Adobe Premiere Elements

This new version of Adobe Premiere Elements makes significant changes over its predecessor. Premiere Elements 8 adds file organizing and keywording, plus greater integration with Photoshop Elements, while making it much easier to edit in style. The retail price is $99 or you can get it bundled with Adobe Photoshop Elements for $149. Adobe is offering rebates right now and SHI.com, where we get most of our software, should be offering it soon with the UC discount.

The most obvious and welcome addition to Premiere Elements is the Organizer. The Organizer allows you to view, keyword-tag, and organize videos and photos; and when you have the two Elements programs installed, it acts as a conduit to both programs via a single interface. It automates keywording through Auto Analysis of image content (including face recognition) and Smart Tagging (of video quality), starting instantly when you import files. In addition, you can drag and drop tags onto a video while it previews, which can be quite useful since the most important content of a movie might not be in the first frame.

There are two ways to create movies from your video: Instant Movie and manual creation. Instant Movie can use the new Smart Tags to create a movie, with music and transitions. In addition, Premiere Elements 8 offers more customization tools for Instant Movie, but it doesn't always produce great movies. The results do tend to be pleasant, though sometimes rough, with the clip order not always logical or smooth. You may prefer to use Premiere Elements 8's manual tools to edit the Instant Movie, or to start your own from scratch.

Other automatic tools include Smart Fix, Smart Trim, and Smart Mix. Smart Fix attempts to automatically correct the imperfections--such as an underexposed clip--that Smart Tags has flagged. Smart Trim uses SmartTags to determine which portions of a video should remain and which should go, as well as to weigh the interest of various sections. You can set Smart Trim either to work automatically or to mark the areas of video it recommends for trimming; if you select the latter, you can then manually trim, adjust, or retain pieces, all in an easy-to-use timeline.

Smart Mix balances different sound sources so that the background music doesn't drown out narration or dialogue. Again, you can override Smart Mix's choices.

In Premiere Elements 8, you can now add still photos to movies, even if you don't have Photoshop Elements installed. There is a library of templates, effects, transitions, and graphics has expanded, and now includes animated clip art that you can drag and drop into a film clip. Afterward you can add the new Motion Tracking to move objects within the video.

Premiere Elements 8 is a worthwhile upgrade for anyone interested in organizing videos, and editing them with its improved ease of use and good value.

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