Professional video editing for amateurs
Shooting video is easy. The tricky part is turning the results into something worth watching, rather than clips that stop and start at random, or full-length events complete with all the boring bits. Affordable editing programs are now available, and many ordinary PCs are powerful enough to run them. But what you really need is a program that tries to mimic professional software without alienating beginners.
Adobe’s Premiere Elements is one of the few that successfully pulls this trick off, and its latest version does it better than ever. Inspired by Premiere Pro, the top-end software that’s widely used to edit films and TV programmes, it simplifies complicated tools to make them easier to use.
There are more than 30 Guided Edits that walk you through particular tasks step by step. For example, you can change a scene to black and white except for one object that appears in vivid colour. You’d normally need to master several advanced tools to achieve this. What’s especially good about the Elements approach is that you can tweak the end result - you’re not stuck with a one-dick filter.
Motion Titles - another new feature - come with preset animations that save you having to fiddle about with keyframes. We weren’t as convinced by the results using this feature - some of the designs worked well with the sample text but looked messy when we inserted our own text. Magix Movie Edit Pro 2016 does a better job of this.
A very useful new filter does a great job of removing camera shake (assuming it’s not too extreme), so handheld shots no longer look jittery. It’s also easier to mask off unwanted background subjects, to adjust them separately or remove them entirely from backgrounds. This gets you into the level of work that will require more advanced skill, but it’s good to know that these features are Included should you need them.
Saving video files for playback can usually be problematic, with lots of technical settings to get wrong. Premiere Elements 14 improves the process considerably, with simple options for the more common purposes.
You can now edit and export video at 4K resolution (four times sharper than Full HD) if your camera supports it, but you’ll need a PC with an Intel Core i7 processor to cope with this. For most people, it’ll make more sense to convert 4K footage to Full HD (1080p) files - which you can do using Premiere Elements 14 - and then work on those, because you’re unlikely to watch them at more than 1080p anyway.
Like Photoshop Elements for pictures, Premiere Elements also helps you keep your video files organised. It can recognise faces within footage, and sort clips by date order and by place, if you took them with a device that records GPS information such as a smartphone.
Premiere Elements 14 is an excellent choice for anyone who wants to learn video editing without being either too confused or too restricted. If you have a previous version, the upgrade price gives you a grand total of £14 off, which Is pretty modest, but buying from scratch represents great value.
VERDICT
You could find a simpler program or a more comprehensive one. but Premiere Elements strikes an excellent balance for practical video editing.