If we were talking about jeans or jewelry, some entrepreneur would have filled that price gap with an in-between product, or competition would have driven down the price on the high end. Instead, the spread has remained in editing tools, as new technology has poured into the pro products, including higher quality from HD video, surround sound, deep color and 24p film editing; broader sharing via syncing to portable devices, uploading online, and burning to DVD and Blu-ray; expanding format support from DV to MPEG-2 to HDV, to tapeless AVCHD, to video DSLR and pro cameras; and faster workflow from real-time preview to graphics acceleration and 64-bit editing. It never ends!

Even better, all that technology is not just for the high end - "Consumer" no longer means "beginner" for video editing. Consumers no longer want to be limited to an easy step-by-step tool. Instead they want access to the kinds of effects they see on television, with multi-track editing and lots of effects.

Consumer Editing

Consumer video editing has definitely gone upscale in recent years, focused on the more "advanced hobbyist" or "enthusiast" user who wants to do interesting things with a collection of clips.

As a result, many of today's consumer tools have moved from simply arranging clips in a storyboard to full timeline editing, with overlaid video (overlays and picture-in-picture) and audio (music and sound effects), plus transitions and effects, titles and animation, even with keyframe controls.

Yet all those options can be confusing and even overwhelming, so consumer tools also tend to have simpler, friendlier interfaces, and provide a task-oriented approach to editing actions, as with the step-by-step Show Me How tutorials in Sony Vegas Movie Studio which provide interactive guidance through tasks.

The result in these tools is a combination of simple drag and drop with surprising power. For example, in Apple iMovie 09, you can drag and drop edit using a storyboard view of your clips, or add details with the Precision Editor with a track view. Plus you can remove shaky footage with video stabilization, or add animation with dynamic themes, transitions, and titles - and even animated travel maps.

This is great for more advanced users who are willing to invest the time to really learn a tool, but can be off-putting for beginners and non-technical users who just want to share a clip or make a quick production. One response has been to provide pre-designed themes and templates to provide better-looking results, along with automated assists to simplify the creation process.

Another answer for easier editing has been to re-think simpler consumer tools, focusing on quick clean up of individual clips and then sharing them online.

You can see this trend, for example, in the Nero 10 and Roxio Creator 2010 digital media suites, which include video editing tools (Nero Vision and Roxio VideoWave, respectively), as well as media organizer / manager tools to not only browse clips, but also to share them directly, on disc or online.

Similarly, in Corel VideoStudio Pro X3, the venerable VideoStudio Pro tool has expanded over the years to provide advanced multi-track timeline-based editing with accelerated HD processing. But the product now also includes a separate VideoStudio Express tool for easier editing, with a Media Organizer hub to browse clips, an Express Edit mode for simple trimming, enhancing, and sharing individual clips, plus storyboard-based editing for a group of clips.

But as more video is being shot on smartphones, why even require that a computer get involved at all? The new Apple iPhone 4 offers an iMovie app that can enhance your video with themes, titles and transitions, photos and soundtracks, and then share directly online.

Then for more complex productions, consumer video tools provide automated assists to help with your editing. As in muvee Reveal 8, these analyze your footage and can even create a full production from photos and videos, complete with trims, effects, titles, and synced to your music style.

And the Auto-Analyzer in Adobe Premiere Elements 8 performs an analysis of your clips, tagging footage based on characteristics including brightness and contrast, motion, shake, blur, faces and audio. You then can use this information to automatically apply trims to remove less interesting footage, fix shaky and badly lit footage, balance audio elements, or even create an entire pre-edited movie.

Advanced Consumer Options

There seems to be no end to the technology flowing down into consumer editing tools. For example, Pinnacle Studio 14 includes image stabilization from the Avid professional movie tools, along with features like stop-motion capture, motion titles, keyframing, and chroma-keying (with a green screen backdrop included in the Ultimate Collection product).

For enthusiast consumers interested in a growth path to more professional tools, Adobe Premiere Elements echoes the general design of full Adobe Premiere Pro. Similarly, the new Sony Vegas Movie Studio HD Platinum 10 echoes the full Sony Vegas Pro, now supporting more complex projects with up to ten video and ten audio tracks on the timeline, and providing professional style color correction to help better match the look across a group of clips.