Product Reviews

Since it arrived in early 2005, Adobe Premiere Elements has offered an amazing amount of editing power for a very reasonable price. But the one thing it hadn't managed to deliver yet was the simplicity required to tempt someone new to PC video editing. With version 3, though, Adobe hopes to bring its entry-level editor to anyone, regardless of their previous experience.

The biggest change lies in the interface. For the third version in a row, the overall look has changed significantly. The windows are still docked, but the tabbed approach of Elements 1 has returned, thankfully without the annoying aspects such as the separation between Effects and Advanced Effects mode. Most of the interface remains the same, although the Media Library now changes with the context.

Adobe has also added a Sceneline view - a storyboard where each clip is represented by an icon rather than a filmstrip. This is much easier for quickly ordering your footage, although a conventional timeline is just a click away. Overall, the improvements are welcome and won't get in the way of more seasoned users. Our only criticism was the tendency of floating windows to dock into the interface whether we intended them to or not,

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after which they could be quite hard to separate out again.

The editing process is divided into movie-editing and DVD-creation stages, and the acquisition options have been expanded. Not surprisingly, capture from HDV sources is the primary addition, although we found scene detection didn't work with our Sony HVR-A1E. The Media Downloader now has a simplified Standard mode as well as the original mode, which is renamed Advanced.

A major new feature is built-in assistance for Stop Motion animation. This allows you to grab single frames from a webcam, a camcorder in camera or tape mode, or even a previously captured file. The onion-skinning leaves a ghost of the previous frame visible to assist with placement of the next. It has a time-lapse feature as well, grabbing a frame at fixed intervals for a given period. Premiere Elements will then stitch the frames together into an AVI clip. Unfortunately, though, Stop Motion capture won't work with HDV sources.

The editing stage doesn't feature many new additions, other than the ability to edit HDV, but you can at last record a narration track live using a dedicated applet as you preview the timeline - a welcome addition.

At the output stage, the DVD- authoring options remain the same as before, and no HD DVD or Blu-ray authoring has been added. However, you can now export Flash video, as well as in iPod, PSP and mobile phone 3GP formats. You can export HDV timelines to tape too.

Unless you're an HDV early adopter or fancy trying out Stop Motion animation, Premiere Elements 3 has less to offer upgraders than previous versions. But for newcomers, it's the best version yet, also offering a Family's Director Kit that includes a free clapperboard worth around £8, three ready-made storylines to shoot and a blank DVD-R.