Labs

The traditional present to give the geek in your life at Christmas is hardware. And, as we've seen over the past few pages, there's plenty of cool gear to choose from this year. But there's a lot to be said for software; after all, anyone lucky enough to have a PC, video camera or MP3 player under the tree is going to need something to help them make the most of it.

For more creative souls, Adobe Premiere Elements 4 is an affordable video-editing package that promises to put together a fun movie in as little as 15 minutes. It boasts a clean, streamlined front end and offers plenty of editing power while remaining accessible to the newcomer, with neat features including a friendly media organiser and the ability to automatically apply themed transitions, titles and credits in just a few clicks.

It can also automatically detect the beat of your background music, which makes it easy to put together your own music videos. There's no support for AVCHD, so HDV is your only option for shooting HD video, but if that isn't a problem Premiere Elements is one of the easiest movie-making packages we've tried and a great choice for entry-level video editing.