One of the last things that caught my eye as I was leaving NAB 2009, way back in April, was a sign that said “HD Mouse.” I had to check it out. I mean, what exactly is an HD mouse after all? Despite the fact that the term HD is overused, thrown about from video to television sets to sunglasses, sometimes it actually means something important. And sometimes, it’s just more marketing hype. For the Bella HD Mouse, as I later found out, that could go either way.

As far as basic mousing duties go, the Bella HD Mouse performs very well. It is a wireless mouse but isn’t a bluetooth device. Rather, it connects to its supplied USB dongle. The two included AA batteries supply power to the mouse and the entire wireless range, says the company, is 26 feet. Plug in the transmitter, pair the mouse with it, and you are ready to go. There is no mechanical rubber ball gum up as the mouse uses an optical sensor to track movements. It is very precise and has a claimed resolution of up to 1600 DPI. Bella also claims a response time of 3,000 Frames Per Second; even though this mouse is geared toward video editing, this frames per second is an indicator of how the optical sensor reads the surface it is tracking. The higher the number, the better the mouse tracks.

When clicking that center mouse button you can enter HD Mouse Mode. It can be an instant activation or you can set a delay of 1-to-5 seconds as you hold down the center scroll wheel button. When activated, HD Mouse Mode allows for special customization based on gestures you make with the mouse. The most common use (and the most marketed use) is for video editing applications. When entering HD mode in Final Cut Pro the mouse itself becomes a jog/shuttle-type controller. This is indicated by a little HD icon in your menu bar turning orange and an On Screen Display that pops up (see below).

The example pictured here is in Final Cut Pro. Move the mouse to the right and you begin to scrub later in your Final Cut Pro timeline. Just like a shuttle control, the further in either direction you move the controller the faster you shuttle. Move the mouse back to the center and the shuttling slows. It’s actually one of the more convenient shuttle controls out there right now for one simple reason: the controller is the mouse itself. Since you already have your hand on the mouse, there is no reaching to another control unit to make it work.

But what if you don’t use jog/shuttle controls when editing? I rarely use the jog/shuttle control on my Contour Shuttle Pro (in fact, I’ve changed the jog dial to zoom the timeline) and prefer to use JKL scrubbing instead. I just didn’t use this HD mode on the mouse much. Plus, I found I had to reinstall the driver software a few different times, as the HD mode would just stop working. There is dedicated HD Mouse software that will give you access to some very detailed, custom programming of all the HD Mouse buttons, as well as the gesture-type controls (see below).

In fact, the software is so detailed that I found it rather difficult to set up. You can add any application to the HD Mouse software beyond the few defaults. I tried to add Safari and make the HD vertical mouse movement scroll a Web page, but I couldn’t get it to work the way I wanted. It would be nice if Bella could provide more presets or provide downloadable presets for other, non-editing types of applications. To be fair, however, it does look like you can customize this mouse to do a lot of tasks. I simply found it took more time than I had to give to properly program some of the more advanced gesture-based features.

The other issue I had with the Bella HD Mouse isn’t really an issue with the mouse at all. I normally use an Apple Mighty Mouse and found myself constantly wishing I had the functionality of the tiny scroll ball that is engineered into the Mighty Mouse. After living with the tracking and range of movement that the little rubber scroll ball provides, it’s hard for me to work without it. While the Apple Mighty Mouse feels much more like a plastic toy than the Bella HD Mouse, it’s in the end a not-surprising case of great design and one single great feature trumping overall build quality. While the Bella HD Mouse feels like a much more professional and well-built product, I would rather have the functionality of the Mighty Mouse scroll ball for day-to-day editing and general mousing work.