Adobe Premiere Elements 7

HD and SD video editing for novices and hobbyists alike

NO, YOU DIDN'T BLINK and miss versions 5 and 6 of Adobe Premiere Elements. Adobe skipped a few numbers to bring the version number in line with its Photoshop Elements sibling. And with Premiere Elements 7, Adobe has also brought the $99.99 program more in line with the features of midrange video-editor competitors like Sony Vegas Movie Studio 9 and Corel VideoStudio X2. It's in no danger of harming sales of the $799 Premiere Pro CS4, but it no longer feels as if it was intentionally held back to ensure that it doesn't.

The program now imports video in AVCHD format, supporting newer HD camcorders like Canon's Vixia HF100, in addition to standard-definition and HDV high-definition video. The interface is easy to use, whether you're new to video editing or an old hand. For a quick video, simply drop video clips onto the sceneline, drop in transitions, and render the results.For more control, switch to the Timeline view, where you can work with up to three different video tracks, narration, and a soundtrack, making precise edits and adding advanced video effects.

As with previous versions, there's a good selection of professional-looking video
filters, transitions, and titling options for manual editing. New to version 7 is the InstantMovie feature, which does a surprisingly good job of taking selected clips and creating a movie from them in just a couple of steps, complete with titles, effects, transitions, and credits. Though there are 20 InstantMovie templates. we'd like to see more variety. For example, there's only one birthday template and two travel templates, so if you use the feature often, your videos will lack variety.

Other new features include Videomerge, an automatic compositing filter that creates a slick combination of two clips by replacing any solid-colored background with the second
clip, and SmartSound, which generates a musical soundtrack to match the length of your video or scene exactly.

Premiere Elements 7 works best when paired with Photoshop Elements 7; Adobe bundles the two programs for $149.99. They share the same Organizer database (listing all the videos, sounds, and stills in your library). and you can send still frames to Photoshop for editing or send slide shows to Premiere
Elements 7 for incorporation in an InstantMovie. The Organizer has been significantly optimized in this version. in Premiere Elements 4, if you had a large library of photos and videos it was nearly unusable, as it was so slow. Now it's a useful tool for locating and organizing video clips, particulary if you take advantage of the software's tagging functionality.


As with Photoshop Elements 7, Premiere Elements 7 works together with Photoshop.com. You get 2GB of online backup storage of your videos and photos for free (not much when
you're dealing with video) and the ability to view your backed-up clips and movies from any PC. In addition to 20GB or more of storage, Adobe promises new tutorials, themes, sounds,
and special effects on a regular basis for those who purchase a $30 Plus membership. Photoshop.com doesn't have public movie galleries, however, so you'll have to rely on YouTube or a personal Web site for sharing.

Once your video has been created, you can burn it to a DVD or Blu-ray disc, publish it directly to YouTube or a personal Web site, or render it to a file. You can create videos in the Adobe Flash Video. AVI, MPEG, Windows Media, and QuickTime formats.The AVI function supports additional codecs that you
install, such as DivX. Premiere Elements 7 can also create files for the iPhone, iPod, PlayStation Portable, and Zune; for 3rd
Generation Partnership Project-compatible cell phones; and for a number of other devices.

You'll want a powerful PC to use with Premiere Elements 7, particularly if you're editing HD video. The program will take full advantage of dual-and quad-core CPUs to speed up rendering,. You'll also want plenty of memory. On our 2GB test system, we got occasional warnings that Premiere Elements 7
was running low on memory. We also had a few crashes when rendering HD video, though we were working with a prerelease version of the program.



Premiere Elements 7 strikes an excellent balance between ease of use and flexibility. The only real frustration is the lack of variety in InstantMovie templates. We hope to see regular additions to the template selection for Photoshop.com Plus members; additional templates would make membership even more appealing. -Denny Atkin

www.adobe.com

Computer Shopper January 2009