Consumer Editor Reviews - Audio Related Features

Adobe Premiere Elements

Magix Movie Edit 10

Pinnacle Studio

Ulead VideoStudio

Mixer works in real time, but adjusts the volume on the entire track, not volume at that location. So, if you want to reduce the volume of the background music when someone starts speaking in the video, you really can't without adjusting the volume of the entire song down (both Studio and VideoStudio adjust audio at the location going forward, leaving other previous levels alone). So the MEP tool looks great, but is relatively useless.

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Studio's mixer is one of its top features, because it:

• Real time operation - works while audio is playing.

• Sliders for all tracks - makes it very intuitive

• Adjusts rubber band controls - complementary to these controls

• Creates two control points at once - immediate drop to desired level (other programs adjust more slowly, often forcing multiple adjustments (see comparison with VideoStudio below)

There are four audio tracks; two with the main and overlay video tracks, and a narration and narration tracks. All have separate controls on the real time mixer, but because there’s only one slider rather than four, you have to click a button to claim the mixer for the track, which felt like a coordination test I kept failing.  

If you compare the Ulead mixer with Studio's or MEP's, you'll notice that both programs have a slider for each track which is much simpler to operate.

Adobe Premiere Elements

Magix Movie Edit 10

Pinnacle Studio

Ulead VideoStudio

Rubber band controls are capable but not inspiring. They don't operate in real time and setting a control point is overly complex.

Specifically, with other editors, you simply touch the volume line in the audio track where you want to set a control point. With Premiere Elements, you move the edit line to the target spot for adjusting audio, click the Add/Remove Keyframe button at the track header on the left, and then adjust away.

Mitigating the weakness of MPEG's mixer is the excellent drawing mouse mode, that lets you create key frames in the rubber band controls in real time, so you can drag audio volume up and down while you're listening.

Note that you can't see the icon for the drawing mouse mode if you use a video window larger than 640x480. For instance, if you elect the 720x480 resolution display, for full resolution DV, the icon disappears, which is confusing when first learning the program.

Note that the accepted technique for deleting control points is to quickly drag them to the bottom of the track (all three other programs work this way). MEP doesn't, and I was never able to figure out how to delete control points without deleting the audio file and starting over.

While you can't set the rubber band controls in real time, you can see the waveform beneath the volume line, you can set control points by directly touching the volume line and delete them by dragging them quickly downward. Though lacking the real time advantage of MEP, these functions don't share the disadvantages of VideoStudio or Premiere.

Since you often use the waveforms as guides for increasing decreasing volume, this complicates their use.

Similarly, once you click the audio track to activate the rubber band controls, VS replaces the preview window with a speaker icon so you know you're editing audio. Unfortunately, you can no longer see the video, so you lose that cue as well.

Finally, when using the rubber band controls, you end up wishing you could expand track height, because the small size of the contact points makes them tough to manipulate.

Adobe Premiere Elements

Magix Movie Edit 10

Pinnacle Studio

Ulead VideoStudio

No true noise reduction. There is a DeNoiser, that according to the help file, works on analog tape noise, and high pass and low pass filters that can remove excessive noise at the upper and lower reaches of the audio spectrum. None proved effective in our tests.

MEPs Noise reduction feature is a diamond in the rough, one of the best features in the product.

Though not simple to use - you have to access the advanced screen and create a noise sample (which is the same way pro programs work), the results were way ahead of other editors.

The tool provides several useful controls, including thresholds and fine tuning options. Unlike MEP, however, you don't have the option to capture a noise print, which is the hallmark of a pro-quality noise reduction capability.

Noise removal tool was noise gate function, rather than true noise removal, and even at low thresholds, it cut out critical portions of the speech that was supposed to stay in. These are the blank gaps you see in the first clip on the waveform.

You can't apply noise removal to audio in either the main or overlay video track. Rather, VideoStudio forces you to split the audio off and place it in another track, effectively reducing the available audio tracks by one.

The result is more striking on the second audio clip, which is almost clear of noise, with just a touch of distortion.

So, so in testing. Little benefit on the first clip, a bit more on the second.

Noise gate filters work by assuming that if audio volume is beneath a certain configurable threshold, it's noise that should be eliminated. Not only does this produce a very artificial sounding result, it doesn't remove the consistent noise from other regions in the audio file. Listen to the second part of the VideoStudio clip and you'll hear the noise when the woman is talking. Then play the Movie Edit clip, and the clip that Sound Forge produced, and you'll hear the noise removed throughout.

Just for fun, here's what the second audio clip sounds like after professional quality noise reduction, courtesy of Sony's excellent Sound Forge Noise Reduction plug-in.

Adobe Premiere Elements

Magix Movie Edit 10

Pinnacle Studio

Ulead VideoStudio

Integrated SmartSound, with songs identified by genre, which is helpful.  A nice tool.

VideoStudio integrated SmartSound, a great automusic tool, in the previous version. In this version, Ulead adds the ability to automatically synchronize duration to clips in the timeline, which is nice.

We still like Studio's approach slightly better because the program separates the songs by style like Jazz or Latin (see Studio screenshot) which makes the songs easier to select.

Adobe Premiere Elements

Magix Movie Edit 10

Pinnacle Studio

Ulead VideoStudio

We used it in conjunction with the noise removal filter with very good effect.

Four audio files; a low volume conversation, talking over a pottery wheel, low music with lots of noise and a noisy recording.

Good - very little adjustment to the first two clips, noise removal worked very well with middle clip, and then a minimal boost to the last clip. Good noise removal, normalization was so-so. 

Very good. Open the waveform and you'll see that Studio produced very consistent volume throughout the four clips. Compare the middle section to other waveforms and you'll note that it is very quiet, the result of noise removal and the ability to set a minimum thresh hold for low noises in the normalization tool.

Poor. Very back loaded and so loud in the last clip that the effect produced distortion (careful when playing).

Apply cross-fade transition to start and end of clip

Adobe Premiere Elements

Magix Movie Edit 10

Pinnacle Studio

Ulead VideoStudio

Pluses:

• Good normalization

Negatives:

• No mixer

• No automatic audio creation

• No noise reduction

• Rubber band controls could be easier to use

Pluses:

• Noise reduction performed well on one clip.

Negatives:

• Mixer is track wide, doesn't adjust volume at specific points in the timeline.

• Difficult to manage multiple audio filters applied to a track

Pluses:

• Very good normalization

• Smartsound

• Real time audio mixer is best of the group.

Negatives:

• So so results for noise removal filter

Pluses:

• SmartSound

Negatives:

• No real noise removal

• Mixer a bit clumsy

• Normalization proved ineffective

• No waveforms for pan and zoom controls