Adobe Premiere Elements 3.0 review

Premiere Elements is the great overachiever of low-cost video editing.

With unlimited video and audio tracks, and powerful object motion and effect automation, the only compelling reasons to spend £700 on Premiere Pro are its advanced colour correction and HDV support.

Premiere Elements 3 offers yet another reason to save more than £630, with full support for HDV cameras and footage. As with Premiere Pro 2, HDV is captured and edited in its native MPEG2 TS format. Previews are reasonably smooth, and we managed three simultaneous HDV streams on a Core 2 Duo E6600 PC before playback stumbled.

The interface has undergone several tweaks that should help new users find their way. The timeline can be switched to show a Sceneline, which is a storyboard-like view that displays one thumbnail per clip. It's useful for quickly arranging your footage, although we recommend that new users avoid the temptation to use it all the time, as the timeline is more informative. The short cut buttons to jump to various tasks have been simplified and now comprise Edit Movie and Create DVD tabs, while capture and import are combined into a single drop-down menu. This menu also covers uploading video and images from digital cameras, webcams, mobile phones and hard disk- and DVD-based camcorders. Export is similarly comprehensive, with templates for Flash Video, iPod, PSP and 3GP (for mobile phones) as well as DVD, MPEG2, QuickTime and WMV. Strangely, AVI export is available only via the File menu and not the Export button.

The capture function introduces a Stop Motion mode, which shoots one frame at a time for creating animations or a frame at regular intervals for time-lapse video. An Onion Skinning option overlays the previous frame or frames over the live video input, which helps to keep track of what's moving where and makes successful animation a lot easier. It's a great new feature that's perfect for unleashing artistic ambitions or for getting the kids involved - toys make an ideal cast. Sadly, this is the one area where HDV isn't supported.

Ripple editing, where objects on the timeline move automatically to close gaps and make space for clips, now uses animated movement to show what's moving where. However, there are no ripple-editing options and a simple on/off switch would be useful. Transitions remain clumsy to implement, with the Dissolve transition buried in a nested folder in the Effects palette. The effects library and keyframe-based effects animation are as powerful as ever, but no less intimidating for casual users.

Premiere Elements' only serious competition comes from Sony Vegas Movie Studio Platinum (What's New, Shopper December 2005). Vegas Platinum remains the easier and faster software to use and its DVD-authoring capabilities are far superior. However, Premiere Elements wins hands down for complex editing, thanks to its unlimited track count, powerful effects automation and bezier motion paths. Now both support HDV, it's impossible to choose an outright winner. People with a flair for technical wizardry should go for Premiere, but most users will get more out of Vegas. However, if you need an image editor too, Premiere Elements bundled with Photoshop Elements 5 for £90 including VAT is a bargain.