"...how often they lift up the mouse and re-locate it to continue..."

I NEVER thought about that - yeah, it's just become "what I do" and take it completely for granted. I'm having issues with C4D because when I use the nav tools (moving the screen around, rotating, dolly in and out, etc.) at the upper right of each window I can only scroll as far as the window in my monitor (I'm sure there's a setting to change this, I just can't find it) and this would help a lot!

BTW - for your audio and video stuff, have you checked out something like this little gizmo? You can roll back and forth on your timeline - frame by frame to just hitting "play" to fast and slow motion/shuttle to the next point you wanna get to. I think this one is around $60?

-Lew