Customer Reviews

Adobe Premiere Elements 2.0 [Old Version]

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Premiere Elements 2.0 is pretty good and easy to use. While Pinnacle Studio 9 is a bit easier to use, Premiere 2.0 does seem much more reliable that Studio.

The good is that you can output both Windows and Mac in addition to DVD format video, whereas with the Apple packages, such as iMovie or even Final Cut Express you're limited to Quicktime and non-Windows formats.

Editing was relatively easy, yet still has a small learning curve; the should scale the items on the screen a bit better but if you have good eyes (and I don't!) you can find just about everything at your finger tips.

About the only complaint I have is that the output quality is not as good as Final Cut Express. For some reason the resulting DVD image I created was less resolution than the original/source video which was a VOB file of an old 8mm Wedding film. Not sure why that happened but it did.

Also the helptext gets an average rating from me. While some information is right there, easy to get at, other stuff isn't in the help or is worded a bit too obscure.

Titling is about the only thing that Pinnacle does better. Premiere's is okay, but many of the checkboxes seem to work backwards. For example the "Start off Screen" for a rolling title caused the title to start on screen and roll off screen, whereas Start On Screen had the opposite affect. So trial and error comes into play.
All in all, if you're a Windows User, I would recommend it, if you're a Mac user (I use both) I would use iMovie which normally comes with your Mac or iLife package.

First of all, I have tried many other editing programs before buying this one.
I tried Sony Vegas, Pinnacle 10 plus (a disaster), Pinnacle 9, and Windows Movie maker 2.1.

By far this is the best program for video editing I have seen.

Most importantly, it works! No crashing like Pinnacle 10.
It has a helpful manual and many books and websites dedicated to it.

Video capture works well and has a nice scene detect function (which most programs have now).

The editing tool is very powerful and the video are effects are more than you could ever need.

Cons:
1. DVD menu's and DVD customization seems very limited. You can only have a 29 second music track for your title and menu screen.
You must own Photoshop to make custom DVD menus.

2. You can't transfer movie clips between projects.

3. It is slightly complex for the average user. The free Windows movie maker is more intuitive but it can't burn DVD's.

Overall, it's a very good program but still have room for improvement.

Thanks to Adobe for giving lots of features that I want for my need in single box so called Adobe Premiere Elements 2.

It's good to resize all panels in single click and no need to take care about other panels, they automatically arrange.

I recently bought Canon Optura 500 that support USB DV streaming and I can capture via USB without a glitch.

Feature wise I like much awaited feature customize DVD template so now I can change fonts, resize or move buttons, change their positions and add Video/Audio/Image in background of DVD Menu and can use as motion menus.

In Adobe Premiere Elements 2.0, It's nice to have latest formats (VOB, MOD, 3GP, AC3, ASF..) import supports basically I did yesterday some VOB editing and its working fine.

Overall it's easy and fairly quick to make a video with Premiere Elements; and it's really very easy to create motion DVD menu and burn them on DVD as well as on hard disk and now we can create DVD with Dolby stereo.

With Adobe Photoshop Elements, I can create DVD Template from scretch, have good interop with Photoshop Elements, create slideshow in PSE and import in Premiere Elements.

Best to have both if you are in video editing and image editing.

Be very careful that your system meets the requirements before you purchase this software. If your computer doesn't support SSE2 (do you even know what that is? I didn't) it just won't install. Unfortunately all three of my PCs have AMD XP chipsets so this software won't work.

The packaging isn't helpful unless you know for sure if your computer supports SSE2.

It seems like a problem that Adobe woudl put out a piece of commercial software that won't install on some very popular computers.

I've been using computers for a long time and I know what works and what doesn't. This product works. One word of caution, make sure your system meets the minimum requirements before purchasing. I'm using a Dell D505 Centrino laptop, 1.6GHz P4 Mobile, 60GB hard drive, and 512MB RAM. When I'm capturing video, I found I needed to shut down my software firewall and virus scan in order to ensure I didn't drop any frames. When capturing, I was using 90% of my processor and 380 out of 512 megs of my RAM (your milage may vary). Also, make sure you have a BIG hard drive to store these video files if you plan to do a lot of editing. I have an external 200GB hard drive for extra storage that helps a lot. A 45 minute movie made a 10 gig project folder on my hard drive.

I've edited a bunch of stuff with this software. Save often because my machine did crash once while editing a 1.5 hour clip. Fortunately, I didn't loose much thanks to the auto-save option. I think I loaded up my memory and crashed the system. Though, with all the video editing I've been doing with it lately, one crash isn't bad.

The editing screens are typical of Adobe products with menus everywhere. But they are logically laid out and you will be happy they are there! It saves so much time having everything you need right at your fingertips! I captured my video off a Sony HC-26 camcorder via firewire. It didn't drop any frames and everything went smooth. Editing was easy and fun. Making a finished DVD was easy too. However, a 1.5 hour movie took about 3 hours to render and burn to DVD. BUT, the quality is exceptional! Other products I tried were grainy or had unwanted side effects. Not this product! Clean clear video, no chop, and great sound.

Did everything I wanted and more for less money than their competition. Thank you Adobe!

I want to transfer VHS movies to DVD using my camcorder's analog to digital feature to convert the signal. The Windows Movie Maker software that comes with XP doesn't burn DVDs, or make DVD menus. Expecially the first problem is absolutely nuts, which is a shame, because Movie Maker is intuitive. So I got Premiere Elements 2, which seems to be the best, relatively low price way to do that (at least, if you get the rebate). Premier Elements 2 turns out to be much more cluttered than Movie Maker and it is more difficult to figure out. I figured out Movie Maker in a few minutes; it'll take a few hours to figure out Premiere Elements 2, and that's a bit annoying. But it seems do the job I want it to do. Someone complained that it won't work with a PC running an Athlon chip. I have an Athlon 64, and it works. The software's Read Me file says it only works with chips that have something called the SSE2 instruction set, and says the Intel Pentium III, AMD Athlon, AMD Athlon XP, and AMD Athlon XP-M don't have it and won't run the software. It says it does run on the Pentium 4, Pentium-M, Pentium-D, Pentium Extreme Edition, AMD Opteron, and AMD Athlon 64. There's a package insert that says if you register at a web site instead of through the product at installation, you can get a couple of free tutorials. That's an odd thing, since the product registers itself automatically. It turns out--at least for me--that even if you let the product register itself, you can still get the online tutorials.

Premiere Elements is probably your best bet if you want to get a little more serious about home video editing. I have tried Microsoft Movie Maker and Roxio Video Wave and found them both lacking in some important areas that Adobe does better.
Pros:
1. Stable, doesn't crash much.
2. Straight foward interface that is fairly easy to figure out.
3. Allows plenty of sound and video tracks.
4. Renders video well and without crashing on my pc.
5. Does a nice and simple job of making a DVD that works on all the DVD players I tried.
6. Titles look professional and have lots of text options.
7. Good sound controls and video speeds (slow or fast motion) are easy to change quickly.
Cons:
1. Previews really slow down as you edit a longer video.
2. Interface is a little hard to figure out and seems somewhat cluttered at first.
Conclusion: This definitly the best video editing software I have found for home users. It takes some effort to learn but rewards you with lots of features. It is stable, and basically performs very well for the money. Since it's Adobe you can upgrade easily to a recognizable interface in a more powerful version of Premiere. If you want to go beyond Microsoft Movie Maker this is the logical next step.

I've tried them all with mixed results both in use and video quality. I ended up recording straight to a set-top DVD recorder and importing VOB files (solved the quality issue), but then I lacked features (transitions, effects, etc). Then, I tried this title. WOW! I captured video from my Mini DV cam, created a DVD using the templates, burned and played. First, the quality is unbelievable! It's as good as my VOB file import/workaround. This is the FIRST PRODUCT I've used where I had a decent capture and transcode that I could live with. No pixelation, jerky playback, or glitchy video streams!

Next, I was impressed about the feature set for the price. With the right amount of planning and imagination, you can do virtually anything you would need for DVD production with this software!

Very quickly, I was able to capture, author with fade in/out's, create menu's, transitions, add audio, and then burn for a great DVD!

With all the good, there is just one small "bad" area. The navigation options for the DVD menu's is limited. For instance, when you navigate a scene from the "scenes" menu and then want to return to the scenes menu by pressing the "menu" key on your remote, you are returned instead to the main menu. This can be a problem if your user has to "renavigate" back to the original scenes menu and you have 4 to 5 of them! I'm not sure if there is a workaround for this, but it seems like a very obvious need/feature that should be there. (FYI, I know you CAN do this in Adobe Encore!).

Also, you should not use this product if you have a weak computer. I am running an Athlon 64 X2 3800 dual-core processor, 2GB of Corsair High Quality RAM, two Western Digital 260GB hard drives (one set up as a "scratch disk" for all my video and audio files to help with performance), one 7900GT Nvidia PCI-Express video card, and a SoundBlaster Audigy 2 ZS series soundcard.

I'm not saying that you can't run the software in a lesser system, but my fast system has made my experience much more easier. Especially when one project had over an hour of high quality video and 40 images set up in a slideshow! My system took care of the task without even a hiccup.

That aside, I've burned two perfect discs so far. All done completely from capture to finished product within the application. Now, I can get started on that drawer full of Mini DV tapes!

Don't let the price fool you. This is a quality Adobe product. Perfect for the individual who wants to archive his/her video collection to DVD.

I am positive that the reviewers with issues did not consult the Adobe Premiere Elements User to User forum. The forum is a huge plus for purchasing this software, friendly, helpful,quick to respond, and can solve 99% of the problems for free.

The minimum specs for version 2 are definately under rated. I would not use this product on anything less than a P4 2.0ghz with 1gb of RAM and 128mb Video. SSE2 supported CPU is required, you can determine if your CPU supports SSE2 by searching the internet.

One reviewer said 'the CD wouldn't load', well Premiere Elements 2 comes on a DVD, it won't work in a CD drive.

(...)

I have tried many different editing packages, this one is by far the best. It takes a bit to learn but once you understand the basic concepts it becomes quite easy. There is also a great book to help you learn; Premiere Elements 2 In A Snap.

This is an amazing program and an unbelievable bargain. As other reviewers have noted, be sure you have enough computer horsepower for the task--this is a general video editing requirement not unique to Premier. Digitizing video can be a nightmare or a breeze, depending on your system and hardware. For example Turtle Beach makes a great $100 video/audio digitizer (VideoAdvantage-USB) that puts out frame-acccurate DV format which is as good as video from a DV camera. Although Premier doesn't directly support this digitizer, the TB unit includes a program that captures video and saves the files in AVI format for easy Premier import. I have a box full of analog Video-8 tapes as source material. I found a refurbished Sony DCRTRV60 "Digital-8" camcorder which functions as an ideal digitizer--it plays the old analog tapes, digitizes them in-camera, and connects to Premier via a Firewire connection. Premier supports this camera, so you can use its excellent video capture module, and even control the camera from Premier--as easy as it gets.

Premier doesn't recognize my DVD burner but it's easy to burn to a file and use a program that does recognize your burner to make the DVD's.

The program is a joy to use. Once I figured out the difference between "cut" (delete key) and "clear" (edit menu), I was flying. (Cut removes the highlighted clip and closes the resulting gap, Clear removes the clip and keeps the gap there so you can insert something else.) Seeing and hearing the content in real time as you move the current time indicator back and forth through the timeline is priceless. The effects, audio, video and transistions, are plentiful, easily tunable, and very easy to use. I had a graduation scene that was spoiled by a gas generator rumbling away in the background. I used the audio highpass and notch filters to completely remove the generator noise while preserving the sound track. Many of my video clips needed significant color and saturation correction--just drag the clip into the timeline, trim it to suit, and tune hue-saturation by dragging sliders while watching the effect of the change in real time. (You also hear the audio filtering effect changes in real time, without which it would be impossible to fine tune something like my generator-sound-eliminator.) When I finished my production I couldn't resist showing off a bit by timing slide transitions to beats in the music--easy with the real-time jogging back and forth, and tinkering with slide durations just by dragging their edges back and forth in the timeline. This is one of those rare products that seems to come up with the perfect answer whenever you ask, "I wonder if it can...."

My final production, a DVD, looks absolutely beautiful.