Customer Reviews

Adobe Premiere Pro 2.0 Classroom in a Book

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

The book does a good job of "hand holding" while you acquaint yourself with Adobe Premiere Pro.

The only complaint I have is that there are a few steps that are missing in some of the lessons. It isn't too hard to figure out what is supposed to happen, but still it would be nice for it to be a little more accurate in the details.

I would recommend to any newbies out there like myself that you begin by skipping "ahead" and doing Lessons 1 and 2 and then going back to the beginning of the book to do the "Tour". I did the Tour first and it involved some concepts that were a little beyond me and I think I would have benefitted from going over the basics that are covered in Lessons 1 and 2 instead of the sink or swim tour, if you know what I mean.

Anyway, all in all, it has been a very satisfying book.

I was disappointed by this entry to the 'Classroom In A Book' series. I've used other members of the series, and I have generally found them to be a relatively quick and inexpensive way to climb up the learning curve for Adobe products.

Most of what the book teaches comes under the heading of 'Video Editing 101'-- what's a ripple edit, how do I lift frames, and so on. I can find most of this stuff pretty quickly in the User's Manual.

There is a lot of repetitive material in this book. I counted a half-dozen places where the book shows how to remove a gap in the timeline, even though it's a simple procedure.

Intermediate topics of the sort that I had hoped to find get less attention. Color correction only gets part of one chapter, and there's virtually nothing on Premiere's waveform monitor and vectorscope beyond how to open them. I'd really like to know how to read and use them!

Premiere's audio capabilities get their own chapter, but the Lesson on the CD-ROM doesn't match the chapter in the book. There were at least a half-dozen files needed by the chapter's project that Premiere couldn't find on the CD, rendering the chapter all but unusable.

When Premiere Pro comes out, I hope Adobe goes back to the drawing board on this volume. It needs a lot of work.

Although I like this series and I enjoyed the example movie that's the basis for all the exercises in this book, I'm afraid this edition is unnecessarily confusing, particularly for beginners. It has an unforgivable number of errors in the text and lessons. And it's a bit wordy in its directions without, in some cases, explaining well enough for me why you are following a particular sequence of steps. And some of the lessons seem to have one too many things jammed into them. It's just not particularly user-friendly.

Apparently, what the editors of this series did was to take an earlier version of the book--I'm familiar with the Premiere 6.0 version and I can see the similarities to that-and update it to the Premiere Pro version of the program and a new movie that the user gradually assembles. Working on one related movie, rather than a series of short, unrelated little projects, might be a good idea although personally I didn't mind the fact that there wasn't one big project in the earlier book. That's just a matter of preference, as is the content of the project (which high school age students find somewhat silly.) What's unfortunate is that there are so many "stoppers" in the lessons.

Honestly, the editing borders on the unprofessional. There are lesson where you're asked to import random sound from the old book (in French, no less) that's totally unrelated to the current clips just to get in some pointers about putting video effects on a clip. In the lesson on effects, you're asked to put a zig-zag effect on an image; well, that worked fine on a cup of hot chocolate in the earlier version, but, unfortunately it's one of the effects no longer in the current program. There's a lesson on sound where you're asked to open a partially completed project; many of the clips necessary for the lesson are not in the lesson folder. I found all but one of them is other folders, eventually, but the process was time-consuming and, of course, you think you've made the error not the editors of the book. In the same lesson the effects workspace is inaccurately described. And there are other errors, I think. The problem seems to be just haste and sloppy editing. You lose confidence that you're being guided through these concepts correctly. I'd wished I'd waited for a second (corrected) edition of the book.

When I emailed the publisher asking for errata data, I didn't get a response for over a week and then just to let me know that they'd "been inundated with user queries," had forwarded my query to the errata editor, and that "Adobe is not always responsive to us in matters of errata." Over a month later, I have not heard more.

It's a shame because this could be an excellent book with just a few changes. Or at least a "heads-up" warning about problems.

Besides the errors, I'd suggest slightly more focused lessons. A couple of chapters are just too long for one sitting. And there are lessons where, in the interest of teaching one more thing or an alternative way of doing things, you do a step only to undo it immediately. To me, that's not beginner-friendly. The chapter on opacity is a bit short on transparency key but includes a lot of information on the waveform monitor, color management, and vectorscopes that really doesn't amount to much a beginner would find practical. It probably belongs in another chapter or an appendix. The chapter on integrating with other Adobe products is sort of confusing; you basically add a lot of cross-dissolve transitions the hard way to, apparently, get a feel for Adobe After Effects. I'd prefer the lessons streamlined and the "extras" in an additional chapter, glossary or appendix. Perhaps in an effort to highlight what's new in this version of Premiere, the editors have lost sight of what should be their primary focus: to get beginners up and running with the program quickly and confidently.

I've Been a Premiere User since Version 6.0 and Absolutly LOVE New Version 2.0 I've Used Classroom in a Book for Previous Versions but because I am Planning on Going for Adobe Expert Certifiaction in 2.0 Well the New version of CIB is just as revamped as the new version of the software the book now includes teaching videos (led by the author) on the included DVD-ROM as well as all the material needed for the lessons the author presents the material in a clear and consise manner and now they even included ACE Exam Objectives for those studying for the test

As a first time user of Adobe Premiere I'm glad I bought this book because it certainly shows a lot of features and how to use them. However!!! There are several errors and OBTW I'm only through Lesson 5 of 14.
Another complaint I have about the book is that in many cases it could be improved if the authors would tell you why you are doing a certain thing. In many cases they do but in many others they don't. By leaving out an explanation of the reason you are doing a certain action it makes it difficult to apply steps to future videos you want to create.
It would be very nice if Adobe or Adobe Press would have a place to go to discuss or ask questions about the lessons in the book so you could get feedback from either them or from other users.
This is an almost great tutorial if they could eliminate the errors or refer you to a website where you could get an up to date list of corrections before you start using it.
The bottom line: I'm glad I bought it. I will finish it and I will keep it for reference, but I'm making notes as I go along on all the errors I find so I don't repeat them when I refer back later.

Well I am a multimedia student with only 2 months of Premiere Pro experience under my belt. This is a great program, and I enjoy using it and will continue to use it. Classroom in a book is what they gave me for my textbook at my college, and though it shows a newbie like me how to use the interface of Premiere Pro and some of it's cool features, I also found errors in the book that were so obvious. When I was working on chapter 6, I was supposed to use the zigzag effect and when I tried to complete the chapter I found that there was no zigzag effect in this version. There is no excuse for this kind of error. However my college publishes their textbooks through a third party publisher, who will remain nameless, that are absolutley horrible, so I'm glad I got Classroom in a Book instead of the garbage that I'm normally given. If you want to learn the basics of Premiere Pro this is about as average as you can get. Try to find a better resource if you can.

I have used earlier versions of Premiere for video editing so this Classroom in a book was more to get me up to speed with the new features of Premiere Pro and in that respect was very useful, as the Classroom books always are. Kudos to Adobe for finally including a DVD with the book and DV source clips.

If you're a beginner it's 90% self explanatory and helps you effectively understand the software interface with some general background explanations as to video editing in general. If you want to understand the principles of what you are doing more than the HOW, I recommend Rosenberg's Studio Techniques book in addition to this. I also recommend reading this book in conjunction with the manual or help files - you'll learn a lot more than if you just go through the motions of "enter this number, push that slider etc".

Although the book is divided into discrete lessons, each lesson forms part of a larger production; a short film called "Books and Beans". Personally I liked this approach better than earlier Premiere Classroom in a Books where each lesson was unrelated to the following one. Plus the video was pretty funny in a kitsch kind of way and the obvious presence of a story encouraged me to experiment much more than previously, especially with things like transition timings and effects for dramatic emphasis. The story also served as something of an incentive - I wanted to get to the next lesson to see what happened to the hero!

I was, however, more than slightly annoyed to discover how lazy Adobe have been in not correctly updating this book from earlier versions. It is full of mistakes. Many stem from the fact that exercises were copied wholesale from earlier Classroom in a Books (particularly the version 6 classroom in a book) and not updated.

For example one exercise asks to you preview your effects by "Alt" scrubbing in the timeline. I find this amusing given that one of the better new features of Premiere Pro, proclaimed everywhere else in the book, is that ALt scrubbing is no longer required. More serious however is the requirement in another exercise that you use the "Zigzag" filter. Again this part of the exercise was not updated and although the "Zigzag" filter is provided with Premier Pro, it is only for legacy support and does not show up in the Effects palette, even though it does load when Premiere starts. If you read the Premiere Pro manual supplement, Adobe consider these old 8bf Photoshop filters REDUNDANT. So why on earth it is in the Classroom in a Book is beyond me and although you could complete the tutorial using another filter, it sort of defeats the purpose and certainly brought me a to a crashing halt as I spent an hour initially trying to get the filter to load and then more time on the net searching for answers.

Given the significant changes between Premiere Pro and earlier versions I suppose some errors are understandable, but if I was a complete beginner some of the instructions would have left me a little perplexed. As long as your bear this in mind, I would still recommend it.

Adobe should be absolutely ashamed for actually releasing such a piece of literary garbage. This book will definitely teach you some decent basics of PPro if you have a good tolerance for mistakes and don't mind spending a significant amount of time trying to reverse engineer things to try and figure out what the book 'MEANT' to say.
One can look past a couple mistakes or typos, maybe even expect them, but I was utterly shocked at the sheer number of mistakes contained within this publication, it defies believe.
I read reviews before paying full retail price at a local bookstore, so I had an idea what I was getting into and what to expect, but I figured, "Hey... how bad can it really be?" and chose to give it a try anyway with my expectations adjusted. Just for the heck of it, I started out keeping track of the number of mistakes I came across... I finally gave up trying to count them by page 175 (out of 505 total pages). I would be completely shocked to discover some editor or proof readers were NOT fired for giving the green light to release this book.
My advice is do not waste your money on this book, choose another publication.

Mirth

At this writing I'm about halfway through the book. I've run across one or two typos and one case where the title templates weren't available for a particular lesson (that's probably more of a problem with my version of Premiere than this book & DVD). I'm going through this book cover to cover rather than spending $900+ on UCLA Extension classes that I can't afford, especially when I don't know if I'll end up getting any work after investing that time and money. This is supposed to be the same book that they use for their classes. I know of someone who learned this software the same way and is working full time as an editor now. If you're serious about learning Premiere Pro 2 this is the book to get.

After editing a short film using an operator, I found that Adobe Premiere was a good and easy-to-use editing program. However, when I actually tried to do some editing on my own, I found out that things are not as easy as they seem.

Not even the help in the program was of any help. And I couldn't find any comprehensive tutorials on line.

Enter this Classroom in a Book. As easy as A, B, C, and I am using the program.

The lessons are very well structured and thought out, allowing you to start doing things and seeing results right away. You can also go to specific sections if you already know most of the stuff.

The accompanying DVD not only has the audio-visual materials necessary for the exercises, but they also have short introductory videos in which you can hear the voice of the instructor as you see the explanation of what you will be learning in the chapter. This really helps the idea and the sense of a classroom, by giving you that "human touch".

The tips you can find in the text are also very useful and certainly beat the lackluster explanations you can find in the help menus in the program.

So, this is an excellent option for those of you who have nor the time, nor the patience, nor the money, to try to get into a course. And this is the only way to learn how to use the program with ease and without frustration.