bubbles and used the first application I came across with forced vibration on my phone. By the way, with it the air bubbles actually rose a little faster however, as it turned out, with shallow filling they come out completely during drying. I poured 0.2 ml into 1U and 0.4 ml into 1.5U.
I poured it from one corner, because while the silicone is liquid, it is very fluid. and will definitely have time to spread evenly over the keycap. But to help, I still set it to vibration for about 40 minutes. By the way, about a shitload of silicone was used, 5-6 grams to be precise, and what was left became this flat puddle. When the silicone in the keycaps stopped being completely liquid, I started to soundproof the Speed Editor body.
Everything is as simple as possible here. I put noise insulation in all the places where it was placed, without interfering with the switch frame and battery. The top panel also really bothered me, because when I tapped my fingers on it, it creaked not like an Australian gadget for professionals, but like a product of the Chinese auto industry.
But, you can’t put a lot of noise insulation on it, there is a risk that after rolling it out it will come too close to the edge. that's why I first put it on the stiffening ribs. After that it occurred to me that I could remove the jog wheel along with the controller and see if anything would fit in there, and, in general, yes, it did fit. The jogwheel, although a heavy piece of aluminum, also received a little denoise along the inner circumference. The front panel and frame are connected with a small gap, approximately 0.1 mm,
I glued thin double-sided tape to the frame at the joints, the consistency is about the same as silicone There was also some space on the frame for soundproofing. After that I started lubricating the switches. The process is quite simple.
I lower the stem, see that it has a guide on the right and left, and I lubricate it. as much as possible. Having lubricated both blocks, I figured out that I could try lubricating the top and bottom and it worked, the sound of pressing became even quieter, and it glided even more smoothly.
If you have a question about why I lubricate them like this and don’t disassemble them, as is customary, then I’ll remind you that the switches on the Speed Editor are soldered to the board with contacts, and some also have an LED threaded through the switch and also soldered to the board. It was done pretty fucked up, but what can you do. I could have unsoldered 128 contacts carefully, I could probably have soldered them too, but I wasn't sure about that, so I chickened out, so the spring lubrication was cancelled, and the stems were lubricated in this way Overall, the method works, although it almost certainly uses more grease, but overall, I don’t give a shit about that. After lubricating the switches, I mixed 60 grams of silicone, adding some gold glitter to it just to see how they would look in silicone.
I tilted the bottom of the case so that its upper edges were horizontal and poured all 60 grams into the case. It turned out that this was exactly what was needed. Although, maybe 70 grams would have been ok too.
It was time to be a moron, as I later realized: at that point the keycaps had been filled with silicone for about 2.5 hours, and they looked and felt quite hard already Curiosity got the better of me and I installed a large start/stop keycap on the switch to check out how it sounds. Naturally, the silicone, which had not hardened completely and had a very thin layer in this place, tore a little, I kicked myself on the hands and left the keycap alone. All that was left was to put everything back together.
To say that I was shocked by what happened is to say nothing. Okay, I won't drag it out, listen to what happened. Fucking awesome, isn't it? In general, the question of the sound of a mechanical keyboard is a matter of taste But I like exactly this silent sound. I also really like that the plastic doesn't knock on plastic at the end of the key travel; this impact is absorbed by the silicone in the keycaps. A special feature is the front panel denoise Despite its thickness, it only now began to feel monolithic.
I probably overdid it with the start-stop keycap, which bounces back quite slowly. but I hope this is due to the thick grease of the stabilizer, which, it seems to me, can still spread throughout the mechanism and the key stroke will accelerate. It's fucking awesome to realize that my Speed Editor is probably the coolest in the world, and there's definitely no other like it.
At least, I did not find any refutations of this on the Internet. I really want to read your comments about what you think about customization of seemingly professional, working gadgets. And I'm not talking about shitty stickers on Sony, but about a real complex custom that makes these devices truly unique. That's all from me. Bye.
2025-03-30 11:28
