Adobe Premiere Elements 8

Customer Reviews

Average Customer Review




Great under the right circumstances, November 27, 2009
By Robert S. Tobias (Arlington, VA USA)
Let's start off with what's not so good...

- This is not as feature-rich as the Sony and Corel <$100 alternatives.

- Might not be stable in all configurations. Other reviewers have reported hangs and crashes. While I haven't seen this even though I'm using an NVIDIA graphics card (identified in other reviews as the culprit) it's still a possibility.

- Like all other video processing software pachages, this runs better on faster hardware. Don't consider it on a 1.6 GHz laptop unless you have a lot of spare time on your hands. (That said, the interface is well suited to a laptop's smaller screen.)

What is good:

- Integrates nicely with Photoshop Elements 8.

- More user friendly than the Sony and Corel <$100 alternatives.

- Even though there are fewer features than the competition what is there is very well done and may certaily be all that's needed.

Bottom line:

There is a limited capability demo available at the Adobe site. Download it and give this a try. If you are satisfied with the capabilites and it runs on your hardware then this could very well be your best choice.



Responsiveness has something to be desired, November 27, 2009
By Vinifera (USA)
Bought this as a gift for my daughter who makes videos with the default windows movie maker. The lack of responsiveness is discouraging despite exceeding the minimum requirements on our computer. Adobe's support is forum-based. Still trying to improve the performance.



Adobe going backwards, November 25, 2009
By Mark Twain
Nothing lasts forever. Have used Pinnacle, Movie Maker, Final Cut, iMovie and Premiere Elements. Love the Adobe products until now. Running Win 7 has all kinds of quirks. SLOW! Pics not playing back even though they are on the time line. Same with some video clips. Went back to version 4 to work on a project. All of a sudden it would not open. Had to use 8 to open it. Then 8 trashed everything and hours of work down the drain. It was backed up but 4 says there is a file error and 8 does not work right.
The welcome screen is a huge pain in the butt and can not be made inactive.
It seems like Adobe like so many others has taken a few to many shortcuts in quality control and in an attempt to overly simplify, has just produced a very poor performing product.
The muliple video/audio tracks is a huge advantage over Pinnacle but if the program in general is to problematic, it means nothing.
I would advise if you do not need the multiple tracks, then stay away maybe if you have Vista, definitley if you have Win 7.
Pinnacle went through the same growing pains with Studio 10 (a disaster.) Seasoned Mac users had real issues with iMovie 08 beinng dumbed down to much and now it is Adobes turn to fall on their face.
I hope they get things corrected. I would like to recommend them again someday.



Nicely designed software, but bloated and buggy., November 25, 2009
By A. Fabbri (seattle, wa USA)
* The Install *

I installed Premier Elements 8 on my 1.8 Ghz, single core XP laptop with 2GB ram. Installation took about 20 minutes then required a reboot.

* First Test: Slow startup and a couple crashes. *

To test out this software, I downloaded about 40 minutes of video from my Canon MiniDV camcorder with the default settings. I'm used to this being a slow process, but just opening PE 8 (Premier Elements 8) took 45 seconds; about as long as it takes to boot into XP and sign in. Half way through the video recording, Premier crashed with a "Elements Auto Analyzer has unexpectedly quit" dialog box. I filed in the crash report and then the application stopped with "unknown recorder error" (I have screen shots if anyone needs them).

* Second Test: Try again to record video from webcam *

I created a new project (had problems opening old one, and had to manually delete clip files to reclaim my hard drive space) and started the recording process again. This time it worked fine.

* Editing Clips and Creating a DVD *

Now that I had my video imported into PE 8, I went about editing my 40 minutes of clips. I found the GUI and workflow intuitive. I appreciate how the look and feel is consistent across different Adobe apps. (There are similarities with Lightroom, which I use for my digital photos.). Applying basic effects to clips was easy, but highlights the need for a multi-core machine to allow for smoother background rendering while continuing to edit.

* Summary *

Adobe Premier Elements 8 is nicely-designed from a usability perspective. Unfortunately, the stability and performance of this release leaves a lot to be desired.

* The Good *

- Nice GUI, intuitive workflow.
- Consistent look and feel w/ other Adobe apps.
- Easy to learn and use.

* The Bad *
- Had multiple crashes.
- Opening an existing project from welcome screen never seems to work.
- Start-up is really slow (can you demand-load some of those modules, Adobe?)
- Some features are crippled and hassle you to log into [...]. I couldn't finish my film because the DVD menu I wanted to use was a "gold ribbon" feature which required me to join Adobe Plus. I requested a login but am still waiting for a confirmation email. This is just annoying.

I would love to give this product five stars as there are some very good things about it (the GUI). Crashes plus hassling me to join some Adobe Plus thing to use features, however, only allows me to give 3 stars.



Wish the interface were easier to use, November 24, 2009
By T. Wheatley
I'm not crazy about the having to have an Adobe ID to use the program. I'd prefer that on start up, the program opens to the main interface.

I use Windows 7, and it works fine so far. The only problem I've had is that the start up splash screen wanted me to verify my AdobeID email (which I thought I had done a long time ago). I clicked send and then it froze and I had to shut it down. It worked the second time though.

As far as video editing programs go, I have a somewhat older version of Pinnacle Studio as well as the Windows Movie Maker.

It's refreshing to have a program that is compatible with Windows 7 (I had to run Pinnacle Studio in compatibility mode).

One of the problems with Windows Movie Maker is that when importing an HD Video, it wouldn't let me import parts of the video. It would start at the begining and import the whole thing. Grr.

In Premiere, when you create a project, you have to select what type of video: HDV 1080i, 720p, DV Standard, Widescreen, etc. That might be confusing if you're not familiar with the options. It'd be great if the program just detected automatically from the source video.

I had to look for a bit to see what setting my camera was using.

I wouldn't say that Premiere is fast when it's creating a project.

The interface is very dark which is supposed to highlight the items you're editing, but it is a little hard to see some options.

After importing a video, an auto-analyzer starts which takes a quite a bit if your video is long. You can turn off some of the analyzing options, which I appreciate to help speed up video imports.

One thing that I like about the software is that it will reduce camera shake and fix other problems such as color issues with the video.

Video playback was not as smooth as other programs I've used. Probably because my computer is a little older, but the other programs played back video just fine.

You can upload video directly to YouTube which is a good feature.

It may be just me, bit it seems like the options should be a little more clear for just creating a simple video file (not a disc). Pinnacle Studio wins as far as ease of use. Premiere has a lot of options, but the usability could be improved.