Adobe Premiere Elements 4 [OLD VERSION]
![Adobe Premiere Elements 4 [OLD VERSION]](/Images/B000UK6OUK/medium.jpg) | Average Customer Rating: Recommend Create and share great-looking movies in minutes with Adobe Premiere Elements 4 software. Show your style with amazing audio and video effects and share your movies on YouTube, your own website, disc, and virtually anywhere else. Visually tag video clips and photos to categorize by people, places, or events. Turn a sequence of scenes into a polished movie in just a few clicks. Adobe Premiere Elements automatically applies coordinated transitions, music,… Product details and pricing info |
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80 Customer Reviews Posted
- I can't believe this is really from Adobe
- I've used Sony's Screenblast Movie Studio for about 4 years. Recently I've started looking around for a replacement that can deal with higher-resolution video. I decided to try the free trial version of Adobe Premier Elements 4. The Adobe web site seemed to offer a free disk, thus avoiding a long download, but the link didn't work. So I downloaded and installed the program. After a frustrating two hours of trying to work with it I ended up ununstalling it. The user interface is difficult to use, the help function is murky, simple actions like inserting a title with a plain background and non-moving text require complex effort, and it crashed on my Windows XP system over and over. I can't believe Adobe put its name on this product.
- 2008-02-19, 5 of 7 people found this review helpful, Rated:
- Glad I read all the reviews
- I was considering purchasing this product until I read all of these reviews. It sounds like Adobe released a terrible product and refuses to provide the needed technical support to correct the problems.
I always try to purchase products only after reading some reviews. I am so glad I did this time.
Adobe. You won't get my money! - 2008-02-19, 0 of 28 people found this review helpful, Rated:
- Worth persevering with
- I have just completed several projects which were otherwise covering vast acres of one of my hard drives. I had put off doing this because of the difficulties and frustrations involved in using video editing software. The difficulties encountered by other reviewers of Premiere Elements are not lost on me. However, I do believe that Premiere Elements is a very good piece of software, and is probably the best of its type on the market for the amateur videographer.
The first thing to say is that editing video is of itself a complex task which requires a good deal of thought, planning and then some complex workflow if one is to achieve anything of merit from the reams of video downloaded on to your PC. There is simply no such a thing as a 'Quick Fix' button which will do all that is required of making even a short home movie. If your expectations fall along these lines then either accept the product of your camera 'artwork' as is, or take up another hobby. If you accept (or can be cajoled into accepting) that making a video is time consuming and involves knocking into shape large sound and image files into a composition which not only tells a story, but does so without jumping all over the place, and also accept that you will need good software to assist you in this task, then Premiere Elements is probably the best software to use.
I have had problems with the software freezing on me, but for some reason, as I have become more practised in using it, it is happening less and less to me (using the 'Save' command regularly is a big plus in this regard). Yes, operations in Premiere Elements can take a long time (often when creating a DVD I will let it run overnight), but if this is understood and worked out in advance, and if you can plan around it, then the software will do its business (Note that during such operations I let the PC get on with doing its job without doing anything else on the PC - browsing the web, or fiddling with Windows Explorer whilst using Premiere Elements is a no-no). If your use of the PC doesn't allow this, then based on my experience, you will have problems.
As for the software itself, there is quite a steep learning curve associated with it, but if you can get through 2 or 3 projects you should reach a level of competence which allows you to knock up acceptable short movies quite quickly, and also allow you to move on to more advanced stuff. Being just about this stage myself, I find using Premiere Elements to be quite fulfilling, if not enjoyable. The workflow arrangement is excellent, and one can move backwards and forwards through the process of making a movie with ease (subject to the limitations expressed earlier), and the features available with the program should allow any amateur videographer to do anything he/she needs to. The black screen works well if your monitor is reasonably calibrated, and the edit screen and various tools and features are laid out well and very easy to find and use. I am pleased with the results, and when Premiere Elements gets to the 'Done' stage, I am invariably pleased with what it has produced.
I am going to give the product 4 stars. It is an excellent piece of software, but is hindered by its attempts at pushing the limits of consumer PC technology. There is no denying that its stability may be an issue for some, and no denying that editing video is not as intuitive or easy as editing still photographs, but if you are prepared to work with the software and the limitations its load places on your computer, and also persevere with your video artwork, you will find Premiere Elements to be an excellent partner in your home video work.
By way of explanation I have a 2 year old 3 GHz Pentium P4 based PC with 2GB ram. It is far from the capabilities of todays machines, and probably falls within the definition of an average home PC. - 2008-02-11, 6 of 7 people found this review helpful, Rated:
- Fully featured product
- This product has Chroma Key (allows you to do green room type substitution effects) and a variety of other filters taking it above many of the rival products. The only match is ULead's offering, but the lack of multiple audio/video tracks makes it much less appealing.
For the price point, this the best product on the market. I knocked off one star for performance, and even then I still think it should deserve 5, because video editing can be a computationally taxing process. - 2008-02-05, 2 of 4 people found this review helpful, Rated:
- Great desktop video editor for the basic user
- I wholeheartedy echo the comments of L. Louis. I was first introduced to nonlinear video editing in college, when it still required a monster Macintosh, large hard drives, and software packages outside the budget of most families. That was about ten years ago, and I haven't done anything with it since. With our new baby, mom and grandparents suggested we try it again. I certainly expected modern hardware to be more up to the task, but I've been more than impressed with the results thus far. That being said, that's more of a testament to modern computers than Adobe's product.
I'm using a P4 1.3GHz machine (lower than the "min requirements" set forth by Adobe) running XP Home, 250GB HDD, 1.6GB RAM, BusLink firewire card and NEC7170A DVD-RW. I have had absolutely none of the compatibility/crashing issues complained about by so many others. For me the software runs smoothly and much faster than I would have anticipated. I have, however, only put together one project to date.
Apparently Adobe has some compatibility problems to work out, at least according to all the 1star reviews here. It obviously has less to do with the power of your machine than the configuration, though. For what it's worth, I've installed Premiere Elements on a partition separate from my OS, I keep my registry and hard drive clean and defragged, and I minimize the number of memory hogs open when editing video.
My suggestion: respect these other reviews and sample the software on your own machine before buying it--download the trial from Adobe and run through an entire "typical" project before you buy. The only limitations of the trial version I've found are the 30-day limit and the fact that any rendered frames have an Adobe logo in the corner. You should be able to simply enter the S/N from the package when you get it to avoid a reinstall. If you're as lucky as I've been you'll find an easy-to-use, intuitive interface with more functionality and power than most home users will ever need. And at today's price of $62 after rebate, I don't know how you could do better. - 2008-02-03, 3 of 4 people found this review helpful, Rated:
