Customer Reviews

Premiere Elements 8: The Missing Manual

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I first tried "Premiere Elements 8 For Dummies" by Keith Underdahl and found it lacking., finding its style lackadaisical - and in many ways, just plain lacking.

Chris Grover's book, on the other hand, jumps right into things with a quick tour of premiere Elements and familiarizes you with the program, leading you to the completion of an "InstantMovie". This is more satisfying than the approach taken in the Dummies book.

Grover then takes the reader on a more detailed excursion through Premiere Elements, beginning with importing video, sound, still pictures and animation. He then moves into using Premiere Elements to organize your media assets. I disagree with the placement of this chapter for my preference would actually be to have it as an appendix. But logically it does flow properly even though I suspect most people will not make significant use of these features.

Thirty or so pages on editing come next. There are plenty of illustrations, which is very helpful.

The balance of the chapters in this section cover adding transitions, effects and themes and animated effects and titles, closing with a section on editing your sound track.

Grover's writing style is clear and generally concise. He includes a lot of very useful information and often, but helpfully, refers to other programs and resources that may be useful.

In the final part, Grover covers getting your finished projects to the web, CD, DVD and devices like the iPod.

There are also two handy appendixes covering the menus in detail for both Premiere Elements and its companion Elements Organizer program.

Finally, there is a site for downloading video material to use in the lessons provided, as well as other materials.

In sum, this is a complete instructional manual on how ot use every aspect of Adobe Premiere Elements 8. You can read it in bits and pieces, use it straight through as a course or just dip into it as a reference. It works on all levels.

Well worth the price.

Jerry

This is my third "Missing Manual" and like all of them very helpful. It's much easier to use than Adobe's "Classroom in a Book", especially when you need to quickly find a specific topic. I only wish that Premier Elements 8 itself was stable enough to use with confidence. Great book supporting a bad program.

Like all the other books in the Missing Manual series this is a must have for me and my employees. Even with our vast experience in Website Design and Audio/Visual production we constantly find ourselves referencing these easy to use Missing Manual books and now we have Premiere Elements to add to our collection. Even as a professional editor with over 30 years experience and well versed in Final Cut Pro, I find this book simplifies every step for a comprehensive understanding of using motion picture, animation and graphics not only for our own family home movies but more importantly for our business needs. We work primarily in Mac but because we are constantly creating websites for our clients we need to understand and create for PC and these Missing Manual books have been a life saver. Bravo!

I am new to Adobe Elements. This book is helpful, or should I say, necessary, for a beginner like me. I'm not computer illiterate, but am not motivated to sit here for hours figuring things out. So the book is helpful to get started. However, I sure wish there were other books on the market to fill in the gaps of this book.

It is easy to read and understand, lots of helpful suggestions. Just doesn't 'cover it all' for me. Guess that's not unusual for this type of manual.

Several years ago I used Premier 5 or 6 when I learned video editing. I recently installed Premier Elements 8 and wanted to get a couple of books to help me figure out how this program handled the basic editing tools. I bought "The Missing Manual," "Classroom in a Book" and "For Dummies." Generally I found "The Missing Manual" to be quite helpful with the basics and oriented to quickly making a template driven video, but less helpful with "create your own video every step of the way." The Classroom in a Book was better at showing details through their project lessons. For instance, I wanted to fade a title in and out for my opening. The Missing Manual has a chapter about titles which never specifically mentions how to accomplish this basic task. Classroom in a Book showed exactly which buttons to click to do this, and how to find them. For me, the two books are complementary and neither is enough by itself.

The "For Dummies" book is closer in its approach to the "Missing Manual" in that it is more general. Its strength is that it explains more about using HD cameras that are not tape based.

Bottom line is that all three books have different strengths and I find them all useful for my projects.

I have Premiere Elements 9 and I couldn't find any books on 9 so I tried this one. Having never owned a Premiere Elements before I was baffled by the controls and not very satisfied with the help Adobe provided. This book cleared everything up. Easy to read, easy to follow. I found buttons I didn't even know existed. Highly recommend.

This is one of the few third party books available on Premiere Elements, as opposed to the dozens on Photoshop elements. This one is the best I was able to find as far as being comprehensive yet accessible to the novice film editor. But I had purchased Premiere 7 not long ago, and found that the features of Premiere 8 shown in the missing manual made me want to go ahead and upgrade immediately. Premiere 8 is a significant improvement over version 7; if you've got 8, this book is helpful, but I would not recommend it for previous versions.

Adequate manual. I think I actually prefer the "dummies" version. Neither could tell me how to do a very simple "cut out and save" a short clip from a long clip. Luckily found [...] which is a fabulous forum.

Premiere Elements initially seems straightforward but I for one soon found myself mired in confusion. I bought this book in the hope it would iron out my problems. It has done so and in an easy to read manner. A well worthwhile product.

Great book for the money. Easy to read and informative. I need a book like this to get around Premiere Elelments 8 and it has been very helpful.