Encryption can also provide a secondary benefit when it’s time to retire old hardware. “When you go to recycle your computers at the end of their life, make sure you’ve destroyed data on them,” added John. “If you’re using encryption, it’s easy to wipe that drive so that it isn’t recoverable.”I’ve changed my mind about Premiere Elements a few times over the years. It started life as by far the most powerful consumer video editor around, thanks to its Premiere Pro pedigree, but years of dumbing down and feature sprawl took their toll. It rose from the ashes in 2012 with a radical makeover, but this year it looks like Adobe is treading water once again.You know the bar has been set low when two headline features are Guided Edits to reveal features that have been included in the software for years. Color Pop shows users where to find the Red Noir effect, which converts footage to monochrome while maintaining saturated reds. The tutorial then shows how to adjust settings using the HSL Tuner filter to isolate a different colour.The other new Guided Edit shows how to use the Time Remapping tool to create variable slow- and fast-motion effects. It’s a great feature, but not particularly hard to figure out without assistance.
To be clear, I really like Premiere Elements’ Guided Edits. While Photoshop Elements’ similarly named feature presents advanced functions with simplified controls, Premiere Elements’ implementation just points to the controls required to achieve various functions. This makes it much easier to go off on a different tangent, and apply the skills to other parts of the application. The disappointing thing is that they’re trickling out at a rate of two per year. Guided Edits are nothing more than an interactive manual, and there’s no excuse not to cover the whole application with a few dozen tutorials and be done with it.Audio View is another new feature that’s largely cosmetic. It reveals buttons on each audio track for recording a narration and for soloing the track, but, surprisingly, there’s no mute button. A master level meter and fader help you avoid distorting the audio output, but there’s no fader for individual channels, despite what the pop-up mixer suggests. Instead, levels are set per audio clip. When in Audio View mode, the Tools, Transitions and Effects buttons in the Action Bar show audio-related functions by default, but all this amounts to is an interface tweak and little more.
The new animated titles are more substantial. There are 32 preset templates to choose from, organised by genres such as Sports, Travel and Wedding. They’re unusually elegant for consumer-oriented software, with simple illustrative graphics that shimmy into view along with a few lines of editable text.The trouble with the more elaborate templates is that it’s trickier to give the user free reign to customise them. The total length of these animated titles is fixed, and inserting longer words than the template allows sometimes causes them to overlap. Text can be resized, reformatted and moved around, but it’s a little awkward. The presets are downloaded on demand, but doing so is painfully slow — 4MB downloads consistently took over a minute.
Another key new feature is 4K support, with Adobe making specific references to the Panasonic GH4, Sony AX100, GoPro Hero 4 and a few other cameras. We had no problems importing 4K footage from a variety of sources, but preview performance was predictably poor on our Core i7 3517U laptop. Sony Movie Studio Platinum was no better when handling 4K footage directly, although it has the significant advantage of proxy editing – where temporary 720p copies of footage are generated to speed up preview performance.A long-running complaint of mine is how tricky it is to maintain consistent frame rates and resolutions from import to export. This is much improved in version 14, with a revamped Export dialog box that automatically matches the frame rate to the source footage and offers various popular resolutions such as UHD 4K (in XAVC-S format), 1080p and 720p.
Meanwhile, the Advanced Settings panel gives options to adjust export settings manually, including detailed control over compression and the ability to save user presets. There are tick boxes to force the resolution, frame rate and compression profile to match the source footage. Frame rate mismatches should, therefore, be a thing of the past.There’s an opportunity to set the resolution and frame rate of the timeline when creating a new project, although you may as well ignore this since the software automatically changes these to match the first imported media. Confusingly, the timeline counts up to 30 frames for each second, regardless of the source footage. In fact, it does use the correct number of frames per second on the timeline. For lower and higher frame rates, it skips or duplicates the numbered frames as necessary to give the required number.
There’s still no support for 2.7K resolutions on the timeline, but while this won’t be an issue for most people, it means the software refuses to apply its excellent Shake Stabilizer effect to 2.7K GoPro footage.All Toshiba’s new consumer laptops will be equipped with a Cortana button and will be equipped with dual microphones to “get the most from Cortana” when they ship in July, it emerged today.
Only one of the pre-production demo units at the launch event I attended was adorned with the new key, and Cortana wasn’t yet active on the machines. I was told, however, that pressing down and holding the “Quick access” button (the F1 key with a search icon on it), would launch Microsoft’s digital assistant, ready for action.
New Toshiba Satellite laptops
The revelation came during the unveiling of Toshiba’s new Satellite laptops, which will initially come with Windows 8.1 preinstalled, but will be upgradable to Windows 10 for free when Microsoft’s new operating system is launched.The pick of the new models is a 15in Windows hybrid: the Toshiba Satellite Radius 15. The Radius – whose lid and keyboard surround is clad in brushed aluminium – has a 360-degree hinge that allows the laptop to be used in a number of different configurations.The Radius is also equipped with an IPS touchscreen with Full HD resolution, and the most powerful models will have fifth-generation Intel Core i5 processors, 16GB of RAM and a 2TB or 256GB SSD. Prices for the Radius 15 will start at £599 inc VAT.
Aside from the Radius, Toshiba unveiled 12 laptops across three other ranges. The low-end 15in and 17in Satellite C portables, which will be the first C Series machines to have SSDs as an option, will be powered by Intel Broadwell CPUs up to Core i5, while some will feature the new AMD Carrizo processors.The three new 15in and 17in L Series laptops will also have fifth-generation Intel processors (up to Core i7) or AMD Carrizo A10s, up to 16GB of RAM and a 2TB hard disk or 256GB SSD, plus screens with a resolution of up to 1,920 x 1,080.Those who enjoy the odd game will be pleased to see that the Satellite L comes with Onkyo speakers which have been “tuned by Skullcandy”, and will have the option of being specified with a separate GPU – up to an Nvidia GeForce 930M with 2GB of dedicated VRAM.
Toshiba Satellite P50C-t
The Satellite P Series also catches the eye, in particular the P50t-C. Toshiba’s premium Satellite model will have a high-DPI 3,840 x 2,160 IGZO touchscreen that’s factory-calibrated. It will be available with up to fifth-generation Intel Core i7 processors, Nvidia GeForce GTX 950M graphics and Harman Kardon-branded speakers.Leaked pictures of Dell’s Surface Pro rival, the XPS 12, have been around for some time now, but Dell has only just officially confirmed the existence of the new device. In an announcement that also encompassed the unveiling of two new XPS laptops, we had the chance to go hands-on with the device.