Product Description

Adobe Premiere Elements 3.0 software makes creating and sharing impressive home videos a snap. Burn your footage to DVD in two simple steps, complete with a DVD menu and scene index, or quickly assemble your movie in the new Sceneline, where you can drag and drop to arrange clips and add effects and enhancements. You can even edit and preview your movie in one convenient window. When your movie is ready, share it on the web, on mobile phones, and virtually anywhere else.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2473 in Software
• Brand: Adobe
• Model: 25530332
• Released on: 2006-09-29
• Platform: Windows XP
• Format: DVD-ROM
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: .55 pounds

Features

• Easily assemble your video clips in the Sceneline
• Edit and preview in one convenient place - the Monitor window
• Share your videos on mobile phones and handheld devices
• Import video from virtually any device, including HDV and DVD camcorders, web cameras (WDM analog), MPEG-4 video recorders, and mobile phones
• Use Stop Motion Capture to create your own time-lapse movies, claymations, and other animations

Amazon.com
Premiere Elements brings your home videos to life and helps you create and share them quickly and easily with friends and family. Burn your footage to DVD in two simple steps, or try the new Sceneline to rearrange clips and add effects and enhancements with drag-and-drop simplicity. You can now download clips from some Nokia mobile phones. And with support for major device formats, you can share your movies on the web, and virtually anywhere else.

Wow your audience with hundreds of eye-catching effects and transitions that are easy to apply with drag-and-drop simplicity.

Move footage from camera to DVD in two simple steps, or drop it into the Sceneline, where you can easily rearrange clips and add effects with drag-and-drop simplicity. For more control, use the Timeline view, which offers more editing options. View larger.

Edit and preview your movie in one convenient place—the Monitor window—where you can split and trim clips, add effects, and more. View larger.

Easily create home videos and DVDs
Premiere Elements makes it easy to import video, audio, and still images from virtually any media device, including DV and DVD camcorders, HDV devices, web, digital still and mobile phone cameras, unprotected DVDs, MPEG-4 video recorders, Windows Media Center, and video clips from selected mobile phones. There is also native HDV support, so you can achieve richer results by capturing and editing HDV footage in its native format.

Premiere Elements gives you control of your video footage, whether you want to burn it right to a DVD or spend time editing and adding creative elements. If you want to simply create DVDs, you can go from camcorder to disc in just a few clicks. Or, take advantage of the powerful video-editing tools that allow you to transform and personalize your video creation. For quick editing, the Sceneline View lets you assemble your video by drag and drop, rearranging thumbnails of your clips, and adding transitions and effects. For more precise control, the Timeline view offers Premier Elements' most advanced features.

Do all your editing in one convenient place: Easily trim and split clips, drag and drop effects and transitions, add text and narration, and more, right in the Monitor window. You can even create your own time-lapse movies, claymations, and other still-frame animations with the stop-motion video capture features.

Rock-solid performance and quality are included in all of Adobe's Premier software. For example, you can view edits in real time, as you make them, by previewing your movie full-screen with just the click of a button. You can also feel free to experiment: With Auto Save, multiple undos, and the History panel, you can always go back to a previous version. The soundtrack for your video can be rich and full with the quality of Dolby Digital stereo. And since video editing can take up a lot of processor speed and memory, Premier is optimized to support multiple processors and advanced multi-threading and hyper-threading technology on the latest Pentium and Centrino Duo-based Windows XP systems.

Wow your audience with amazing effects
Even if you're new to video editing, you can raise the production value of your video by adding special effects. With narration features, your video will tell the story in your own voice; simply add narration to your video as you edit. For adding titles or other text to your video, Adobe provides world-class fonts that are designed to look great on video. And adding text is easy since you can now type text right on screen, then add a cool shadow, glow or other effect to make it unique.

If you want to make your video more dynamic, you can add moving text and graphics. Adding TV-style effects is simple—just drag and drop one of the hundreds of amazing special effects you can customize and reuse. Also choose from hundreds of eye-catching transitions to creatively move from one scene to the next. To apply a transition, just drag and drop to apply effects such as dissolves, fades, and wipes. Or you can create your own transition style.

Music can be an important part of your video, so Premier Elements lets you add your music files and then edit your video to match the beat. For crediting your cast and crew, choose from more than 100 professionally-designed templates.

Share your videos anywhere
Since videos are made to be seen, Premier Elements includes powerful tools for outputting your movie. While creating a professional-quality DVD, you can design unique DVD menus using your own video, photos, audio, and text. Or, save time with automatic scene indexes or chapters that link to your video clips. Create and watch your video in traditional TV (4:3.0) or widescreen (16:9) format, in NTSC or PAL standard for a worldwide audience. Give your audience high-quality sound by automatically converting audio to industry-standard Dolby Digital stereo, allowing you to burn more video onto a single disc without sacrificing sound quality. Before you burn, make sure your movie is just as you envisioned it by watching a full-screen preview on your computer or TV. Then burn your finished movie to a single- or dual-layer DVD.

For sharing on portable devices, export a movie in the MPEG-4 format. MPEG-4 files can then be viewed on virtually any portable device—including the Video iPod and Sony PlayStation Portable.

Supported Formats
Premiere Elements 3.0 Import/Export formats supported include:

• 3GP
• ASF (import only)
• AVI
• Dolby Digital Stereo
• DV
• DVD
• H.264
• JPEG
• JVC Everio MOD (import only)
• MPEG-1
• MPEG-2
• MPEG-4
• PNG (import only)
• PSD (import only)
• QuickTime
• WAV
• Windows Media
• WMA (import only)

Customer Reviews

Powerful Software Greatly Improved Since v2.0
Video editing on the PC is more voodoo than artisty - almost every "consumer level" editing program on the market has compatibility problems, the software that comes with the hardware tends to be next to useless (if you can get it to work at all), and customer support is TERRIBLE. Most of what is to be found is geared towards either 1) encoding low-quality video either from TV or cell phones or 2) "dummy-editing" for those that want to get poorly-edited YouTube video on the air. Consumers that want to do high-quality video editing but aren't professionals (read: can't spend thousands on one piece of software) are, for the most part, ignored.

Having messed with numerous products including Pinnacle Studio (very buggy and contains huge compatibility issues), WinTV's Win2000 (comes with their card - lacks usefulness), VirtualDub (free and having huge potential with numerous features, but unless you're willing to spend a tremendous amount of time working with it, have the exact hardware the fan-community is using, and have superior knowledge of the technology, you won't find it useful), etc... in the end, Premiere is the best. It is professionally done, VERY compatible compared to other software packages, powerful, easy to use, and easy to understand. If you want to do video editing on the PC, this is where you should start - everything else just creates too many headaches.

So, what can you do with Premiere Elements 3.0? You can combine multiple video clips into a movie; you can narrate a video; you can create video for your blog (if you have a camera); you can burn professional-looking DVDs with full menus that will blow people away. Whether you are making home movies of your kids, compiling a highlight reel of your best sporting moments, or making a movie on an extremely tight budget, this is the best software out there in the price range.

As to what 3.0 improves from 2.0: To the casual user not a lot. There are a few more minor options, but the big advantage comes when burning DVDs - in 2.0, my sports DVDs looked terrible with a great deal of "jumping" (I'm assuming this was caused by the software not using enough compression keyframes, but don't quote me on that) - in 3.0, everything is extremely clear and smooth. There are also more exporting options and more useable codecs, though the software still lacks the ability to switch to any installed codecs (a major flaw, IMO, but one most other programs at this level share).

Note: In order to make DVD templates (DVD Menus) for 3.0, you need Photoshop Elements 5.0 - earlier versions do not seem to work (or, at least, I can't get them to work properly). While you can make very good DVD menus within Premiere, you can't save them from Premiere for use in other projects. If that is something you might want to do (and, quite honestly, it may not be for many users), pick up the "bundled" version of Premiere and Photoshop and save yourself some money.

Now, a few things that Premiere Elements can't do/doesn't do very well:
- Capture video from "legacy" devices like VCRs. Premiere can capture video from some devices, but it doesn't work particularly well with many capture cards (nor is it really designed to). Either send your VCR feed through a digital camcorder or use another recording method ("Tivo" or a capture card with useful capture software).
- "Mega" special effects. Premiere Elements has numerous effects like dissolve, fade, time-stretching (slow motion), and distortion - it does not, however, do major CGI-effects. You might be able to pull of a Star Trek "beam in" effect, but you'll need another program for most others.
- Post-capture video improvement. Premiere Elements can do some video enhancement, but it is more of a timeline editing tool - if you want to significantly improve the quality of your captured video (removing major noise, massive high-quality zooming, etc..) you'll need another program.

To address a few other negative reviews...

"Just a quick warning: trying to deal with Adobe is a nightmare. I spent 45 minutes on their customer service line today, waiting for someone to answer. Twice, I was disconnected and had to call back."

I've never had to deal with Adobe's customer support, so I don't know whether or not this is true - I do know, however, that CS in other retail companies in this market is terrible.


"I imported some video from a DVD that I made myself, and the program shut down. It said I had to go to a website and type in a 20-digit "encoder activation" and the site would give me another number that I could use to activate the MPEG2 part of the product. But the site won't take the number. I keep getting an invalid code message when I type it in."

This situation is true - you will need an internet connection AND you'll have to register a code to enable certain compressors. However, all you need to do is copy and paste the code from the software window and into your web browser (there's even a button that will copy the code - you just have to paste it in). No one I know has ever had the problem described above - though it could occur.

"No web support or patches on Adobe site to date. "

There are numerous plugins available on the Adobe website and a patch - just go to the updates section of their webpage.

In conclusion: Premiere Elements is the best software out there for most users. Other reviewers should feel free to post if there is a better software package available.

From Pinnacle to Adobe Premiere Elements
I have been frustratingly using Pinnacle for years. I started with Pinnacle 7.0 and had problems with it locking up. When Pinnacle offered Pinnacle 9.0 with claims that all its problems were solved I bought it. It was as bad in fact worse than the 7.0. It had many features that were locked and could only be opened using a credit card.
I received Adobe Pinnacle Elements 3.0 from Amazon this week and it is perfect! It has many features Pinnacle lacked and works perfectly! No locking up and the sound is synchronized with the video unlike Pinnacle which usually ran a ½ second off. You would hear the hammer on its upstroke. Speech was irritating too.
I have had good luck with Photoshop Elements for several years and when Adobe offered a product for video editing I was happy to get it. Adobe is a class act.

Lots of Features, but Slow and Crashes with AMD CPU
Having used Pinnacle9 and NeroUltimate7 and a few other video editors, I was ready for disappointment and frustration when I masochistically bought yet another video editor Premiere3.0, and I was not disappointed. I have a fast laptop with lots of hard disk and 2G of ram but it barely is able to run this program. I have been able to make actual DVDs with it, using collections of 30 second AVI clips from a digital camera, but it is a tenuous process and you never know if you will be able to get all the way through without something going kaflooey. Some observations:

1. DVD markers dont stick with the scene, when you add stuff you have to move the markers all over again to sync up with the scenes. This is positively boneheaded, yet is described in the manual as a 'feature' not a bug.

2. RAM usage goes up pretty fast. Once you get more than 30 or so 1 minute clips in the workspace you could easily be up over 1.4G of RAM usage, incredible as that may sound. At which point Premiere will tell you it is getting low on memory (on a 2G RAM machine) and warn you to shut down. (It is hard to believe any of the Premiere software developers ever actually used the application for anything other than 1 minute long projects, as it seems barely able to handle an hour-long project with lots of clips and still jpgs etc.)

3. Editing the DVD menu text is painfully slow, the CPU goes to 100% and response time is like 30 seconds when you try to do a simple thing like change the menu text of a DVD menu screen.

4. Adding clips to the workspace is painfully slow, it must process each clip for scene detection and can take tens of minutes for adding like 20 1 minute long AVI clips. I am not sure what their assumptions were about typical content users might use, but 20 1 minute long AVI clips seems not an unreasonable amount for a DVD, yet it brings Premiere3 to its knees.

5. 3.0 Crashes on Vista. A patch must be downloaded, which I didnt find out about before deinstalling it from Vista, so I dont know if it works at all, and am not tempted to try it again on Vista.

6. DVD and MPEG export require a web page authorization scheme which is locked to your PC. One authorization, maybe is OK, but no, there are at least two and who knows maybe more. Try to export to mpg, up pops the authorization, so I do it, then go to export to DVD and voila another authorization! Oh joy. I guess this means you cannot install 3.0 on multiple PCs as the keys are locked to the PC MAC code.

7. It is fairly easy to crash. I have a 20 minute long project, nothing fancy, no transitions, no narration, just 30 or so 30 second clips and some titles. It will crash after about a half hour of working on the project, even with nothing else running on the PC. So I am nervously saving every minute or so and rebooting the PC every hour to start over again.

8. Project save does not work after two or more saves. Fails with some meaningless error and requires you to do a 'save as' with a new name.

9. All that griping aside, there are a lot of neat features not found in Pinnacle9 or NeroVision7, and the program menu structure is fairly easy to use. I am just a nervous wreck when using the program never knowing if all my editing will be suddenly lost when it crashes.

10. Update: after my last experience of trying to make a 40 minute dvd with about 50 short avi clips, I would revise my review to 2 stars if Amazon would let me. I got numerous low memory warnings loading my project (with 2G of ram), it sat there for minutes at 100% cpu before I could even select a menu option. So I stopped trying to edit the content and just burn it before Premiere went up in smoke, it started the encoding ok, at 1.4G of ram used, finished encoding a mere 4 hours later, then started the burn, and a mere 1 hour later finally crashed with a meaningless 'unknown error' message. Oh what fun!

I cannot believe Adobe has any software QA department at all. How this program could have ever been released is beyond me. How the phrase 'rock solid' ever got into the blurb hype above is also beyond me. It may be, as others have said, that this app only runs on certain hardware. Also, it appears that for lengths greater than 10 minutes one must use the strategy another reviewer described of making multiple sub projects, exporting them to mpg, then merging them in a separate project, or even a separate program ie one of the numerous simpler DVD authoring programs out there that actually work for hour long compositions.

11. Update - AHA! apparently there is some fine print somewhere saying that it only works with Intel processors. I have an AMD CPU laptop which may be the problem. This should be made more obvious to the average consumer. I will try it on my Intel desktop, hoping that the web authorization will allow a second install.

12. Update #2: Reinstalled it on a new HP Vista PC, with 2G ram and dual core Intel CPU and fast hard drive. The program now is actually usable as far as GUI responsiveness compared to running it on a laptop. I was able to burn a 20 minute long DVD of AVI clips with no problem. However, the program locked up and I had to kill it with task manager when I tried to do an hour long DVD with about 50 AVI clips.