Adobe Premiere Elements 4.0 - Adobe

Adobe Premier Elements 4.0 is one of the most unstable, crash-prone software programs I've ever encountered, even on the latest, most-powerful home computer systems. I've run the software on two computers with two operating systems, XP and Vista, and the results have been the same... disappointing. I suspect this software is only useful for the smallest of video projects. It's virtually unusable for moderately complex projects such as a DVD to commemorate a youth sport team's season with a mix of edited videos, pictures, music, and text. I thought Roxio's Easy Media Creator software had a few bugs but it was a dream compared to Adobe's Premier Elements. My first project with Premier Elements will be my last; I'm going back to Roxio.

I've previously had experience using iMovie for video editing. Premiere Elements 4 is more difficult to do the basics than iMovie - it has a higher learning curve, doing Ken Burns effects on photos takes more clicks, etc. However, Premier Elements 4 has more options/power than iMovie - I like the multiple video tracks, the fully customized titles, and all the other extras that I couldn't do with iMovie. And it's been very stable - I've only had one crash since beginning to use it (I have 1 GB of RAM - I would say that's the minimum - 2 GB would be nice).

After downloading 'trial' versions of a number of similar programs, I decided to give this a try. I've owned a number of Adobe products, like CS2 and now, CS3. I assumed that I would find the same quality and reliability. This program simply doesn't work. After 6 hours of trying to create a slides show, interlaced with some small .avi videos, I give up. Loading a file of photos is hit and miss. YOu end up with a dozen or more black squares out of 60 total photos. And it's hit and miss. You can delete those photos and then reload the same file, and it will then miss out on different photos. I have a Core2Duo CPU with 4GB of memory on WinXP and this program gets through half a session before it pops up with memory resource messages.
I bought this on Amazon 3 days ago, and I'm sending in the $20 rebate and then putting this thing on eBay to get what I can out of it. Shame on Adobe. This is a really shoddy product. I have to believe that anyone with a good experience isn't really using this or has not spent 6-8 hours with it. ......Save yourself.

After updating my Premiere 3.0 with Adobe's updates and having the system totally die, I decided to buy 4.0. Mistake. The install required me to do some system clean up due to its large footprint. Once installed, it took so long to even come up I went and did laundry. After it came up and I loaded a 3.0 project, which allowed me to do some more laundry, the software caused my system to do the BSOD (Blue Screen of Death). I literally had only entered in some text, when the system crashed. I decided to uninstall 3.0 and reinstall it without any updates and went back in order to finish my project. I would strongly suggest waiting until they figure this one out before purchasing it. I only gave it 2 stars instead of 1 because I think for the brief time it was up that the design will be better than 3.0, but then again my experience was so brief I could be wrong about that.

I have no basis for comparison as I got this software to make a wedding slideshow. I've done my research and read reviews that this is more difficult to learn than other programs.

I've only used a very old version of ULead before, but I must say, this program was able to do whatever I wanted it to do, Ken Burns effects, rotations, pans, zooms, etc. Granted I was forced to learn quickly, after I discovered the concept of keyframes, it was just a matter of manually doing everything the way I wanted it done.

I highly recommend this program for beginners because it provides many of the special effects, transitions, etc. for video production. Once done, you can either author a DVD or export movies into many formats including MPEG-2, AVI, WMP, and autoplay DVDs.

Although it's an Elements version, it packs many powerful features. I haven't had time to read the manuals. But I guess if I did, I would find out more functionality and shortcuts. Good luck deciding!

I have had some experience with Photoshop and Photoshop Elements, but none in Premiere. Photoshop has several new features I had not used previously. The book was great at getting me started on a new project to put together a DVD of our church's high schools grads and their family pictures, along with audio. The book includes a disk containing all the lesson materials, showing how the final product should look prior to walking you through on how to get to that final product. It does not cover all of the features of each program, but is great at getting you started and familiarizing yourself with the program interfaces.

Haven't tried Premiere Elements yet, because I have no experience with this type software. Photoshop Elements 6.0 Works well with Vista and I lke the new features. It isn't as aggressive about taking contol of the way I sort my pictures and has some great features; such as being able to move people from one photo to another in group shots. I really like the way extra visual depth can be accomplished using adjust lighting and then shadows and highlights. This was my favorite feature in version 4.0 as well.

I recently scanned several ancestral photos that had damage to them. With Photoshop Elements, I was able to clean up damaged,faded and unclear areas. The results were great. The photos were clear, color was in the correct tone and damage to the photos was reduced. I would only suggest a user guide to answer questions when they arise. I still consider it a great software.

Even though a newer version is out, this is probably the best choice for the multimedia hobbiest. PSE4 has a lot of great features and I'm always impressed with how much depth there is in the program. I've created many great movies with Premiere Elements, and though it lacks a lot of fancy features, it has just about everything you need to put together a solid film. Playback is choppy with MOV files, but who really cares. Overall this is a wonderful buy and cheap bundle.

I have used Pinnacle products for years and the last one was Studio 9. Pinnacle Studio seemed to always have problems, and I almost lost interest with video editing all together. Knowing Adobe's reputation, I decited to try Premiere Elements 2.0 and Photoshop Elements 4.0. I loaded them in my computer and they worked without at any problems. I have ued Premiere quite a bit, but haven't used the photoshop at all. If photoshop works as well as Premiere, I will be very pleased with my purchase.