Adobe Premiere Elements 3.0 [OLDER VERSION]
by Adobe
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Software Reviews of Adobe Premiere Elements 3.0 [OLDER VERSION]
Customer Review: A POX on Adobe
Summary: 1 Stars
Adobe Photoshop Elements 5.0/Premier Elements 3.0 [LB]
I recently re-installed Photoshop Elements 4.0 and the newly acquired Premier Elements 3.0. My computer technician had advised me to uninstall Elements 4.0 several months ago since we were both having severe problems with my computer (operating system Windows XP Pro). I followed his advice, and after many hours of his time, he was able to clean up my computer and make it functional. While I followed his advice, I did not feel that the Adobe program was the source of the problem. I was determined to use the product. When I was able to acquire Premier, I installed both programs. Possibly a co-incident, but both DVD drives became inoperative, and the AV program would no longer function. Several hours were required to correct this situation. Who knows what mysteries lurk with the computer, and I realize that others are using these programs with various degrees of success. I cannot give a rousing recommendation.
Customer Review: Lots of Features, but Slow and Crashes with AMD CPU
Summary: 3 Stars
Having used Pinnacle9 and NeroUltimate7 and a few other video editors, I was ready for disappointment and frustration when I masochistically bought yet another video editor Premiere3.0, and I was not disappointed. I have a fast laptop with lots of hard disk and 2G of ram but it barely is able to run this program. I have been able to make actual DVDs with it, using collections of 30 second AVI clips from a digital camera, but it is a tenuous process and you never know if you will be able to get all the way through without something going kaflooey. Some observations:
1. DVD markers dont stick with the scene, when you add stuff you have to move the markers all over again to sync up with the scenes. This is positively boneheaded, yet is described in the manual as a 'feature' not a bug.
2. RAM usage goes up pretty fast. Once you get more than 30 or so 1 minute clips in the workspace you could easily be up over 1.4G of RAM usage, incredible as that may sound. At which point Premiere will tell you it is getting low on memory (on a 2G RAM machine) and warn you to shut down. (It is hard to believe any of the Premiere software developers ever actually used the application for anything other than 1 minute long projects, as it seems barely able to handle an hour-long project with lots of clips and still jpgs etc.)
3. Editing the DVD menu text is painfully slow, the CPU goes to 100% and response time is like 30 seconds when you try to do a simple thing like change the menu text of a DVD menu screen.
4. Adding clips to the workspace is painfully slow, it must process each clip for scene detection and can take tens of minutes for adding like 20 1 minute long AVI clips. I am not sure what their assumptions were about typical content users might use, but 20 1 minute long AVI clips seems not an unreasonable amount for a DVD, yet it brings Premiere3 to its knees.
5. 3.0 Crashes on Vista. A patch must be downloaded, which I didnt find out about before deinstalling it from Vista, so I dont know if it works at all, and am not tempted to try it again on Vista.
6. DVD and MPEG export require a web page authorization scheme which is locked to your PC. One authorization, maybe is OK, but no, there are at least two and who knows maybe more. Try to export to mpg, up pops the authorization, so I do it, then go to export to DVD and voila another authorization! Oh joy. I guess this means you cannot install 3.0 on multiple PCs as the keys are locked to the PC MAC code.
7. It is fairly easy to crash. I have a 20 minute long project, nothing fancy, no transitions, no narration, just 30 or so 30 second clips and some titles. It will crash after about a half hour of working on the project, even with nothing else running on the PC. So I am nervously saving every minute or so and rebooting the PC every hour to start over again.
8. Project save does not work after two or more saves. Fails with some meaningless error and requires you to do a 'save as' with a new name.
9. All that griping aside, there are a lot of neat features not found in Pinnacle9 or NeroVision7, and the program menu structure is fairly easy to use. I am just a nervous wreck when using the program never knowing if all my editing will be suddenly lost when it crashes.
10. Update: after my last experience of trying to make a 40 minute dvd with about 50 short avi clips, I would revise my review to 2 stars if Amazon would let me. I got numerous low memory warnings loading my project (with 2G of ram), it sat there for minutes at 100% cpu before I could even select a menu option. So I stopped trying to edit the content and just burn it before Premiere went up in smoke, it started the encoding ok, at 1.4G of ram used, finished encoding a mere 4 hours later, then started the burn, and a mere 1 hour later finally crashed with a meaningless 'unknown error' message. Oh what fun!
I cannot believe Adobe has any software QA department at all. How this program could have ever been released is beyond me. How the phrase 'rock solid' ever got into the blurb hype above is also beyond me. It may be, as others have said, that this app only runs on certain hardware. Also, it appears that for lengths greater than 10 minutes one must use the strategy another reviewer described of making multiple sub projects, exporting them to mpg, then merging them in a separate project, or even a separate program ie one of the numerous simpler DVD authoring programs out there that actually work for hour long compositions.
11. Update - AHA! apparently there is some fine print somewhere saying that it only works with Intel processors. I have an AMD CPU laptop which may be the problem. This should be made more obvious to the average consumer. I will try it on my Intel desktop, hoping that the web authorization will allow a second install.
12. Update #2: Reinstalled it on a new HP Vista PC, with 2G ram and dual core Intel CPU and fast hard drive. The program now is actually usable as far as GUI responsiveness compared to running it on a laptop. I was able to burn a 20 minute long DVD of AVI clips with no problem. However, the program locked up and I had to kill it with task manager when I tried to do an hour long DVD with about 50 AVI clips.
Customer Review: Great Value and Versatility...but Quite a Memory Hog
Summary: 4 Stars
A near perfect program in my opinion. Only downside is that it's a total memory hog...thus, 4 stars and not 5.
If you like to make videos and are detail oriented then I would say that this is the consumer video program for you. I tried Nero out and the default Movie Maker that comes with many pc's and found this one to be so much better. There is a lot of versatility regarding sound (you can fade, add, remove reduce or increase audio options, have multiple layers) and video (multiple overlays for introductions, fading, transitions, effects, etc.). I've only made one video but the project required a lot of detail in order to make it slick and seemingly authentic. A classmate and I did a skit for our graduate school class based on a movie. With an image I found on the internet I was able to recreate the DVD Menu, select scenes, mix in the soundtrack onto our video, fade all audio and video transitions and have rolling credits at the end. The versatility of this consumer video program is right up someone's alley if they are looking for many ways to express their creativity. A bonus feature that Nero did not allow, you can put in still photos into your video and determine how many seconds it plays. However, it should be noted that I didn't have the Nero Ultimate addition. Overall, I'm very happy about the use of the program. My only complaints are those below.
I'm running a Dell "productivity" laptop. I had not intended to get into video editing but recently took it up. I have a 600m with shared video memory (can't upgrade :( ), 597 Mhz - 512 RAM, 1.80 GhZ, 40 GB hard drive (16GB free). Unfortunately, this is not nearly enough to make the program run smooth. I would recommend maxing out your machines...well, everything, if it's cost effective. If you don't mind having to take a little more time with the program you'll be able to do pretty well with it. When you're done with your DVD/Movie and want to burn it has to encode the information before burning. For a 16 minute video with a few audio tracks this took about 35-40 minutes. Once this is done then copies burn as fast as your drive. I did work in Word while the video was encoding and nothing froze but this was pushing it. Sometimes the video or sound would cut in and out or go choppy because my machine's memory just wasn't enough.
SPECIAL NOTES: You can download a 30 day trial from Adobe, DO IT! You may decide it's just not for you but beware, the download is 700 MB so be prepared with your highspeed line and your patience. To make it go faster don't use wireless but hook up your LAN line...it transfers quicker.
If you do get this program, congrats! But two things to note...plan out how many DVD's you want to burn because you have to enter this number before you burn the project. Also, read the manual or be willing to be make mistakes on your first video. Some of the default settings (like that for widescreen) cannot be changed after you begin a project. This rendered my project in 4:3 instead of the native 16:9 the camcorder shoots in. If you order directly from Adobe you can't download it and Best Buy sells it for 100 so don't go there unless you have too. Good luck!
Customer Review: Adobe Crash 3.0...
Summary: 4 Stars
A month or so ago I purchased the older version which isn't Vista
compatable and I wasn't aware of this initially and spent
hours trying different configurations in order for the
"Get Video" to work. If you run into this problem Adobe
has a free update on their site to make it Vista compatable.
It takes maybe a minute or so to download.
This editing software is very user-friendly and has a
good variety of editing tools and special effects. The
Timeline tool is very handy, you simply playback footage,
clip scenes, and move them anywhere you wish along the Timeline.
There is also fades, multiple audio tracks for adding narration
and soundtracks and a nifty, sensitive playback bar which
enables pinpoint editing. I'm running mine on a 320GB hard drive,
and according to premiere elements this gives me about 22 hours
of available space to upload my video, and so far there
has been no problems.
UPDATE 11-12-2008
Okay, I'm now experiencing the same problems other reviewers
have described. My video is about an hour long and I've spent countless
weeks creating my film project and now I'm continuously being booted
out due to either a "System Error" or by simply making some minor
change (such as adding text or moving a video frame). Apparently, there is a patch on Adobe's website for these crashes and I'll be testing it out soon. If that doesn't cure the problem then I'd definitely say steer very clear of this program if you plan on making large film projects... I'll never get back the time this program has taken off my life.
Update 11-19-2008
Uploaded the patch... it still doesn't function properly. I even installed another gig of RAM (putting me at 2.87GB). And still, I get the same vexing errors; such favorites as "Unknown error", "Export error", "Adobe failed to return a video frame" (well, what frame I wonder?)and my all-time favorite "Sorry, a serious error has occurred that requires Adobe to shut down". My film is an hour, I've spent countless hours tweaking and getting it just right, and now I can't export it, and I can't get past encoding. So, basically, the film is trapped inside that file. There is one technique left to try, which I doubt will work, so I'll be scraping Adobe and going over to Veags Pro (I've read many great things about version 8). Thanks Adobe for the heartaches!
Customer Review: Great software
Summary: 5 Stars
I tried all the other ones out there and had nothing but trouble with lockups or the software was very hard to use. I look at Adobe with the free 30-day free trail and I could not believe how easy it was to use and how stable it is. I use it for both slide shows and movie editing and create of DVD movies with menus. I would only go with this software.
Tom