Tag Archives: editor

Adobe Premiere Elements 14

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Adobe Premiere Elements 14

Back in the heyday of the FireWire interface, I became fairly proficient with Final Cut Express. However, in 2011 Apple stopped developing it, and Final Cut express just wasn’t designed to work natively with compressed video file formats that virtually all modern cameras output. I really liked the Final Cut Express interface and was sad to see it be left behind.

Many people rave about iMovie. Unfortunately for me, I’m one of those people that doesn’t like the iMovie interface. Just give me a linear editor with stackable clips and I can easily and quickly find my way around.

In the meantime, my 2007 MacBook Pro 17” inch became quite long in the tooth and I started leaving it at home. For the past year I’ve been doing relatively simple video editing on my phone.

The recent purchase of a Microsoft Surface Pro 3 256 gigabyte machine inspired me to try out a trial version of Adobe Premiere Elements 14, the latest version of Adobe’s consumer verson of Premiere, which is aimed at high-end professional video editors. Premier Elements 14 is somewhat different than Final Cut Express, but actually very similar since it is a linear editing approach.

Unlike Final Cut Express, Premiere Elements 14 is quite up to date and handles all of the modern compressed digital file formats. It is even capable of editing 4k video. It’s quite flexible in output formats, and is capable of uploading directly to YouTube and Facebook.

I am still learning my way around the interface. My biggest complaint so far is that using the animated titles seems a bit clunky. I’m sure I will become proficient with them over time as I continue to use the software. Some of the options at first blush seem to be a bit hidden.

Before I pulled the trigger and purchased the unlock key from the Adobe website, I watched a number of tutorial videos on YouTube to make certain that the program could do everything I expected it to be able to do. It turns out that all of the features are present, but proficiency requires a bit of time and effort. Alas, this is video editing after all!

Version 14 of the software has 4 modes, Live, Quick, Guided and Expert. The two most useful modes for my needs are Quick and Expert. Though I am spending most of my time in Expert mode, switching to Quick mode can be useful from time to time in order to gain quick access to certain features. To instantly switch from one mode to another it’s as easy as clicking on the appropriate word just below the title bar.

Premiere Elements 14 sells for $99 dollars US and is available for download at the Adobe website. The 30 day trial version is easily converted to the full purchased version by purchasing a license key from Adobe.

Overall, I like the software. I will be happy to purchase the next upgrade.

KineMaster Pro Video Editor

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For several years I have had feet planted firmly in the two dominant mobile device camps — Android and iOS. I have a 64 gigabyte iPad Air, but I also have an original Nexus 7 as well as my third Android phone, a Galaxy Note 3. The Galaxy Note 3 is an incredible piece of hardware. It has an awesome 1080p 5.7″ display, excellent battery life, and a 2.3 gigahertz quad core processor. The Galaxy Note 3 is the most powerful computing device I have ever owned, including more powerful than every Apple or Windows computer I currently have.

In the past iOS has had a distinct advantage in the form of more sophisticated apps. However, that is rapidly changing.

I usually end up finding ways of pushing my hardware to its limits. I used to do video the conventional way by recording it on a separate device such as a Sony HD camcorder. I would have to go through the arduous task of capturing it to the computer, editing it in a video editor, rendering the file out and finally uploading it to a service such as YouTube.

Now with the Galaxy Note 3 I have a device that is capable of recording excellent video, but it also has a touchscreen that is large enough to edit on.

Up until recently, there were no good Android video editing apps available.

That has all changed with the release of an Android video editing app called KineMaster Pro. There is a free watermarked version which I tried out initially. I quickly determined that KineMaster Pro was worth the $2.99 price tag so I bought it. KineMaster Pro offers themes, along with the ability to easily add background music. It also offers different variable-length scene transitions. It’s possible to export the final rendered result in 1080p, 720p or 360p. It gives a very accurate countdown timer once the rendering process is started. On the Galaxy Note 3, a 13.5 minute long video will render to 720p resolution in about 8 minutes to a 621 megabyte file.

The seller is adding in extra themes that can be applied from within the app.

At one time, even a short video represented several hours’ worth of work to go from initial recording to the final rendered file. If the process can be fully handled on one device, video production actually becomes quick, painless and fun.

Audio Evolution Mobile App

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Audio Evolution Mobile 1.7.2 is a powerful multitrack audio recorder for Android that is somewhat reminiscent of Adobe Audition 1.5 in both form and function. Priced at $7.45 US, the app is a real bargain for anyone looking to do serious multitrack audio recording and editing on an Android tablet or smartphone.

Back a few years ago I switched from Windows to Mac, and Adobe Audition 1.5 is one of the pieces of software I had to let go of on a day-to-day basis in order to end the endless frustration of dealing with Windows. Newer versions of Adobe Audition have never struck me as having the same appeal of Adobe Audition 1.5.

It might be just me and the way I relate to software interfaces, but I’ve never had much use for Garageband on either the Mac or on my iPad. I was able to make use of Apple’s Soundtrack app, but it was just never as quick or as easy as Adobe Audition 1.5 was in quickly cranking out a tightly-edited piece of audio.

Audio Evolution Mobile 1.7.2 was easy for me to instantly make use of. The software maker suggests that you download the trial version to try on your particular Android hardware before you buy it, to make sure it will work for you. I downloaded the trial version onto my Galaxy S3 smartphone, and quickly determined that it would not only work but that I really liked the software and the way it worked. I uninstalled the trial version and purchased the full paid version and was able to crank out an hour-long edited recording quite easily with a minimum of confusion.

The software vendor makes it very clear that Audio Evolution Mobile 1.7.2 cannot directly output into the MP3 audio file format because of MP3 file format licensing issues. The app can output mixdown files to WAV, AIFF, FLAC or OGG file formats.

Of course the podcast file format standard is MP3, so in order to be able to convert the mixdown files to the MP3 file format, I downloaded the free MediaConverter app that converts files using the open-source FFMPEG libraries from many different file formats to MP3.

To add ID3 tags to the converted MP3 files, I installed the free MP3dit app that is able to edit ID3 tags for many different audio file formats.

To upload the MP3 file to my podcast server, I use the free ANDftp FTP client for Android.

Finally, to make the WordPress post I simply go to a browser such as Firefox for Android to the regular full browser view, log in and make the post as I would on a regular desktop or laptop computer.

To be honest, the last step is the hardest to accomplish on a tablet device. WordPress just isn’t laid out in a very touchscreen-friendly manner, but it can be made to work in a pinch.

From a podcaster standpoint, the mobile device recording, editing and posting software is slowly getting there.

Videolicious

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I’ve been playing around with video recording and editing for a number of years. One constant with video editing that can always be counted on is that it’s editing video is time-consuming.

That is all about to change. Enter Videolicious, a FREE video app for iOS. This is an amazing app. Videolicious makes it possible to produce short (up to about 50 second) videos in a tightly-edited, documentary style complete with background music and voiceovers.

You start by recording short video clips. I do this all the time – I have my own name for them – “video snapshots.” I take plenty of short video clips, generally following the “rule of thirds” for good photography and holding the camera as steady as possible, compensating for the cheesy fixed iPod camera lens by getting in close and using angles as much as possible to create visual interest.

Once you have up to 10 video clips, you are ready to quickly put them together into a movie in Videolicious. Step One in Videolicious is to select the video clips or still photos from the iPod (or iPhone or iPad) Camera Roll. Touching the thumbnail in the sequence you want to talk about the clips and photos will number them. You can have up to ten per video.

Once You have selected your clips and/or photos, you move to Step Two. Record up to a 50 second long video of yourself talking about the clips, ideally in the order you numbered them in when you selected them in Step One.

Once you have recorded yourself talking about the clips and/or photos, Step Three consists of selecting background music. Videolicious comes with six background tracks though you can also select any other track present on your iPod. I suggest sticking with one of the tracks that comes with Videolicious, since these are public domain and will keep you out of trouble with the copyright police if you share your video publically on sites such as YouTube or Facebook. Once you have selected your track, the video will quickly render into a final *.MOV file, ready to share with the world.

The remarkable breakthrough with Videolicious is that it has predefined parameters that it follows in order to create a tightly-edited final result. Playback starts with video of you talking and then quickly cuts to the scenes you have selected in the order you selected them. Still shots automatically have the so-called “Ken Burns” effect applied. At the end of the video the shot cuts back to you ending your description of the clips, resulting in a brisk documentary style video that takes what would have been boring clips by themselves and makes them into visual elements of your spoken story discussion of the clips.

It is possible to produce a tightly-edited, to-the-point video in just a few minutes and share that with the world, which is an amazing accomplishment.

Videolicious is not a replacement for traditional video editors. It is a way of placing video clips into bins where the software itself decides makes most of the editing decisions. Videolicious spits out surprisingly watchable, entertaining results in a matter of a few minutes. This is a task that can easily take hours with traditional video editing tools.

Adobe Audition Mac Free Beta Download

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Making the switch to Mac OS/X a few years ago as my primary computing platform was not without its sacrifices. Among these was Adobe Audition. Sure, I could use Audition in a Windows virtual machine, but it just wasn’t the same thing and entailed its own sacrifices.

Sacrifice no more. Adobe finally heeded the call for Audition for Mac OS/X, and has released a public beta that can currently be downloaded for free available at

http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/audition/

After a cursory look at this new beta, I’m impressed. They seem to have succeeded in bringing the Adobe Audition user interface I love in Windows to OS/X. I’ll be buying the final product once it is released for sale to the public.