If you
want to save yourself some time reading this
review, just go out and buy Adobe Premiere Elements
4.0.
Simple.
Clear. Direct.
This product is really that good and will give you hours of fun creating videos as well as showing them. Adobe Premiere Elements 4 has class stamped all over it. And it also has the Elements style – take a top end product, strip out some high-end professional features and make it easy to use. Most of the removed features are ones you will never use anyway as this program is feature rich. Not that long ago you would have paid a fortune and needed expensive video editing kit. Now you can do all of this at home on a desktop or even laptop computer for next to nothing. The first thing you notice when you open Adobe Premiere Elements 4 is the simple flash screen asking you either create a new project, edit an existing one or capture video. The main screen is uncluttered and intuitive – this is part of the modern Adobe makeover. Just compare it to Adobe Lightroom for instance. You have three choices: Edit, Create Menus or Share.
As part of the editing process you can select media, choose a theme, apply effects, add transitions and create titles. There are a number of high quality and good fun templates available with the program, but of course you can find many more online. Menu creation couldn’t be simpler. Just choose a template and edit the title and screen text. There are a huge number of themes available including entertainment, memories, sport, travel, kid’s corner, weddings and so on. There are plenty of choices to suit most here.
Sharing enables you to create DVDs including Blu-ray discs – a nice modern touch. You can also upload to video sites such as YouTube. You can even export to mobile phone, video iPods and if you really want to you can save to tape.
I took a simple video, dragged it to the sceneline, and applied a memories theme, by simply dragging and dropping. To keep the memories theme running, I then selected an old film effect, again just a drag and drop operation, followed by a magic carpet transition. This was all so easy and yet the results were starting to look incredibly professional. I then mixed some audio, added the narration and did some fine tuning with the time-line and I had my video ready to show. The whole process, including learning how to use Premiere Elements 4 only took one hour.
After I did this, I then read part of the manual and noticed there was an excellent getting started tutorial which highlighted 14 simple stages to creating a video. I might have saved a few minutes by following this first and I might have done things in a different order, but the fact that I was able to work through my video without reading the manual, showed how accessible this program is. Well done Adobe – you have made a complex process simple. If you have a previous Elements version, then the new features and layout are well worth the upgrade. Some of the new and enhanced features are:
Streamline workspace. This is oriented around tasks and does a great job of allowing you to find items and action them all in one space
Organiser to access and manage your files. Videos, stills and audio files are all accessible here. A nice touch is that if you have Photoshop Elements, it shares this area.
Audio mixer. This finesses your audio and has a great feature of adding markers at the beats of the music, making it much easier to synchronize slide shows or video edits.
Add professional touches with new themes, animations and effects.
So that’s it. If you decided to read the whole review, then I will repeat what I said at the beginning - just go out and buy Adobe Premiere Elements 4.0. Simple. Clear. Direct.
This product is really that good and will give you hours of fun creating videos as well as showing them. Adobe Premiere Elements 4 has class stamped all over it. And it also has the Elements style – take a top end product, strip out some high-end professional features and make it easy to use. Most of the removed features are ones you will never use anyway as this program is feature rich. Not that long ago you would have paid a fortune and needed expensive video editing kit. Now you can do all of this at home on a desktop or even laptop computer for next to nothing. The first thing you notice when you open Adobe Premiere Elements 4 is the simple flash screen asking you either create a new project, edit an existing one or capture video. The main screen is uncluttered and intuitive – this is part of the modern Adobe makeover. Just compare it to Adobe Lightroom for instance. You have three choices: Edit, Create Menus or Share.
As part of the editing process you can select media, choose a theme, apply effects, add transitions and create titles. There are a number of high quality and good fun templates available with the program, but of course you can find many more online. Menu creation couldn’t be simpler. Just choose a template and edit the title and screen text. There are a huge number of themes available including entertainment, memories, sport, travel, kid’s corner, weddings and so on. There are plenty of choices to suit most here.
Sharing enables you to create DVDs including Blu-ray discs – a nice modern touch. You can also upload to video sites such as YouTube. You can even export to mobile phone, video iPods and if you really want to you can save to tape.
I took a simple video, dragged it to the sceneline, and applied a memories theme, by simply dragging and dropping. To keep the memories theme running, I then selected an old film effect, again just a drag and drop operation, followed by a magic carpet transition. This was all so easy and yet the results were starting to look incredibly professional. I then mixed some audio, added the narration and did some fine tuning with the time-line and I had my video ready to show. The whole process, including learning how to use Premiere Elements 4 only took one hour.
After I did this, I then read part of the manual and noticed there was an excellent getting started tutorial which highlighted 14 simple stages to creating a video. I might have saved a few minutes by following this first and I might have done things in a different order, but the fact that I was able to work through my video without reading the manual, showed how accessible this program is. Well done Adobe – you have made a complex process simple. If you have a previous Elements version, then the new features and layout are well worth the upgrade. Some of the new and enhanced features are:
Streamline workspace. This is oriented around tasks and does a great job of allowing you to find items and action them all in one space
Organiser to access and manage your files. Videos, stills and audio files are all accessible here. A nice touch is that if you have Photoshop Elements, it shares this area.
Audio mixer. This finesses your audio and has a great feature of adding markers at the beats of the music, making it much easier to synchronize slide shows or video edits.
Add professional touches with new themes, animations and effects.
So that’s it. If you decided to read the whole review, then I will repeat what I said at the beginning - just go out and buy Adobe Premiere Elements 4.0. Simple. Clear. Direct.
Adobe Premiere Elements 4.0 Review