We've looked at the Standard version of the second release of Adobe's Production Studio. The latter bundled Premiere Pro, After Effects and Photoshop CS2 into a single package, and combined them with the new Adobe Bridge software designed to manage the vast number of files created by any desktop video project.

For an extra £500, you can get the Premium edition which provides everything in the Standard package along with three other elements: Encore, a DVD authoring program; Audition, for editing and mixing audio; and Illustrator, for vector graphics. In addition, there's the Pro version of After Effects which adds the advanced keying, extra filters and motion tracking tools missing from the Standard version.

The Premium Production Studio is aimed at those needing to do complex video effects, those who produce professional DVDs and those who need to mix, re-master and restore things such as sound. Effects filters only available in the Pro version include a more in-depth lightning generator capable of creating lightning which sticks to objects on screen and which arks from one point to another.

There's also a glow filter and some distortion filters most of whose effects can be approximated with the Liquify tool in the standard version. In addition are a few filters that enable After Effects to take depth matte information (usually generated by 3D packages) and use it to create effects like focus, fog and masks.

The ability to paint directly on to individual frames or sequences is another feature of After Effects Pro, and although it stops short of the level of control you'd get in Photoshop or Illustrator, paint strokes are animatable and you can create them using a graphics tablet if you have one.

Particle systems are also included. Although they let you specify objects as particles and apply some quite complex motion, they're nothing like as advanced and easy to work with as those in Autodesk's competing package, Combustion. After Effects particle system is due for a makeover and it's rather a pity it didn't get one in this release.

If you're working with very complex, high quality projects, there's also support for 32-bit HDR and 16-bit colour, optics compensation and the option of importing camera movement from 3D packages. Keying is augmented in Pro with a Matte choker for improving the quality of the edges of keyed objects, a spill suppressor for reducing blue or green fringes and additional tools for animating drawn masks.

Again, After Effect's Keyer is strong, but Combustion's is far stronger. An animation tool called the Wiggler is also included in After Effects Pro. This is very useful for automating animation, allowing you to select any two key frames, and instantly produce random variations between them. With the Wiggler, you can simulate an earthquake, make a light flicker, create a swarm of insects, or make a character wave.

There are a few new specialised tools included in After Effects Pro for the first time. The first is the Timewarp filter - which allows you to animate the speed of a clip, slowing it down, speeding it up and even reversing it smoothly. Timewarp uses morphing technology to create new frames when a clip is slowed down so that even very slow moving shots are smooth and fluid.

It can make mistakes at very slow or fast speeds causing a surreal warping smear effect, but if your footage is decent and you don't expect the impossible, results are generally very good. Encore offers a lot more than your average DVD program. It's not just a series of preset menus, but a complete authoring package.