Adobe Premiere Elements for Dummies [Paperback]

Keith Underdahl (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0764578812 | ISBN-13: 978-0764578816 | Publication Date: November 5, 2004 | Edition: 1

Adobe Premiere Elements offers amateur and home moviemakers the opportunity to work with editing tools as powerful as those packed into Adobe Premiere Pro, one of the top tools on the market. Adobe Premiere Elements For Dummies offers these same users not only a guide through all the how-to steps of using the software, but also a valuable reference on how to best apply the tools to a great video project.

Author Keith Underdahl, also author of Adobe Premiere Pro For Dummies, is an experienced video editor who understands what new Premiere users need to know and how to best explain the topics. In this book, Keith describes:

• Best practices for shooting quality video
• Picking the clips you want to keep and getting them into your computer
• How to use Premiere Elements’ editing tools to add an opening credits page, transitions between clips, sound, music, and ending credits.
• Adding special effects using only computer trickery
• Putting your finished project on a DVD, videotape, or the Internet

Covering more ground than the typical expanded users manuals you find in bookstores, Adobe Premiere Elements For Dummies is the book you need to get you through your first video-editing project as well as to return to whenever you hit rough spots and need instant help.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Once, only professionals with expensive tools could create digital videos. Now, with Adobe Premiere Elements and this book, you can create movies without a huge budget or a film school degree. This friendly guide shows you all the digital filmmaking steps from shooting video to getting it into your computer, editing your clips, adding music, and putting it all on a DVD to share with the world.

Discover How To:

• Shoot video like a pro director
• Get clips from your camera to your PC
• Edit out the bad stuff and keep the good
• Add in special effects, music, and credits
• Put your movie on DVD or the Web

About the Author

Keith Underdahl is a digital-media specialist residing in Albany, Oregon. Professionally, Keith is an electronic publishing specialist for AGES Software, where he serves as program manager, interface designer, multimedia producer, graphic artist, programmer, customer support manager, and resident Portable Document Format (PDF) guru. At the end of the day, he even sweeps up the place. Mr. Underdahl has written numerous books, including Teach Yourself Microsoft Word 2000, Microsoft Windows Movie Maker For Dummies, Macworld Final Cut Pro 2 Bible (co-author), Digital Video For Dummies, 3rd Edition, and Adobe Premiere Pro For Dummies.

Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: For Dummies; 1 edition (November 5, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0764578812
• ISBN-13: 978-0764578816
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #713,165 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #12 in Books > Computers & Technology > Digital Photography & Video > Adobe Premiere Elements

More About the Author

Keith Underdahl has produced professional marketing and kiosk videos and also enjoys hobby moviemaking. He is the author of Adobe Premiere Pro For Dummies and Digital Video For Dummies, 4th Edition.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

31 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Book Adobe should have Written!, August 4, 2005

By 

Joe (Woodside, New York USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Adobe Premiere Elements for Dummies (Paperback)

I have been working with Adobe Elements for about 6 months now. I started with Adobe's tutorial and then their "Classroom in a Book" series and have created numerous multi hour DVD's from old VHS video I have. As with most books from the makers of software, they leave a lot of how too stuff out, so I started to look elsewhere for more info on how to use all of the great things in Elements. I saw this book and it's rating so I figured I'd give it a try. For the $16 it cost, even if I learned just two new helpful things it would be worth the money. Never having read any other ".... For Dummies" book I had no Idea what to expect.

I am currently half way through the book and I have to say I have learned not just two but a lot of new things. There are a lot of the basics in the book for people just starting out with Elements but it also goes into detail on how to use all of the fancy transitions and effects very clearly. Before this book I had no idea on how to use some of the more complex effects properly. It's is clear that the author is very familiar with Premere Elements and video editing. The book is worth three times the $16 it cost.

The only thing I felt should have been done, but was not, was that the pictures should be in color. Even if this drove the price up $5 a book it would be better. I say this because often the author refers to the color of an item (The yellow line) in the pictures and unless you are sitting in front of your PC with Elements up or you are very familiar with the Elements windows, all you are going to see is a black and white photo.

Bottom line - A great book, buy it, you won't be disappointed.

I will definitely be looking for other books by Keith Underdahl. Hopefully he knows Photoshop Elements too!

34 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Good indepth book with lots of useful feature info, November 7, 2004

By 

Home Movie Buff "Riptide360" (San Jose, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Adobe Premiere Elements for Dummies (Paperback)

Keith's knowledge of Premiere really pays off in his "Adobe Premiere Elements" for Dummies book.

The book does a good job of going more indepth than the user manual that comes with the product. Capture, Edit, Effects, Titles, DVD and other export types like web, are all covered.

I really enjoyed the numerous examples & gotchas that folks just learning how to edit video would run into. The book has a good balance of tips on video editing, as well as going indepth on how to do specific special effects. Chapter 19 goes thru 10 specific examples: Making people disappear on video, seeing double (twins), freeze frames, old movie, star wars titles, Ken Burn pan & zooms, moving image mattes, lens flares, audio hums and zooming in on video.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great instructions for Premiere Elements *-Note it's not for other versions, January 5, 2010

By 

Chandler - See all my reviews
(#1 REVIEWER)    (#1 Hall OF FAME REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Premiere Elements 8 For Dummies (Paperback)

I noticed some confusion in the reviews of those who had hoped this was for other versions of Premiere Elements. However, as the title dictates, the copy I received is copyrighted for 2010 so you won't find the old info within. If, however, you are like me and looking specifically for something to uncover the mysteries in Premiere Elements 8...this is the right manual.

I gotta admit I was shocked that no manual came with Premiere Elements 8 and that they even wanted to charge for some of the few tutorials that they offered. I consider myself a pretty good navigator through software and I picked up on how to do the editing for my Flip UltraHD camera on the free software that came with it right away...but I'll be the first to admit, I played with Premiere Elements 8 for days and still couldn't complete a decent video using even just a few of the great editing gadgets that I know it contains.

I compared various books that might help me solve this video editing program and settled upon this one because I knew it was written specifically for the version I had, these books in general are written for the total novice so anyone can easily read, follow along, and master the skill, and I knew they always offer tips to help you master your skills in other ways.

And it did.

Not only did it help me create a truly high-tech movie with my camcorder, but it also gave me tips on shooting...such as lighting, sound secrets, and other tips not on just navigating the software but in making better movies in genearal. And they were great tips.

As far as learning Premiere Elements 8, the instructions were super clear, it shows photos of the screen on the pages so you fully understand visually what's being said with zero confusion, it even keeps learning lighthearted with some jokes thrown in.

I think it might be fairly impossible for me to list all that it teaches you to do here but suffice it to say you'll be able to use all the tools, menus, panels, buttons and options, edit clips and join them together, add special effects, cool extras, background music, and upload to whatever you wish: youtube, discs, mobile phones, etc.


Bottom line: It takes you in simple steps from "dummy" to "creative camera whiz".

BOTTOM LINE:It's ashame this is not included in the software. I'll be honest, so much of this I had no IDEA I could do with Premiere Elements 8. I expect the way this is written was better for me in the end than trying to grasp the contents of a thick manual that the creator of Premiere Elements 8 may have put together (well, they did eventually put one together but it was more expensive and I dont understand why Adobe is charging for basic tutorials and a users manual so I'd rather have this one anyway)...this is made for the total novice, yet I think even those more advanced will learn TONS of new things from it due to its vast content.