» Adobe Premiere Elements 4 [OLD VERSION]

Adobe Premiere Elements 4 [OLD VERSION] Reviews

Customer Rating:
Summary: Great features, If only would stay running
Comment: Great features but it's extremely slow to load and is terribly buggy. On an HD project with four layers and keyframes, it's utterly unusable due to crashing. I've gotten weird behavior, errors during renders and, worst of all, shutdowns. It is unusable since it now takes approximately 2 minutes to load and I get a major crash within a few minutes of trying to do anything useful.

I've got three fast hard drives and 3 Gb of RAM on Win XP so you'd think that would be enough.

It would be an incredible program if it could keep running.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Absolute junk
Comment: I purchased this software for use on XP and have since reinstalled it on Vista. On XP it was buggy yet usable. On Vista it is buggy and useless. Your projects cannot be exported to DVD/CD or PC, at least in any of the formats I tried. All of the problems Premier Elements 4 has are well documented yet Adobe has never patched it. Are you a sucker? If not, don't waste your money. Windows DVD Maker is plenty for the home user and way easier to use.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Don't waste your money
Comment: I wish I would have read the reviews first. I upgraded from Premier Elements 2 to 4...and that was a big mistake. The program crashes and takes FOREVER to load video...I just deleted it and lost out on my money. Never will i go Adobe again.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Fun While It Lasted
Comment: Awesome, a low-budget version of the professional Adobe Premiere Studio, what could sound better? Warm pancakes? Maybe...but Premiere Elements could have turned into a classic software, great for students, beginners, and inspiring film-makers who can't afford the average $799 price tag for the full blown version. The Adobe Elements series as lasted this long, solely on it's prime series of Adobe Photoshop Elements. I work full-time as a MultiMedia Production Specialist, doing video-editing, graphic designer, and various other MultiMedia duties. I tap into the Adobe group every single day to do various aspects of my job, and I have loved what I have worked with.

Coming from a very big dollar company, we can afford the full blown Creative Suite which is well over $1,000. However, we budget when it comes to our office computers, in which we need Photoshop...so since Photoshop Elements 1, our company has kept updated as the updates roll by. Photoshop Elements is a fantastic program, but for some reason the Premiere Elements series has strongly lacked the potential it could be for an amazing budget software. I read through the reviews and all I saw was bad review, after bad review...but why? I have dealt with Photoshop Elements all this time...how could Premiere Elements be THAT BAD? I took the advice of one reviewer here and downloaded the Trial Version of Premiere Elements 4.

From the get go, the interface is a matching feel for what Photoshop Elements 6 is...dark interface, different navigation than the full blown version, and a semi-beginner friendly atmosphere. I actually love the interface for the software, even though it is totally different than what I typically deal with on a normal basic when we would with the CS2 suite. But I found it interesting and quickly began to try and "prove the reviews wrong", maybe the people didn't know what they were talking about or maybe they didn't have the right system requirements. Well, like most people here, I put it to the test with a top of the line video editing system.

I wrapped myself around the software and explored the slimmed down version left and right. I thought hey, this would be pretty fun for a beginner, or person trying to get a budget software to start them up...I mean hey...it's from Adobe, it can't be bad. Then all my hope crashed, just like the software did...crashed. Not one, not twice, not three times, not...well...I gave up after the fourth time. Like a teenage school girl who just found out that the nerd in the back of the class likes her, I yelled..."Like..OMG!" Yeah, it was THAT BAD. The same THAT BAD that I didn't think was clearly possible, it's ADOBE for pete's sake! But Adobe has dropped the ball....BIG TIME. I do recommend the Photoshop Elements Series, but not this...stay away from it as far as possible.

If you want to test it, download the trial. You can do much reproducing, primarily because of a black bar across everything that you do that states that "This was done by Premiere Elements 4 TRIAL", but you can at least see if it is going to crash on you. Don't get your hopes high, cause it will. In a nutshell, had potential, but failed big-time. One can only hope that Adobe can hear the complaining by us and actually produce a Premiere Elements that is actually GOOD. Elements 7 is coming in October via some sources...maybe there can be hope in that.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Good Overall
Comment: A good product overall. Exclellent features, especially preview and scanning of clips which can be shaky with similar products. It was not running well to begin with, though. I called tech support and it seems I had a problem with my WinTV card competing for the same codec. But the tech support guided me through the solution quicky and with great expertise. 5 stars for tech support (located in Oregon, not Calcutta or Hong Kong!)
Now it's working very well. But 4 stars vs. 5 as it's a little weak on menu creation. I am running on a 2.4 GHz computer, 1 GB RAM and 3 hard drives (1 for the OS and product install, 1 small drive reserved for temporary scratch data which makes it run much faster and the other for the imported videos)

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