Editing

Slinging together clips for fun and profit

Video editors primarily use a multiple-layered timeline, allowing for clips and audio to be easily overlapped and moved around. Most of these apps do too, and Premiere Pro CC soon shows why it’s so popular by making it easy to both assemble clips and create complex edits with multiple sequences on one timeline. Final Cut Pro X's twist on this though (the Magnetic Timeline), combined with keystroke editing, is notably faster and less prone to edits breaking up the movie and leaving gaps or unsynced footage. Premiere Elements – being the mid-tier product here – also offers a Quick edit tool closer to iMovie, only with the scope to open up into a fullerfat system for when the skeleton is in place. However, it lacks the ability for multiple timelines in a project. Avid Media Composer is really the undisputed king here, though – but the kind of fine control it offers is overkill unless you already know you need it. As for Jahshaka, it offers the basics, but no frivolities whatsoever. It’s going to frustrate, soon.