Consumer Editor Reviews - Artistic Special Effects

Adobe Premiere Elements

Magix Movie Edit 10

Pinnacle Studio

Ulead VideoStudio

Premiere Elements controls are the same as Premiere Pro. You select the background color with an eyedropper, then adjust similarity, blend, threshold and cutoff. Not sure what the last three do; simply wiggle them around until you find the best result. Don't forget to set the Smoothing control to high, this smoothes the edge between the foreground clip and background.

If lighting or other conditions change in mid scene, you can adjust all parameters with key frames. Nice simple control set; almost prototypical, but more complicated than VideoStudio or MEP.

Nice automatic controls, just two adjustments for Threshold and Fading range (no softness). Adjustments are coarse with no numerical entry and the preview window is 320x240 - would have liked a bigger window and the ability to zoom in and actually look at the edges more closely when setting the effect.

Good set of controls. Mask on the left helps display when regions from the background image are showing through, which is helpful.

Chroma key controls include an eyedropper for choosing the chroma key color, a similarity control and width and height cropping controls to trim away edges. The program applied smoothing filters between foreground and background videos.

Controls felt a bit twitchy, complicating precise adjustments.

Frame 3:07

Frame 29:06

Just a hint of blue around the edges of the dancing girl and very slight transparency.  Edges a touch smoother than others.

Very good results on second clip.

Results were good for consumer editor. Some ragged edges along hip of dancing girl, and slightly rougher edges than Studio.

Second clip was very good.

Dancing girl clip was pretty strong overall, with decent edges but no transparency like VideoStudio and Premiere Elements. Some green showed through on edges of second clip.

With the dancing girl clip, even at 100% similarity, couldn’t eliminate transparency. Could see through dress and had rough patches around the edges. Second chromakey had pretty good smoothness on the edges with some faint transparency in the hair. 

Adobe Premiere Elements

Magix Movie Edit 10

Pinnacle Studio

Ulead VideoStudio

Simple control that lets you set speed or duration. you can also specify to maintain audio pitch, but the audio starts sounding funky after dropping below 50% speed.

Controls are easy to find and use, but you can't go below 50% speed without unlinking audio and video files, an undocumented operational factoid (we called tech support who told us).

The only control that gives you the option to replicate or create intermediate frames via replication.

Premiere Elements produced the best quality using interpolation rather than just frame replications. This produced the smoothest result, though some artifacts showed in the golf videos.

A touch choppier than Premiere Elements and Studio, with some stuttering. 

Motion a touch choppy looks just like frame replication.  Premiere Elements is noticeably smoother (but more artifacts with golf club). Some shimmer in the background.

Adobe Premiere Elements

Magix Movie Edit 10

Pinnacle Studio

Ulead VideoStudio

Yes, by applying a border to a lower track and adjusting to size (awkward, slow)

Border, color and shadow

Not that I could find

Yes

No

Adobe Premiere Elements

Magix Movie Edit 10

Pinnacle Studio

Ulead VideoStudio

Controls are initially intimidating but generally pretty simple to pick up. Very, very good precision for advanced users with the ability to input key frames for different parameters at different times during the effect.

All filters are infinitely key frameable, though again you’re forced to work in the extremely tiny filter window.

Very simple to move effects up and down and toggle their effect on and off. That makes it simple to apply multiple effects.

You use the Object curve effects control, which is obtuse as already noted.

Very simple - only one preview window, very easy to click effects on and off and move up and down (which makes a big difference.

Very confusing when working with multiple filters. For example, when working with these three filters:

If you preview the Brightness and Contrast filter, the file looks vastly improved.

If you preview the DeNoise filter, it looks like the original file.

This makes it tough to adjust the DeNoise filter, and also to predict what the end result will look like.

Though it's simple to move effects up and down, there's no easy way to toggle them on and off, so it's tough to isolate the operation of the effect that you're adjusting.

• I especially like Premiere Element's Camera View filter, which allows you to move the image in 3D space on all three axis as if you were moving the camera around. Pretty unique in this space.

• The Edge feather effect is also unusual, and allows you to soften picture in picture effects, which is a great look.  Beveled edges is an effect I've also used in for P-i-Ps.

• Some fun simulated photography effects (look like you're snapping a picture).

• Some fun mask effects in the styles

• Fire

• Witness protection

• Rain, smoke, snow (all third party)

You can now insert Flash overlays on the second video track, with VS including a small library of 18 flash animations. As with previous versions, you can insert objects and frames on the second video track that appear over the background video.

One killer feature is the ability to distort a video clip in 2D space. Below I've angled the foreground video to fit into a photo-album sized window in the Flash background. 

Adobe Premiere Elements

Magix Movie Edit 10

Pinnacle Studio

Ulead VideoStudio

Pluses:

• Very smooth slow motion, though significant shimmer in video

• A good mix of highly technical filters

• Generally good blue screen quality

Negatives:

• Lacks some "fun" filters like old film

• Should be easier to preview effects

Pluses:

• Easy to use blue screen control that produced generally good results.

• Good key frame control over effects (if you can figure out how to use it).

Negatives:

• 2D controls are obtuse

• Lacks some key effects like lighting and lens flare

Pluses:

• Good slow motion quality

• Mixed blue screen quality

• Good mix of Pinnacle and third party controls.

• Controls are generally non-technical

• Simple to apply multiple effects

Negatives:

• No key frame controls for effects, just transition in and out

Pluses:

• Very good collection of artistic effects, including Flash

• Most filters preview out DV port

• Virtually infinite key frame controls

• Ability to distort video

Negatives:

• Frame replication is only slow motion technique; can produce slightly choppy video.

• Blues creen not very effective on one of two clips

• Applying multiple effects is too complex