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Adobe Premiere Elements 4
Product Review Create and share great-looking movies in minutes with Adobe Premiere Elements 4--the newest version of the best-selling consumer video-editing software. Get started quickly with all your video clips and photos at your fingertips and a choice of easy options for transforming them into polished movies. Show your personal style with amazing visual effects, rich audio, and interactive menus. Then broadcast far and wide by uploading your movies directly to YouTube or your personal sharing site; share with family and friends on DVD, mobile phones, and portable media devices; and even enjoy movies in high definition, including on Blu-ray Disc.
Create fun movies in as little as 15 minutes Create and share great-looking movies in minutes with Adobe Premiere Elements 4 software. Get started quickly with easy moviemaking options; show your style with amazing audio and video effects; and share your movies on YouTube, your own website, disc, and virtually anywhere else. Create your first movie in minutes
Show your style with amazing effects
Share your movies virtually anywhere
Product Description 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, and professionally designed layouts for titles, credits, and disc menus. Create your story faster in the Sceneline, an easier alternative to the more traditional video-editing Timeline, where you can make a movie by simply dragging and dropping thumbnails of your clips, transitions, and effects. Choose from a set of world-class Adobe fonts designed to look great on video, and customize them with shadows, glows, and other effects. Add in background music and sound effects with the new Audio Mixer, which lets you easily adjust relative volumes and create slideshows and movies that move to the music. Animate titles to fit your movie's personality Mix and refine your audio and edit to the beat of a favorite song Customize your discs with interactive menus Easily add dazzling effects to impress your audience Create visual interest with eye-catching transitions Share in many ways from one convenient place Create dynamic, personalized DVDs and high-definition Blu-ray Discs Easily upload your movies to YouTube and your personal website Share movies on mobile phones and portable media players Share movies in multiple ways from one convenient place Add professional-quality animated transitions and effects System requirements - Intel Pentium 4 or compatible processor; Microsoft Windows XP with Service Pack 2 or Windows Vista, 512MB RAM or higher, 4.5GB free space, Color monitor with 16-bit color video card, 1,024x768 monitor resolution at 96dpi or less, Reader Reviews Adobe Premiere Elements 4 is the best of the 2007 enthusiast-level video editing software packages on the market... but that really isn't saying much. Media editing on the PC is EXTREMELY frustrating because ALL of the software at the hobbyist/enthusiast level is either 1) buggy, 2) difficult to use, or 3) both. In fact, it is hard to say that Premiere Elements 4 is the "best" of the 2007-released programs out there; it would be more accurate to say that the other video editors that came out in 2007 perform at levels lower than PE4. A few examples include... Sony Vegas Movie Studio 8 - Confusing and counter-intuitive interface as well as incompatibility with certain OS-aspects and hardware make this editor a no-go for most. Pinnacle Studio 11 - Extremely buggy, poor rendering, and reports of system corruption (??? check out the reviews and newsgroup posts!) will keep most away. Windows Movie Maker - Version 6 (or three if you aren't going by OS numbering) isn't available for XP... just Vista. 6 doesn't have the power and versatility of Premiere Elements, but it is vastly improved over the XP version. Windows Movie Maker 6 is worth checking if you have Vista, because most version of the OS get it for free (XP also contains the older version of both it and Media Encoder). Roxio Easy Media Creator Suite 10 - Roxio, best known for DVD and CD burning software, adds media editing to their suite. Sadly, it crashes so often that it creates more frustration than fun. Almost non-existant tech support and months without a patch are signs that this is software to avoid. You'd think it would be easy to recommend Premiere Elements 4 with such poor competition, but it is not. On release, PE4 has shown itself to be buggy. During the first three days I used it, the program crashed four times and even erased all of the editing I had saved during one event. Turning off auto-saves helped, as did only importing one file at a time (rather than an entire folder). PE3 had somewhat similar crash issues before it was patched, but eventually became extremely stable (Adobe has decent support for their releases, unlike some companies). PE4 also lacks some of the encoding features many of us would have liked - you can't capture from most cards, and the getting video from DV and harddrive camcorders can be hit-or-miss depending on your specific hardware and whether or not it is supported. Finally, PE4 does not support numerous file types "straight out of the box" that it probably should (the best example of this is .flv "flash" files that PE4 can create but that it can not edit nor import). What's good about PE4? When it works, the interface is easy to understand and work with. The video files produced tend to be top-notch, and there are a lot of "advanced" options for new users to grow into. There are numerous plug-ins available to expand the power of the software, and many support avenues are available (including books, newsgroups, and discussion lists). DVD burning is built in, simple, professional-looking, and can be improved upon if Photoshop Elements is used (Photoshop can build DVD menu templates). There are some great effects that can be used, and you don't have to have a degree in video editing to learn how to use them. There is also a decent (but not complete) range of pre-set file-saving options to choose from, including QuickTime, Windows Media, AVI, MPEG, Flash, and various mobile products. Summary: Premiere Elements 4 is the best of the 2007 video editing releases, but it is still buggy and could use improvement. I'd recommend waiting for the first major patch before buying, but if you really need video editing software, try downloading the demo from http://www.adobe.com/products/premiereel/ and seeing if it is right for you (it was available at the time of this writing. Note that many of the other products mentioned also have demo versions available, too). For those thinking of upgrading from Premiere Elements 3: Once patched, I never had a problem with PE3 crashing - not so with PE4. Wait for Adobe to release a decent patch before upgrading (it was not available at the time of this writing, but it may be up now - check the site). The new look of PE4s interface is nice, but PE3s wasn't bad, either. The new features range from pointless to moderately useful, but aren't groundbreaking: Beat detection (useful in rare instances), improved audio mixer (nice!), ability to burn to Blu-Ray, upload to YouTube function (pointless), improved keyframe control (can be VERY useful), and various new settings/save options (very useful) are included. Comment (1) | Permalink | (Report this)
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