When Apple released Final Cut Pro X back in June, it caused a furore. This wasn't the Final Cut Pro that people had grown to love, that had revolutionised the video editing industry and that had taken both the independents and the major studios by storm.

This was something else, and given how many features had vanished, many thought it certainly didn't deserve its 'pro' monicker.

But Apple is keen to show its customers that just because some features were dropped from the current version, doesn't mean that they'll never make a comeback. So it got busy and released two fairly substantial updates last year.

Now comes the third one, which is the biggest since the program's launch. Apple's engineers have tried to meet professional editors' most pressing needs, which include support for multi-camera editing, improved chroma keying, the ability to connect to broadcast monitors, and better import and export options, among others. So how does it all look now?

Multicam is easy to use and incredibly powerful. Just like in FCP7, it can handle up to 64 different angles, but unlike its predecessor, you can work with clips of multiple formats and frame rates without having to render or convert them - they all play at the same time in the Angle Viewer.

The chroma keying tools that came with version 10.0.0 were already better than version 7's, but the added refinements are incredibly impressive.

To test it out, we loaded up one of our first attempts at a green screen, where everything that could have gone wrong, had. The improved Chroma Key filter did remarkably well. It wasn't perfect – we would have been amazed if it was, considering the material it had to work with, but compared with what you could achieve with FCP7's built-in filters, it was impressive.

Compatibility with broadcast monitors is absolutely crucial and is achieved via third-party cards as well as Thunderbolt-enabled devices. The process is labelled a Beta, so check with the manufacturers to make sure their solution is compatible - you'll also need to be running Lion.

The beauty of this update is that it covers many parts of the editing process. For instance, you can once more work with multi-layered Photoshop files and manipulate each layer individually.

Keyframe behaviour has reverted back to the way it used to work: in the previous version, if you set a keyframe then altered that parameter elsewhere along the clip, another keyframe would be instantly created for you. For some reason, that immense timesaver had disappeared in FCPX but it's now reinstated.

But perhaps most important of all is the program's compatibility with XML 1.1, a format that allows you to import and export data from your project and its clips to and from other programs. This means it's now finally possible to bring your projects from FCP7 into Apple's new flagship editing application - although this can only be done via a third-party program called 7toX.

It's not all good news though. For instance, it's still impossible to create sequences of any size - you're limited to a select few standard options. And if you work in green screen a lot, you'll puzzle at the absence of garbage mattes.

However, the list of missing features is dwindling and it may be time to explore FCPX more seriously, especially if you can migrate your projects. This is the first version that we feel may be worth considering from a professional perspective.

With Final Cut Express discontinued, Adobe's Premiere Elements 10's closest rival, iMovie, comes free with every Mac or can be downloaded from the Mac App Store for just over £10. So how can an editing package that costs nearly eight times as much hope to compete?

By offering tools and options that Apple left out of their own offering, such as being able to edit using multiple video layers, work with the native AVCHD files that came out of your HD camcorder (iMovie must reformat them, wasting time and storage space) and even design DVDs, complete with menus.

So what does version 10 bring to the table? The whole emphasis is on sharing and tagging your clips to make them easier to find. Adobe split the editing process into two programs.

The Organizer takes care of importing, cataloguing and tagging your clips – be they photos or videos – while the main app is where you build your project. You can send a clip from the Organizer straight to places like YouTube, Flickr or Facebook without any kind of processing if you like, but the whole point of an editing program is to edit, so few people may take advantage of that option.

Pan and zoom

A new powerful pan and zoom tool is now available, so you can create complex motion across an individual photograph. Unlike iMovie, you're not limited to just setting an end and start frame, but you can create multiple focus points and move across them over time. You can even pause the view for a few seconds on a specific area.

If editing feels too much like hard work, you can use the enhanced 'Auto-movie' options: choose the clips you want in the order you'd like to use them, select a theme and a few other parameters, and Premiere Elements will take care of the rest for you.

You can of course customise the end result should you like to apply a more personal touch to your project.

Colour-correcting video clips is now possible thanks to a new filter. By default, the process is automatic, but you can delve into it and manipulate the colours to your heart's content, even focusing solely on highlights, shadows or midtones.

Export deluge

When it comes to exporting your work, you'll be deluged with options: some of the new features include being able to upload to places such as Facebook, Flickr or YouTube, save an HD-quality movie onto a standard DVD disc to play it back on a Blu-ray player (as long as the movie's relatively short, of course) or even export the whole project back into AVCHD format.

All this sounds good, but sadly, there's a huge drawback to using Premiere Elements: if you're used to iMovie, you'll find the two-program approach confusing, and the lack of elegance can be felt throughout.

You have to double-click on a clip to preview it in a floating window for instance; and accessing all the menus and options begins to feel as if you've left your Mac and are exploring a new interface paradigm, which can be frustrating at times.

However, there's no doubt that you can achieve more with Adobe's Premiere Elements 10 than you can with Apple's iMovie.

But before investing in it, make sure you experiment with the 30-day demo, which is available to download from www.adobe.com. That way you can see if this app suits your needs.

That Final Cut Pro (FCP) had lately been showing its age is no secret. Most of the innovation was actually taking place in the consumer field with iMovie, and there were many features that professional editors were eyeing with envy.

These were features such as: skimming through thumbnails to get a preview of clips to greatly speed up the selection process; being able to label clips with various keywords to make it easy to find the right one in seconds; giving each project its own scratch disk as opposed to having one set for the application; a more up-to-date font and text architecture instead of the antiquated one that hadn't changed since FCP's introduction; and being able to see when an audio clip is peaking just by glancing at the waveform in the timeline, rather than having to listen to it proper.

All these were added to FCP X (pronounced 'ten'), along with many others including a 64-bit architecture (meaning you can feed it as much RAM as you can cram into your Mac, rather than be limited to only 4GB), background rendering and the ability to work with any files from SD to 4K – even within the same project. All this sounds good, so why all the fuss online and even on comedy shows?

It's because Apple decided to remove a lot of what many professional editors depended on and never thought about until it was taken away from them.

Take the main column in the browser window, which used to remain anchored on the left-hand side – no matter how far down the right you'd scroll to see more of the clip's metadata, you'd never lose track of its name. Well, that's gone.

And what about adding keyframes to animate any parameter, which was automatic each time you modified its value after having set the first one? Missing in action. Then there are the clips in the browser that kept the last In and Out points you'd set; the free creation of chapter markers along your timeline; the ability to drag any clip anywhere on the timeline, creating gaps if you needed them (or not); and the projects that could be of virtually any dimension.

None of these – nor many others – are possible with FCP X. Larger omissions include: a complete lack of multi-camera support; an inability to natively export to OMF, AAF or EDL files to move your project to other programs for further manipulation; no option to send a clip to Motion from the timeline to add effects to it; no proper support for connecting to a broadcast monitor; and no possibility of importing projects created with an earlier version of FCP.

This is all because FCP X isn't an upgrade but version 1.0 of a completely new program. What's confusing is that Apple kept the same name and discontinued the Final Cut Studio suite when FCP X was released, forcing people to move to the new application. And if they couldn't, they had to consider their options – hence the anger and confusion.

Curiously enough, Apple kept the older version alive when transitioning users from Mac OS 9 to OS X and even iMovie 6 to 7, so why they haven't done so this time is a bit of a mystery. But if so much is missing, what does this new software offer aside from the above?

For one thing, you can edit more files in their native format, such as AVCHD, avoiding the lengthy transcoding process and saving you a fair amount of disk space. You can finally work with AAC and MP3 audio files without having to render them first, and clips shot with any iOS device now display as expected.

FCP X can also import iMovie projects, creating a clear and easy migration path for up-and-coming editors.

The new magnetic timeline keeps your clips together, avoiding unintentional gaps and making sure you never overwrite clips by mistake, or move the audio and video out of sync when moving things around (unless of course that's your intention).

There's no such thing as layers anymore: clips can be added above existing ones as you wish, but all are linked to the main Storyline, which is essentially the first layer. This is an entirely new editing concept that will take some getting used to.

The whole process feels like you're being looked after, which is great for first-time editors, but veterans may well feel constrained because they can't work the way they're used to. Many keyboard shortcuts are the same, but quite a few are different. Thankfully, there's a powerful shortcut customisation option, but this can't disguise the fact that you're having to learn an entirely new program.

There are a lot of things to like in this release, such as the ability to mouse over an effect and see how it changes a selected clip prior to applying it (holding down the Option key as you do so intensifies the effect), and the new colour correction tools are impressive, but too much is missing for professionals.

Since it's so cheap though, you should consider purchasing it and running it alongside FCP 7 (which will still work with Lion), then learn how to use it as you keep earning money with the older version.

Apple's promised to update its new program fast and you don't want to get left behind when younger editors can do things better and faster thanks to the changes in FCP X.

Vegas Movie HD Platinum 11 has just been released as a standalone program. Selling for around £60, it's relatively cheap for a video editor, especially one that offers so many features – yet it's only around £15 less than the full Sony Imagination Studio Suite.

The suite's edition of the software is a couple of versions old, but you also get a lot of extra tools as well. So is Vegas Movie HD Platinum 11 worth the expense by itself?

You'll either be disappointed or elated to learn that one of the most significant new features is 3D compatibility. So you can import and edit 3D footage from dual-lens cameras and camcorders, and export them in a number of different formats, including Nvidia 3D Vision and standard anaglyph. You can also burn to standard 3D Blu-ray discs.

As you'd expect from Sony, who has been busy trying to convince us of 3D's value, it's the most accomplished and least gimmicky implementation of 3D we've seen in a video editor, but if you have no interest in 3D, then that isn't going to sway you.

New features that might make more of an impact include an increase in support for file formats, GPU-accelerated AVC encoding (which makes a big difference to speed) and a new video effects SDK for developers to create plug-ins.

It's not enough to recommend an upgrade from version 10, but if you're fed up with your current video editing software and have never tried Vegas Movie, then it is definitely worth buying.

Sony Creative Software has quietly built up a portfolio of very good creative editing suites that have been hits in the professional and consumer markets. Imagination Studio Suite 2 includes five of the most popular, along with 360 royalty-free music soundtracks.

This collection provides powerful tools for almost any creative process involving video, music or photos, all for one price. If you were considering buying most of these products separately, you're going to save a lot of money.

If, however, you only want a home video editing program and have no interest in music editing software, buying the programs individually will be more cost effective.

Vegas Movie Studio HD Platinum 10 covers the home video editing side of things. It's an excellent package that gives you a wealth of options for editing your home movies. It's not the most user-friendly software, and beginners may feel overwhelmed by the complex interface.

However, it's a package that's worth mastering, because it offers excellent scope for editing home video footage and is especially adept at handling high definition AVCHD files.

As evidenced in Vegas Movie Studio HD's no-nonsense interface, this is a serious product. It doesn't have some of the 'wackier' – and often tacky looking – visual effects of its competitors, but it does provide excellent corrective and tweaking tools that can drastically improve your video footage.

The ACID test

The excellent ACID Music Studio 8.0 covers music editing. It turns your PC into a recording studio, letting you record, edit and mix live vocals and instruments (plugged into your soundcard or via a MIDI interface).

Over 1,000 music loops are provided, from various genres and instruments. These can be added to your music, or used to create new songs.

Two features we've been having a lot of fun with are the Studio Devil and Amber Lite plugins. The Studio Devil British Valve Custom guitar amp plug turns your PC into a guitar amp that can be used to recreate classic guitar sounds. The Amber Lite piano plug-in turns any plugged in piano keyboard into a fantastic virtual grand piano.

As with Vegas Movie Studio, ACID Music Studio's origins as a professional tool are still evident in the home version. While this means that it's incredibly powerful, it can seem overwhelming.

ACID Music Studio also has a more specific audience than Vegas Movie Studio, but it's an excellent home recording program, and adds a lot of value to the overall Studio Suite package.

Forging ahead

Sound Forge Audio Studio bridges the gap between Vegas Movie Studio and ACID Music Studio. Rather than creating new music, it lets you record audio from various sources, which is ideal for backing up your music collection from vinyl and cassette tapes.

Audio imported from analogue sources can benefit greatly from the clean-up tools provided, which remove hisses and other annoying noises. The tools aren't all about restoration though - some fun can be had with the ability to remove vocals from songs for karaoke. On second thoughts, perhaps 'fun' is too strong a word.

Photo Go, as the name suggests, is a digital photo application that imports photos from digital cameras and organises them by tags, date and time. You can also improve your photos with one click, adjusting white balance or removing red eye.

There's nothing you couldn't do with free software like Windows Live Photo Gallery, and it's not worth the £14.95 standalone price, but as part of the Studio Suite 2 package it's not bad.

Finally DVD Architect Studio lets you create DVD and Blu-ray discs with custom menus and graphics. It's not an amazing product, but if you don't already have a program that does a similar job then it's a welcome bonus.

The two biggest draws here – Vegas Movie Studio HD Platinum and ACID Music Studio – are well worth the total price themselves. Indeed, buying one separately would cost almost as much as this whole package. If you're looking for a great value creative suite with excellent tools, this is it.

Magix Movie Edit Pro 17 Plus HD claims to be the 'world's first 4D video editing program'. A bold claim, but it goes on to explain that the fourth dimension is 'speed', as this is the quickest and most resource-light version yet.

It certainly feels quicker than previous versions and proved faster than both Adobe Premier Elements 9 and CyberLink PowerDirector 9.

The main screen has a look in keeping with the majority of other suites, with a nice amount of space for the playback panel, as well as an attractive Timeline display. We like the layout of this package, as there is enough in the basic outline to edit and export videos without it getting too complicated, while experienced users can locate Advanced Tools from the toolbar.

We found importing video was quick and editing a movie together is relatively simple. Playback proved satisfactory with no sign of lagging, while rendering and exporting was better than in the past.

This is the first video-editing suite we've come across that has full support for 3D video camcorders. You can import 3D footage, as well as make the most of the array of effects that are bundled with the software.

It's not the only 3D suite on the market, but it's certainly one of the cheapest. There is even a pair of 3D glasses included in the box. You'll need a laptop with a screen that runs at 120Hz or, as in our case, an external monitor, and even then you'll find it can be tricky to get a perfect image.

There are plenty of other new features on offer, such as uploading videos to Facebook, YouTube and Vimeo, in Full HD. If you don't need the full-blown package, there is a Classic version aimed at first-time users which costs £60 (inc. VAT).

Magix Movie Edit Pro 17 Plus HD is a well-rounded package, but is better suited to those with editing experience. The 3D features are fun and work really well, opening up options the other packages here simply can't offer.

When iMovie first came out for the iPhone and later the iPod touch, it was a revelation: in the palm of your hand was an app that let you edit video, complete with soundtrack, titles and transitions. Of course it didn't hold a candle to what iMovie can achieve on your Mac, but then again, you can't carry your Mac in your back pocket.

With the release of the iPad 2, Apple bumped the version up to 1.2 and made the program 'Universal', meaning it now works with the iPhone 4, fourth-generation iPod touch and iPad 2.

The first iPad isn't officially supported. So what does this new version have to offer?

Aside from the old-style movie theatre look, the first screen is where you can finally rename your projects. The export feature is accessed through here too and you can upload your work directly to YouTube, Facebook, Vimeo and CNN iReport.

It's in the main editing section that most of the changes have been made though.

In landscape view on your iPad, your camera roll is displayed top-left of the screen. You're no longer forced to add an entire clip to your project, since you can now specify which part you need straight from there. An orange line above sections of your clips shows you which ones you've already used in your project.

In the portrait orientation, the Camera Roll is available as a pop-over window but all the features remain the same.

The audio tools have been greatly improved: you can now alter the volume of each clip (you still can't vary that volume within the clip) and you can work with up to three layers of audio in addition to the background music and your clips' own audio tracks.

You can record a voiceover straight from iMovie and you also have a handful of sound effects to choose from. Although the background music can now be trimmed, it still has to start at the beginning of your project.

You have a choice of three new themes, bringing the total to eight. Each comes with its own transition to add in between clips, or you can use a basic cross-dissolve instead if you prefer, so nothing's changed there.

One useful addition is the ability to rotate your footage. You also have access to a Precision Editor to fine-tune your edit points, in a manner very similar to the same feature in iMovie for your Mac.

Although your projects aren't compatible with iMovie on your Mac, it's possible to transfer them to another iOS device (you could start editing on your iPhone and finish it on your iPad), but the process is incredibly cumbersome since it only works via iTunes on your computer. You can, however, transfer your clips using Apple's Camera Connection Kit, so you could shoot on one device and edit on another.

On your iPhone or iPod touch, you have the new camera roll browser, and you can work with multiple audio layers, but you can't trim your audio tracks nor do you have access to the Precision Editor.

This new version of iMovie has a few useful features that will make editing much more enjoyable on your iOS device. It needs more transitions, title options and effects, but it's still a fantastic app for editing anywhere.

Depending on which version you buy, PowerDirector 9 Ultra64 starts out with either a very helpful performance boost or a bizarre missed opportunity.

Buy the more expensive Ultra64 version and you get a specially written 64-bit version of the software, which is fast, efficient and effective. The regular Deluxe version, however, is 32-bit.

There are reasons why you have to pay more for its Blu-ray support – expensive technology licenses have to be to be taken into account – but 64-bit support? If you don't burn Blu-rays, the extra £30 is a lot to swallow.

It's a shame that this leaves such a sour taste in the mouth, because PowerDirector is a genuinely good tool. Along with the standard timeline editing mode, you get plenty of effects to play with, including video upsampling using the TrueTheater technology that we enjoyed so much in PowerDVD.

It's best to have a clean clip to work with, and whether you're removing noise or boosting the video, it's not hard to crank it too high, but when it works, it's just what you need to make your videos look good.

Finally, while not a unique feature, PowerDirector also comes with SmartSound to sort out background music for your movie if you don't have any on tap. You take a base tune, set a variation, then customise it to fit a set chunk of time. You get several pieces of music for free, with the option to buy more.

All of these features are available regardless of whether you get Deluxe or Ultra64, with the only real boosts beyond the 64-bit support being the ability to handle Blu-ray discs.

If you need those, the extra £30 is justifiable. If not, let's hope that Cyberlink sees sense for PowerDirector 10, makes 64-bit a standard option for everyone, and we all get a great bonus feature on top of an excellent product.

Pinnacle Studio 15 is one of the most complete video editing packages, starting out well by offering a full sample project that lets you really see what you should be building towards.

Where most simply offer tutorials and expect you to fill in the gaps, being able to see everything from chroma key to professional-quality cutting in action is a great help if you're new to video editing.

What really stands out is the high quality of the effects at your disposal. Montages, for instance, work like super-transitions, letting you import multiple clips into an animation (for instance, a pan over several Polaroids, or three vertical bars of clips that fade in and out, music video style) that look surprisingly good.

The dedicated Effects corner offers several impressive tweaks that you can apply to your video, but by far the best is 'Looks'. This offers a range of post-production filters to make your video stand out, from the classic day-to-night effect to faking a tilt-shift and adding a dreamy look to your movie.

There are a few minor irritations, including the small size of the preview window, a limited number of tracks, and the fact that while Pinnacle does offer dual-monitor support, it only stretches to letting you make the second monitor a fullscreen preview.

The fixed interface doesn't offer any scope for moving things around, and its media organisation tools are weak.

However, nothing in this test does a better job of letting you play with the raw look and feel of your clips, making Pinnacle especially worth checking out if your video editing wish list extends to post-production. That does push the price up a bit though, because both the regular Studio 15 and Ultimate editions lack the 'Looks' plug-in and some of the other fancier filters.

Compared to most of the suites on test, Vegas Movie Studio HD Platinum 10 is a startlingly intimidating editor – at least at first glance.

At this price, most interfaces are sleek, with clear options, and a wide array of wizards to guide you through the more complex features. Vegas is big, confusing, cluttered, and extremely unfriendly – even with its excellent interactive tutorials.

As just one example of this, when you apply new effects, they're all controlled and stored in a pop-up window rather than being integrated comfortably into the main interface.

To get away with this, a product has to pack some serious power - and while Vegas isn't as strong as it really needs to be, many of its features do exactly that. The majority that it offers are at least as good as its competition, with a few that surpass it – like the Secondary Color Corrector for fixing issues that simple tweaking and white balancing can't handle.

With this, you can pick any colour in your video and shift it as much as you like – the tutorial demonstrates this by recolouring the yellow stripes in a bumblebee costume into pinks, greys and more, without affecting the other colours.

Another unusually advanced option is a dedicated levels control, which lacks the graph you'd expect in an image editor, but works under the same principles.

A few of the package's features let themselves down in odd ways though. The biggest disappointment is the video stabiliser effect. Technically it works, but it's far too crop-happy.

When you finally learn where to find everything, you won't want for much. Vegas is powerful, and in its own way, efficient. However, unless you really need one of its unique features, or you feel like taking off the training wheels, it's hard to justify the hassle involved in using it.