Update 1 - November 27
Premiere Elements 2.0 - a correction and apology
While carrying out further tests of Premiere Elements 2.0's DVD-burning speeds and the ATI card's video-capture quality - the results of which we plan to add later this week, along with those of other tests - we made the minor effort to read and follow Elements online help and this made it clear that the program can itself create DVDs will proper menus.
Guided only by the succinct advice available in the onscreen help, we found it was easy and quick to create decent-looking menus. This means that our initial comments in the preview - inferring that Premiere Elements 2.0 can't create DVDs with proper menus (written in a rush, we'd say in our own defence) - were way off the mark. Sincere apologies to site visitors if any were misled and apologies to Adobe and ATI, too.
However, what we also came to realise is that the menus that the program can create are limited in terms of their customisation options. It's not possible to hand-roll a menu from scratch, for example, or even add additional navigation buttons or greatly tweak those that the supplied templates use. However, the templates - and there are a good few dozen, spread across six different categories - are of high quality. They can also have certain aspects adjusted, such as the wording of titles and thumbnail, the position and size of each item and the size and type of font.
But anyone who has used a DVD-authoring program with more user options will notice the difference and feel limited by Elements' restricted offerings. And we should point out (while conceeding that Elements is a freebie to those who buy the AIW card) that many programs that are considerably less expensive than Elements do offer many more user-customisation options - perhaps the most notably being Ulead's DVD MovieFactory.
Perhaps, though, what all this best shows (apart from the errors that haste can help generate) are that it's seldom possible to carry out any sort of video-editing or DVD-creation job with a single piece of software. And, would-be editors trying to produce the best possible results need to bear that in mind, even if they intend to buy into solutions considerably more expensive than Elements.
DVD-menu-creation in Premiere Elements 2.0 - note the useful help display at top right
Get a better Scart?
We're usually very sceptical about claims made for high-priced cabling that usually centre on the increased quality of images or sound they produce. However, on the weekend after this preview was intially posted we spotted in a Homebase DIY store a range of Scart leads sold under the company's own-brand Posiscart banner and claiming to offer a rather more tangible benefit (oddly, these are not shown in Homebase's online store: http://www.homebase.co.uk). On the packaging, it says,
"If your Scart
lead becomes loose your equipment stops working!
This scart [sic] will ALWAYS stay connected and never become loose if correctly installed"
This scart [sic] will ALWAYS stay connected and never become loose if correctly installed"
We alighted on one of the cheapest of the bunch, a one-metre fully-wired cable at £5.95. This had gold-plated connectors (a non-plated version was £1 less) and this, presumably, explains the additional blurb on the pack saying, "Digital Quality - Optimizes sound and picture quality."
Given the grief that Scart caused us during this preview, we thought we'd have a punt (it was 10%-off day, afterall) and also go the extra mile and pay out an extra quid (less 10%, of course). What we should have done is bought one of each and done A/B quality comparisons but our concern was whether the main claim - about the plug staying put - was true.
Also our available time remains limited. To our astonishment, it turns out that the claim is true. The trick, as you can see, is possible thanks to a pair of little metal humps on the two long sides of the plug's metal surround. These make it a little harder to insert the plug, but very definitely do help to ensure that it stays put. Well worth the investment, we'd say, if you ever have any trouble with sloppy Scarts.
The little humps help ensure the plug stays put
