Customer Reviews

Adobe Premiere Elements 8 [OLD VERSION]

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(20)
2 star:		(26)
1 star:		(101)

 

 

After upgrading to Premiere Elements 8, I initially had problems similar to what other reviewers have reported. The application was crashing regularly, rendering it unusable. After I spent some time sleuthing (searching the web for forum posts where users were discussing this problem) and figured out how to fix it. Turns out, the problem was related to one of the NVIDIA drivers for my graphics card (see further below for possible fixes if you are experiencing similar issues and use a graphics card with an NVIDIA chipset). Now PRE8 works like a breeze, and I'm enjoying the new "smart" features and the integration with the Elements Organizer that another reviewer also commented on in her exhaustive review.

For those interested in my system's specs, I'm running PRE8 on a Windows 7 64-bit machine w/ an AMD Athlon Dual Core Processor at 2.50 GHz, 8 GB RAM and an ASUS EN8600GTTOP graphics card (which uses the NVIDIA 8600GT chipset) w/ 256 MB RAM.

Since fixing the compatibility problem w/ the NVIDIA driver, I have completed several short video projects (between 4 and 8 minutes long) for which I used various of the "special effects" in PRE8 and did some rotation and cropping, and have used a couple of different output formats (flv and wmv). Of course, I make sure that I close any other resource-hungry applications, such as Firefox and Outlook, before I start PRE8. I have really not experienced any further problems in terms of crashes or sluggishness (hence "works like a breeze"). I have not edited any HD projects using PRE8 since I don't shoot or view HD video.

If you are on the fence at all about this product and/or are wondering if your system specs are sufficient to run PRE8 without trouble, I definitely recommend installing the trial version first that can be downloaded from the Adobe website. I believe the trial runs 30 days, enough time to put the program through the wringer and see how it holds up on your particular system.

For those interested in giving Premiere Elements 8 a try but who experience the frequent crashes and use a graphics card with an NVIDIA GPU (graphics processing unit), here are the possible fixes that I found during my search:

1. If you don't use the NVIDIA 3D goggles (i.e., most people), uninstall the NVIDIA Stereoscopic 3D Driver (in Windows 7/Vista: Control Panel > Programs and Features; in XP: Control Panel > Add or Remove Programs). To reiterate, this will *only* uninstall the driver for the NVIDIA 3D goggles. (Amazon doesn't like people posting URLs for other web sites in their product reviews, but if you want to see the source, search for a thread called "Premiere Elements 8 keeps closing or crashing" in the Adobe Support Forums and scroll down to post #8). [This is the fix that worked for me.]

2. Another possible solution to some compatibility issues that has been reported (see post #39 in the thread "Cannot restart Premiere Elements 8" in the Adobe Support Forums) is turning off the "Threaded Optimization" feature for Premiere Elements in the NVIDIA Control Panel (right-click on empty space on your desktop, click on "NVIDIA Controp Panel"; in menu pane on left, select "Manage 3D Settings"; click on the "Program Settings" tab; browse to and select "C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Adobe Premiere Elements 8.0\Adobe Premiere Elements.exe" (Note: do *not* select "Adobe Premiere Elements 8.0.exe" as this won't do the trick) and click "Open" [Note: for 32-bit systems, replace "Program Files (x86)" with just "Program Files"]; click "Apply" and exit NVIDIA Control Panel.)

3. Lastly, of course it's also always worth a making sure that the latest NVIDIA driver is installed on your computer. Check the NVIDIA website to see if there are any updates available.

Hope this will help someone who is experiencing compatibility issues w/ PRE8 and their NVIDIA drivers.

(Note: I've updated this review to add my system specs and provide some more detailed info on how PRE8 has performed for the video projects I've been working on.)

Updated 09/23/2010
Adobe released Premiere Elements 9 Trial, I have experienced none of the problems with Ver 9 that were present in the stability challenged Ver 8. PE9 remains 32 bit and is slow but it is stable, it is a very usefull editing tool for short projects and lower resolution video. Skip PE8 and go directly to Premiere Elements 9.

Updated 03/03/2010
If you like to get "under the hood" of your computer and spend countless frustrating hours sorting out performance problems, Premiere Elements 8 is for you. PE8 has numberous fatal flaws some of which have been traced to conflicts with Realtek Audio drivers and Nvidia graphics driver installation software, other are the direct result of the feature bloat that was added to this release. These conflicts and issues render the PE8 useless to those that have Asus and Nvidia hardware or software on their computers. Asus and Nvidia are major players in the computer hardware industry; the extent of the conflict problem can be seen in the large number of reviewers that have given PE8 a very low rating. This type of conflict should have been sorted out by Adobe in beta testing before the product was shipped. Adobe released a patch 8.01 (02/26/2010)to address several of the problems plaguing PE8, some users report slight improvement but stability is still questionable. A large percentage of users report that even with the patch, Nvidia's newest drivers and ulilizing all know user researched tweaks, PE8 refuses to perform as advertized. PE8 does not work well in AVCHD, also do not consider this software if you are using 1080 resolution or above.
By all means download the free 30 day trial version from Adobe to test compatibility with your PC before purchasing this product or wait untill Adobe releases a patch to solve the stability issues many are experiencing. You may also wish to try PE7 which has very good stability and isn't bloated with marketing gimmicks and useless "new features" of PE8.
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I received my copy of Premiere Elements 8 and Photoshop Elements 8 today. Installation was fairly easy with both programs but I can't see any improvements over PE7 unless you consider being even more resource dependent an improvement. The one feature that I was really hoping for in this version continues to be absent, PE8 cannot write Blu-Ray format to a file, disk only. The conversion of videos from PE7 to PE8 also caused many problems, skipping frames, refusal to render,dropping sound and repeatedly hanging the program during rendering of a four minute video. I have a new dedicated video editing Asus P6T,Intel Quad Core i7 with twelve gig of ram, Windows 7 64 bit ...what does it take to satisfy Adobe PE8? Those who give high marks to PE8 must have a server farm in their basement or are not editing in HD which slows PE8 to a agonizing crawl. Do not buy this software if you are filming in HD and your videos exceed five minutes or are multi track, PE8 simply can't handle the load of Blu-Ray quality editing, a fatal flaw for those of us with newer equipment. I have used Primere Elements for many years, I wish I could continue using it but it just can't meet the demands of multicamera HD. Sony Vegas is a far more suitable editing tool for HD, there is however a learning curve to overcome with Sony's unique "event chain" interface.
I recommend that all users of PE7 skip this upgrade as it offers nothing in usefull functionality or performance. I honestly don't see how Adobe can justify calling PE8 an "upgrade", it is simply a destabilized PE7 in a new box. The best feature is that PE8 does not overwrite PE7 so you will still be able to access and edit your PE7 videos which PE8 refuses to update or edit. Save your rupees for PE9, 10, or 11, PE8 is the upgrade that never was.

Bad Software: What to Do When Software Fails

Adobe Premiere Elements 8I "upgraded" from Premiere Elements 3 to Premiere Elements 8, hoping improvements in the software. First I installed the software on my desktop far exceeding software installation requirements with Windows XP Professional. This software kept crashing with newly generated project files. This software is absolutely useless. I have returned this software as useless product. I am continuing to use Premiere Elements 3, and eventually switch to another product.

I also tried this software on my high performance laptop with Vista Home Premium operating system. The software acted similar way as did on my desktop computer.
I am an expert user of computers, and I am a software tester. I know how a badly tested software behaves. I do not recommend purchasing this software.

My daughter is really into taking and editing video, and I suggested that she could use some better quality software. Trusting the Adobe name, I downloaded the trial version of Premier Elements 8. All I can say is that while I rarely give just 1 star to anything, this one deserves it. The introductory "tutorial" information is all marketing -- it doesn't walk you through using the software at all. Performance is extremely sluggish (running on a 2.13 GHz dual-core processor with 2 GB of RAM on XP, well above the minimum requirements). Even though we haven't used the program since this morning, there's still an "Organizer" process hanging around holding about 450 MB of RAM hostage. And now when I tried to restart the program, it's hung. I guess I've got to reboot if I want to use this thing again.

In short, despite the cachet of the Adobe name, this thing is a disaster. I wish I had read the reviews here before I took the time to download and install this thing.

UPDATE:
I finally had to uninstall this. I noticed after several reboots that part of the software was starting up automatically and chewing up 80% of my CPU, doing what I have no idea. Note this is after days of not using the product and after multiple reboots. This thing is literally taking over my computer. I downloaded a couple more trial products, both of which work great on my computer, but since I need to edit MP4s, decided on Sony Vegas Studio Platinum. I'm not a huge fan of Sony products (see my other reviews) but I've got to say that the Sony software is exactly what I had hoped Premier Elements would be: intuitive and fast.

I also downloaded the full trial to test it out. Thank goodness I didn't buy it. I know that I'm on a laptop but I do a lot of photo and video editing and I just wanted a simple program (much like iMovie) to where I can quickly do some basic editing. What I found is a very laggy program. In fact, I was so frustrated I had to just quit. Mind you I have 4 gigs of ram. I downloaded the demo for Sony Vegas...wow that's much better.

I recently purchased a Canon HFS10 HD video camera. This camera produces absolutely gorgeous full hd video when played back directly from the camera.

I bought Premier Elements 8 to edit the video because the package and online information claimed that it supported the AVCHD format. I installed it and began editing my first video by putting several AVCHD video files together into a simple movie. At this point I was still very happy, the video looked pretty good on the computer screen and the interface was nice.

The trouble started when I wanted to "share" my video by burning a disc. I expected that I would be able burn a DVD in the AVCHD format and then play it on a bluray player. This is when I discovered that Premier Elements 8 does not support burning AVCHD format DVDs! I was very dissapointed because I know that most of the competitive software allows you to burn AVCHD format DVDs. I used Sony Vegas Pro do do it and I was able to burn very good quality full hd video onto a normal DVD.

It appears that the only way to use Premier Elements 8 to burn a full-hd video disc is to go out and buy a $300 bluray writer and bluray media that still costs around $3 to $5 per disc. If I used a video editor, like Vegas Pro, I would be able to burn AVCHD DVDs at a cost of about 30 cents per disc, no additional cost for a bluray burner, and little or no loss in quality on the way from the camera to the disc.

My next big dissapointment with Premier Elements 8 came when I wanted to share my video with relatives that did not have a bluray player. I thought that it would be no problem to burn a standard definition DVD disc from my beautiful full-HD source material. I was able to burn the DVD, but I was horrified when I popped it into a DVD player and saw the results. The quality of the video burned onto the DVD was so bad that I promptly threw it in the garbage. The video was full of fuzzy blocky artifacts and totally unusable!

I got much better results from Microsoft's Movie Maker Live, which you can get for free on the internet. I used it to burn a standard definition DVD from the exact same source material and was able to produce a nice quality disc without all of the artifacts.

Shame on you Adobe. This software is NOT compatible with my Nvidia graphics and the only "fix" Adobe seems to offer is to turn off the features of your graphics card. One of the fixes is so ridiculous that it has you turn off hardware graphics acceleration for your entire computer! Are you kidding me? If it hadn't come in a bundle with photoshop, it would be back in the box on its way back to Adobe. I would give a more substantial review but it wont stay running for long enough to do anything!

Oh, almost forgot to mention. Even if this software does manage to work on your machine, it installs some pretty nasty tools that run in the background and eat your computer alive for about 15 to 20 minutes after EVERY start-up. Then when the program crashes, the junk stays running in the background until you end the task with task manager.

AVOID THIS PROGRAM AT ALL COSTS!

*EDIT* For all those who say "get a faster computer" Nonsense. I run a Phenom II quad core 3gig black box processor with 8 gigs of fast ram and a SATA II terabyte drive with dual graphics cards in SLI.

This program is buggy and may not run correctly on some computers. Best to download the free trial before purchasing this product and run it for a few days to see if it works. I was a bit disappointed in Adobe for releasing this version in its current form.

Sony Vegas Movie Studio Platinum Pro (not to be confused with Vegas Pro) is a good alternative in the same price range.

Always download the trial when ever possible before purchasing any software :)

Like other reviewers, I had very slow performance, choppy playback, sluggish controls,and application freezing with the trial version. It slowed my whole system down even when the application is shut off. What I found was that Premier Elements was analyzing my video even when shut off. I had to quit the process from the task manager to get it to stop. It took over 50% of processor use even shut off, running in the background. I have a Dell Workstation with Quadro Video card, 4G Ram and Core2 Duo processor.

I would imagine that after the video analysis is complete, that performace would return to normal, but in my case, Premier Elements wouldn't read the HD video from my Sanyo Xacti, MP4 video (but you could preview it in Adobe Bridge). I would have to convert it to something else first. I normally love Adobe products, I own Photoshop CS4 and Audition, that I use frequently, and a lot of other Adobe software, but Premier Elements isn't for me.

The product just doesn't work, it won't do the simplest of tasks. To give you an idea how bad it is, I created a new project, inserted a 3 minute clip, played it, saved it, and exited the appliation. Restarted the program, opened my project and crash, I tried all sorts of "work arounds" posted on adobe for nvidia video cards, but nothing worked for me.

I then bought a new XPS Dell computer (Qaud Core, 8GB, 1GB ATI Video Card, RAID 0 HD configuration), thinking my old machine is just to old and slow. I did the same test as before, new project, 3 minute clip, played, saved, exit appliation ... the application never quits and hangs until you kill it. Open your saved project all your work is lost.

It's very disappointing, the features seem top notch, the UI intuitive, I really wished it had worked better.

I then tried the Trial Version of Sony Vegas, this crashed in the first 3 minutes of running, but when I restarted, it prompted me from where I had left off and none of my work was lost; disappointing, but at least it works. I didn't find this interface as intuitive but not the worst. Second time I ran it, crash in the first minute, still no loss of data. There were some sweet features here, but I want software that I can trust.

I then tried the Premiere Pro CS4 (adobe), this seems very stable and a very difficult interface to use, more than an hour before I got anything to play. When I finally got the hang of it, the software wouldn't recognize my camera's HD format, (MTS files). I tried a number of solutions to get it to work, no success; this may be a function of the trial software as their website claims to support this format, but at $800, I'm going to need proof before I buy.

I downloaded the trial version of PowerDirector, it appears rock solid in video editing (that's all that I tested). It's intuitive, but I wish it had a few more bells and whistles; example, I recorded a very dark video, adjusted it's brightness with a slider bar, what I really wanted to do is type an exact number to better adjust, the slider bar is far to inaccurate for such precision work.

At least PowerDirector works, which goes a long way in my book.

I'm a software engineer and I'm very comfortable applying adobe's work arounds, but if it's not working for me after weeks of effort and a new computer, do you really want to invest your time too?