A bit of cut and polish
The Age
Thursday March 31, 2011
Adobe and Corel take different paths to impressive video-editing software. HAVING overcome our prejudices against shooting video with a still camera and having been impressed with the quality of the moving images, even from compacts, it is time to come to terms with the moving equivalents of Photoshop for making the rough edits smooth.It is a truth universally acknowledged that most amateur videos are going to end up on YouTube. That being the case, the demands of editing are basic. Windows Live Movie Maker (already in your Windows OS or available as a free download from Microsoft) will do a crude but acceptable edit, as will iMovie, part of the Mac OS or the latest version can be had for ready money.At the other end of the application scale stand the big guns, Final Cut Pro for Mac users and Adobe Premiere for PCs. As these programs cost more than you paid for your camera, we will give them a miss.The two editing programs we use are Adobe Premiere Elements ($146) and Corel Video Studio X4 Pro ($150). We like them both for different reasons. Both programs are competent and produce complex and impressive videos without taxing the bank account or the brain. They both work in much the same way. Content video clips, stills, audio clips is assembled in an organiser area on the screen. Then the components are dragged on to a timeline and clipped and spliced together.The key to good editing is to write out a sequential shot list in effect an editing script so placing clips is not a suck-it-and-see process.Both Adobe (tinyurl.com/2wsezbe) and Corel (tinyurl.com/4r4nhcl) provide user manuals as downloadable pdfs. The Adobe manual runs to 306 pages, so it is not for printing out. But manuals are not much use located on the computer where you are editing, so it is best to move them to another device such as an iPad or smartphone for easy reference.The big difference between the applications is that Adobe's is more complex, fully featured and sophisticated, while Corel's is simpler, user-friendly and we're not sure about the value of this has a pseudo 3D function and comes with a pair of 3D spectacles of the old-fashioned kind.Adobe Premiere Elements forces the user to make decisions and choices every step of the way and, for most of them, there is no help in choosing one setting rather than another.In true Adobe style, words are used that do not have the same meaning as they do in conversation. This means that while Premiere Elements is undoubtedly the better featured product, it is also harder to use.Corel reduces the decision-making process by making assumptions that seem to work well enough. If YouTube is the masterpiece's destination then Corel is the way to go. If you are putting videos on your own web server and don't mind a steep learning curve, then Adobe Premiere Elements would be the application of choice.
© 2011 The Age
