Consumer Editor Reviews - Corrective Filters

Corrective Filters

Adobe Premiere Elements

Magix Movie Edit 10

Pinnacle Studio

Ulead VideoStudio

Filter interface in general

Better for advanced users than beginners, but once you're up to speed you'll really like the precision and straightforward nature of the controls.

Most controls allow you to enter numbers (for ease of replication) or use a slider. You can also insert key frames for each parameter independent of others, which delivers a great deal of precision.

On the other hand, the controls are not touchy/feely for beginners.

You access most corrective filters in the Video cleaning window which is a highlight of the program. It contains four tabs with automatic and manual controls for adjusting brightness, color, sharpness and de-interlacing. Though operation is slightly confusing, for the most part the results were quite good.

Most tabs have an Automatic Adjustment button you can try to see if it produces the desired effect. If not, you can manually adjust parameters from there.

Filters parameters are almost always expressed in non-technical language in a clear and consistent manner.

While you have transition in and transition out capabilities, you don't have key frames, which all other tools offer.

You access some color correction capabilities on the left screen panel (with no key frames) and others as traditional filters with infinite key frames.

Double click and VideoStudio displays the effect in the preview window.

Good ability to toggle filters on and off to see before and after views and determine optimal parameters for one or all filters.

All filters are applied separately, so this isn't an issue. You apply one, then move on to the next.

Good ability to toggle filters on and off and reorder them. No problem determining how they work together.

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.

Adobe Premiere Elements

Magix Movie Edit 10

Pinnacle Studio

Ulead VideoStudio

We used Premiere Elements' Shadow/Highlight filter "off the rack," meaning no adjustments, which was fast and produced the best quality in the roundup.

No custom controls for backlighing, used gamma, brightness and contrast, which was time consuming, but produced a pretty good result.

Used the lighting plug-in from BW Plugins. There is no automatic adjustment with this control, and manual fine tuning produced slight banding on the first clip and slightly garish colors on the second clip, in part because the colors produced by the other programs were muted.

Other than this control, your only other option are the brightness and contrast tools, found in the manual color correction filter in the Color Effects tab. If you have problem video, you can buy the filter for $19.95.

VideoStudio’s Auto Exposure tool proved effective, and you can supplement it with manual hue, saturation, brightness, contrast and gamma controls. In addition, all these manual tools enable key frame adjustments, which is pretty industrial strength for a consumer program.

Very good on the first image, boosted quality with little or no grain. Not quite as sharp as Premiere Elements on the clown image, but better than Studio.

Adobe Premiere Elements

Magix Movie Edit 10

Pinnacle Studio

Ulead VideoStudio

Once you arrive at the optimal parameters, you can apply the adjustments to all clips, or grab it from the previous clip but can't save and paste the parameters and use as needed. However, the tools uses numeric values so it should be easy to duplicate.

Nice that you can toggle the filter on and off, and if you have a DV camera attached to your FireWire card, you can preview out to a TV.  Still, this operation takes longer than it should and not as easy as auto color correct. Also needs brightness control on the color balance filter, since you have to adjust both controls almost interactively to get a good result.

Adobe Premiere Elements

Magix Movie Edit 10

Pinnacle Studio

Ulead VideoStudio

No image stabilization capabilities.

The control is confusing and disrupts workflow. Drawing a "radius for analysis" is confusing, as are parameters like "maximum displacement" and "temporal smoothing."

You also have to render while editing (rather than at the end) and longer clips can be very time consuming. We would have preferred a completely automatic adjustment like Studio.

Studio's stabilization filter is completely automatic. You just select it and go.

Play the clip through once to view the comparative smoothness of the two approaches. Studio is clearly smoother on the first and third clips, and perhaps slightly ahead on the second clip.

Then play the clip and stop it every few moments to look at irregularities in the videos. I think you'll see many more on the Magix side of the video, particularly in the middle clip, than on the right.

Magix Movie Edit Pro

Pinnacle Studio

Low Light Video

Adobe Premiere Elements

Magix Movie Edit 10

Pinnacle Studio

Ulead VideoStudio

We produced the best single frame image using the Shadow/Highlight control (in automatic mode) and adding a bit of additional light with the Brightness/Contrast adjustment. Since Premiere Elements doesn't have a noise reduction filter, we couldn't remove the noise from the signal which appears quite grainy.

We produced an acceptable result working with the Video cleaning panel and using the automatic adjustment in the Brightness/contrast tab. We added a bit of color manually, which looking back, may not have been a great decision.

We used the brightness and contrast controls with some noise reduction to cut the noise created by boosting the light in the video. The contrast isn't quite as strong as Premiere Elements, but the video is much less noisy.

Here we used the Auto Level controls and manual brightness and contrast control. Adjustments feel twitchy (on a 3.2 GHz HP xw4100 workstation) which makes it tough to adjust settings – you move, and there is a two or three second delay before you see the new values. Also big difference between screen and TV, and multiple values depending upon which tab was pressed (which is it).

Previewing video when multiple filters is very confusing because it’s tough to tell which filter is being applied and when. See Previewing multiple filters above for details. In the end, we got a good result using the DeNoise, Brightness & Contrast  and Auto Exposure filters.

Adobe Premiere Elements

Magix Movie Edit 10

Pinnacle Studio

Ulead VideoStudio

Pluses:

• Great precision once you learn the tools.

• Shadow/Highlight filter is great for backlighted videos

Negatives:

• Technical interface

• No image stabilization

Pluses:

• When the color correction works, it works very well. When it doesn't, MEP has a very visual tool for further corrections.

Negatives:

• Image stabilization is too complicated and much less effective than Studio

Pluses:

• Great auto color correction

• Simple and effective image stabilization

Negatives:

• No key frame controls

• Have to pay extra for fixing backlight issues

Pluses:

• Good tool for backlighting

• Most filters preview out DV port

• Virtually infinite key frame controls

Negatives:

• No image stabilization

• No auto color correction

• Filter interface confusing when multiple filters applied