Product Reviews

It had to happen sooner or later. While Adobe Premiere was once the king of video editing on the PC, the competition at the semi-professional end has stiffened up considerably over the past couple of years. Premiere pioneered the use of the timeline-editing metaphor, at least on the PC platform, and its branding is still paramount. So producing a cut-down version tailored for the home user and hobbyist was an obvious next step.

The Elements interface is a dead ringer for Premiere Pro, with many of the same tabbed palettes, a timeline along the bottom, a central preview window, and the media bin on the left. However, Adobe has sensibly followed the best existing entry-level editing software and used a system of tabs along the top to separate out the various different stages of the process, namely Capture, Edit, Effects, Titles, DVD, and Export.

The first step is capturing video, and the button for this pops out an extra window with controls for FireWire-attached camcorders. It has basic scene detection built in, but no clip marking or batch capture. We also found scene detection failed to notice most of our in-camera edits. Premiere Elements also assumed we'd be using NTSC, and the method for switching over to PAL is hidden behind a Settings button in the startup splash screen, which also hides a series of tutorials.

But from here on in, Premiere Elements really comes into its own. The Edit stage lets you trim your clips and arrange them on the timeline. Apart from an extra 'How To' palette on the right to assist novices, this is still very much Premiere, not some budget copy. Significantly, and unlike any previous mainstream entry-level app, it's possible to have multiple tracks in the timeline, for sophisticated layering effects. Premiere Pro's plethora of mouse tools has been cut down to Selection, Razor, and Time stretching, but these are by far the most useful.

The Effects stage has two modes - Normal and Advanced. The latter reveals the Effect Controls palette from Premiere Pro. Advanced mode is necessary for removing unwanted effects, and offers fine control over filters. It also has the full motion-control capabilities of Premiere Pro, including keyframing

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and onscreen adjustment. The range of filters is a very large subset of Premiere Pro's, including the excellent automatic colour correction and Shadow/Highlight, backed up by over 150 presets. Elements has substantial keying abilities as well, including chroma, blue screen, alpha, and various kinds of track and garbage mattes - the only real omission is luma keying. Most of the effects have the same or similar parameters as in Premiere Pro - great if Elements is your low-cost entry into the Premiere methodology, but rather daunting for beginners.

Although Premiere Pro's real-time editing abilities aren't up to the standard set by its professional-grade opposition from Pinnacle and Canopus, at this level the Premiere engine is more than adequate. GPU effects are also included, such as page peels and ripples, which, depending on your graphics card, are essentially real-time. Best of all, in tandem with a camcorder that supports conversion of FireWire input to analog video output, the onscreen preview can be viewed on a TV. Many camcorders, even at the sub-£500 mark, now support this feature.

Titling in Elements again produces a series of extra windows. There's a selection of templates based around themes like travel or new babies, or you can create titles from scratch. Either way, the capable Adobe Title Designer is used to edit text and lay out graphics.

DVD has its own separate button because, like Pinnacle Studio 9, DVD menu creation is built in. You can add DVD markers straight onto the timeline, choosing a thumbnail and text title for the chapter. These are then picked up in the DVD creation stage. Here, you can choose a DVD template from seven different themes such as sports and weddings. There's little capability to customise the overall design, however, with only the option to edit text and scene markers. The results can be saved to DVD or CD, at a chosen video quality or to fit the space available on the media. Thankfully, it's also possible to change from PAL to NTSC at this stage. Alternatively, you can export to a menu-less DVD, back to tape, or to a file as MPEG, QuickTime, or Windows Media, but not RealMedia.

Premiere Elements is already having a major effect on the entry-level video-editing software market. It can be no coincidence that Pinnacle has just released a new Plus version of Studio 9, complete with multiple video layers and chroma keying. While Studio has supreme ease of use on its side, and much more powerful DVD menu design capabilities, Premiere has aspirational appeal. And Premiere Elements is impressively featured compared to Premiere Pro - it even supports After Effects and VST plug-ins. Anyone looking for the most powerful video-editing package under £100 should get themselves a copy - it's a bargain.