Over at TCS Daily this week, I noted the growing popularity of video on the Web. For those who'd like to get into the game, Adobe's Premiere Elements DVD-authoring program has managed to combine a variety of attractive features at an extremely affordable price - it streets for about a C-note. All of which makes the program suitable for a wide range of applications and users. It's certainly easy enough for beginners to plug in a camcorder and transfer and edit their first DVDs, but it's powerful enough to create some surprisingly professional looking finished discs.
However, as I wrote in PC World last year, there were several areas where the program lacked horsepower, especially when compared with more full-featured programs (not the least of which is Premiere Elements' own big-brother,Adobe Premiere).
Several of these areas have been rectified with version 2.0, which we'll address in a moment. But first, an overview of the basic concepts of the program and the minimum horsepower a computer needs to run it.
Minimum Requirements
With a program like Premiere Elements, it helps to have a fairly speedy computer and a fair amount of RAM. Adobe recommends running the program on a Windows XP PC with an Intel Pentium 4, M, D, or Extreme Edition or AMD Opteron or Athlon 64 and 256 MB of RAM; anything beyond those minimums would be all the better. I used a machine with 2.5 gigahertz Pentium 4 and a gig of RAM, and the program ran very smoothly.
A FireWire card and a FireWire-equipped digital video recorder are both fairly essential elements for getting the most out of Premiere Elements; the program is tailor-made for them. (If your PC lacks a FireWire card--as mine did until earlier this year - installing such a card is a breeze; for most computers, only a screwdriver is necessary.) Having both of those components will make importing video a surprisingly seamless task.
Essentially, the DV camcorder and Premiere Elements merge into one component. Pressing fast-forward, play or rewind on Premiere Elements' GUI sends those commands to the DV camcorder, which responds accordingly. And another button on the GUI will capture the camcorder footage and import into the PC and into Premiere Elements. (And of course, if your camcorder has A/V inputs, a conventional VCR can be connected to it, and then via the FireWire cable, video can also be input into Premiere Elements).
![Adobe Premiere Pro 1.5 [Old Version]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51110ZFMMRL._SL120_.jpg)
Article comments
1 - Bliffle
Maybe it's a great product. But I'm not going to buy it. I can't remember how many times in the past 15 years I bought Adobe Premier, installed it, learned how to do something with it (even attending Premiere classes), then watched it just gather dust as I used some shareware package to do practical everyday editing. As recently as last week I actually used the ancient Video For Windows (VFW) which came free from MS on a single 1.44 mb floppy. It does all I need for family videos. Last night I used the freebie MS Movie Maker to good effect. Who needs Premiere?
2 - Stephen Inoue
Nice review!
The improved MPE2 handling in Premiere Elements 2.0 is great. New support for DVD camcorders, Hard drive based camcorders like the JVC Everio-G makes allows folks to bring in video from almost any device.
SI
3 - Gentle trombone
I have just bought the Sony HDR 12E video camera hoping to use it in conjunction with my Adobe Premiere Elements 4. However, I cannot get the program to see the camera. Any helpful suggestions, please?