Adobe Premiere Elements 4.0 - Video Authoring for the Masses

Adobe is associated with quality and power, and the company is often viewed as having one of the best lines of software products available when your project requires working with media. Adobe's Elements line offers a lower cost, wizard-based solution for home users that removes a lot of the technical end-user knowledge requirements. Adobe Premiere Elements 4.0 delivers on this easy-to-use concept when working with video. Adobe Premiere Elements 4.0 now has the ability to publish your personal creations directly to YouTube making you projects even even more versatile and fun. This addition to Adobe Premiere Elements 4.0 appeals to all ages. Overall, the creation of your first project can be completed quickly once the various features are learned. Even my eleven year-old son was able to understand how to use Adobe Premiere Elements 4.0. After 'playing' with the product for only an hour, he published his movie .

What's Hot: 
All Adobe Elements products are reasonably priced and offer many of the features found in their full-blown product siblings. With With Adobe Premiere Elements 4.0, capturing video from a Digital Video (DV) camcorder was simple and straight forward. The ability to add still pictures, multiple media types, and narrative audio were a huge bonus. The media provided by Adobe Premiere Elements 4.0 included DVD menus, multiple transitions, and a great library of DVD graphics. For $99, Adobe Premiere Elements 4.0 has enough features and capabilities to make it a great value. 

What's Hot: 
Microsoft Vista support is included with Adobe Premiere Elements 4.0 and the installation was straightforward.

What's Not: 
Installing Adobe Premiere Elements 4.0 took some time and the minimum system requirement of 512MB is unrealistic. On Windows XP, 1GB of RAM is really needed and on Vista, without 2GB of RAM, you will become frustrated. The total disk space required is 3.5GB and while today's hard drives are large, 3.5GB is only the program, not the captured audio and video files.

What's Hot: 
The user interface in Adobe Premiere Elements 4.0 is intuitive for beginners. The online help is complete and full of information for those (like me) who are not interested in reading the owner’s manual but rather seek assistance only when assistance is needed. Complete drag-and-drop control allows for on-the-fly video editing. Media tie-ins to Adobe Elements 6 are included encouraging customers to remain Adobe faithful.

What's Not: 
Adobe Premiere Elements 4.0 has buttons that may be overlooked and others whose functions are not easily decipherable by their icons. Learning what the buttons do (such as time control) takes some effort, adding some time to video production. I have used Pinnacle System's Studio since version 8 and the difference in the UI did slow me down initially.

What's Hot: 
The number of features included in Adobe Premiere Elements 4.0 far exceeds the expectations of a $99 program. My personal favorite and something unique to Adobe Premiere Elements 4.0 was the ability to publish to YouTube. The savvy Wizard even prevented me from attempting to upload a film over ten minutes to YouTube (the current length restriction). The media include (while large) will help anyone create a fun video (the DVD menu options are endless).

What's Not: 
Multiple camera sources with time-sync is not included in Adobe Premiere Elements 4.0 requiring those who have additional creative needs to look to a high-end product.

What's Hot: 
Adobe Premiere Elements 4.0 performed well as long as the system was beefy enough. On a dual-core 2GHz Vista computer with 2GB of RAM and SATA hard drives, I was pleased.

What's Not: 
If you attempt to run Adobe Premiere Elements 4.0 on the minimum system requirements, you will be very disappointed.

What's Hot: 
The online help file included with Adobe Premiere Elements 4.0 is phenomenal. Whenever I had a 'how to' question the help file had the answer. Tutorials are included with Adobe Premiere Elements 4.0 to assist first-time videographers with understanding and creating a video as well.

I would love to see more instructional material included to help beginner videographers learn the basics of shooting movies.

Adobe Premiere Elements 4.0 is a great product with a barrage of included media, publishing options, and great online help. If you have a passion for video and a powerful computer system, but do not have the desire to pay for one of the professional video editing systems, Premiere Elements 4.0 is for you.

Adobe Elements 6, Pinnacle Studio 11, ULead Videostudio 11