Premiere Elements

This is the second article in a series of three, in which Robbiebee compares three video editing programs. This article discusses Adobe's Premiere Elements 1.

• Part 1: Studio 9 plus
• Part 2: Premiere Elements (this article)
• Part 3: Liquid Edition
  

Introduction

Premiere Elements is in a similar price range to Studio 9 plus, and there are things I like about that too. I bought it because I did not want to totally lose touch with Premiere and its developments, and it was advertised as having some features that I thought I would be interested in – who knows – it might be an upgrade route in the future.

The interface for Premiere Elements is very similar to its parent program, Premiere, except that you appear to have no choice of monitor layout. Elements seems to have just one monitor available. Although in this instance, I am referring to the on screen monitor, in fact, I have not found a way to utilize the dual monitor set up that I use. Whether this is because I unconventionally have my 2nd monitor on the left or because it is not designed for dual monitors I don’t know. I can find no reference to dual monitors in the manual. Utilizing the space that the 2nd on screen monitor would use in Premiere are the various tool windows, including a "HOW TO" window, very much like the recipes in Photoshop Elements. These can all be closed.

Capturing

This is a straight forward process, and Elements will capture via firewire, using either a camcorder or analogue capture via a Pinnacle Movie Box. This is a painless process, and you have a choice of things to do with your capture. Very useful is Scene Detect, although for it to allow you to just capture the scenes you want on the fly, date/time info must be recorded on the tape. Unlike Studio 9 plus, Elements does not differentiate between analogue capture via the firewire Moviebox and DV input. Elements does not allows you to control brightness, contrast, hue, saturation and audio levels before or during capture like Studio. If you have chosen Capture to timeline, you capture will be waiting for you when you move to Edit mode.

Editing

There are few tools available to actually trim clips compared to the full version of Premiere, but it does retain one very useful feature. On the timeline the clips are viewed as a series of picons. If you choose to view the timeline at its largest magnification, you can see each individual frame, which makes it very easy to trim or place markers in exactly the right place.

The monitor can be used in 2 ways; either it can display the clip you are considering using, where you can place mark in and out places, and then import just what you want, or it can display the timeline where you can track the progress of the full movie.

As well as trimming in the clip window, clips can be trimmed directly on the time line by using the razor tool or by dragging the ends of the clip, which is my favored way of working in all programs, unless I’m doing something fiddly. The tools available are a selection tool, a razor and a time stretch tool. The timeline opens with 4 tracks showing: 2 video and 2 audio. Audio or video tracks may be added, and the link between captured audio and video can be broken so that clips can move independently. Transitions are placed between 2 adjacent clips on the time line and there is a wide variety to choose from. The opacity of a clip can be adjusted, and this is keyframeable, as are the wide variety of effects that can be added.

Titling is easy and straightforward, very similar to Title Deko in both Studio and Liquid Edition 6.

In Elements, like in most other programs, you need to record voice overs separately and then import it to the project. This is where Studio scores over virtually every other editing program: you can record direct to the timeline.

DVD authoring

I have only tried outputting as a DVD, and that is pretty straightforward. Because the timeline shows picons right down to virtually frame accuracy, it is very easy to position markers, and the markers can be scene, main menu or stop. This is much quicker than it was in Studio. The menu templates seem to be clear and it is easy to author a multi menu DVD. However, apart from changing the words, there is absolutely no control over the appearance of a menu once chosen.

No opportunity to use own backgrounds, change fonts or re-arrange buttons. Motion menus or backgrounds are not an option, all of which are available in Studio. There is little control over the burn settings either. I tried a test DVD in both Studio 9 plus and Premiere Elements, and both had their good points and drawbacks.

Laying out the menu, consisting of two movies, each with eight chapters, was quicker and easier in Premiere elements, partly because of the clip icons, and partly because the markers were of 3 different types and a choice had to be made when setting them. This meant that it was very simple to incorporate the menu for the 2nd movie, whereas that process in Studio was more of a workaround, and would not be obvious. Studio scores hands down when it came to menu appearance. Everything can be changed within the template from the background up, links can be deleted, and motion backgrounds and buttons can be used. Not so in Elements. You can change the words and that's it. That said, you do get buttons for Play movie, Scene selection and then the different movies listed, though their scene selection is all together under the one button. If you can do this in Studio, its not obvious.

Encoding quality

Both programs, Studio and Elements, encoded fairly quickly, but when viewed on a 32" wide screen, the quality of the more challenging footage was marginally better from Studio. This was unusually difficult footage, tracking border collies running flat out round an agility course, with the camcorder on optical zoom. You can download the movie that I made here: agility.wmv (30MB). There was little to choose in the quality of the more average kind of footage, it was good from both.

Conclusions

All in all, this is a good program, and if you wish eventually to move to Premiere, it would be a good initial purchase. It is not as intuitive as Studio 9 plus, but the manual is not difficult to understand. It has some features not available in Studio 9 plus and vice versa. If you wish eventually to move to something like the MatroxRT100, which operates around Premiere, then this is the best buy for you. If Edition is the way you want to go, then go with Studio 9 plus. Good places to help you make your mind up are the discussion groups which you can find on both Adobe and Pinnacle web sites. Both manufacturers have a thriving community of fellow editors, all of whom were beginners once and are usually only too pleased to answer queries.