Adobe Premiere Elements 3.0

Adobe Premiere Elements is a fairly user-friendly package; it opens up with a video preview screen front and center, a scene timeline across the bottom, and a toolbox on the side. It's easy to figure out where to find what you need, and both video clips and effects can be dragged from the toolbox to the timeline. We were on our way to making our first movie in Premiere elements in no time. Once you've edited your movie, a big button on the toolbar leads to the DVD authoring section of the program.
Like most such programs, Premiere Elements includes two types of timeline functions. The traditional timeline is a detailed view of all the tracks, adjustments, and elements associated with your movie. The other, simplified view, which Premiere Elements calls the "sceneline," presents a slimmed-down look at the most important tracks with each clip represented by a still shot. Unless you're doing advanced editing, this is the way to construct a movie without a lot of fuss.

The program also provides full control over each aspect of your movie. Individual elements can be selected and technical specifications edited on the right side of the screen. Beginners will not need to pay much attention to these details, but more experienced users will appreciate the ability to control the video from start to finish. If you need help figuring something out, it's best to turn to the users guide because tech support will run you a painful $39 per incident. (Support plans are available.)

Premiere Elements installed quickly and does not take up as much hard drive space as some of the more unwieldy suites. The program did run a little slowly on our machine, although none of the apps mentioned here are particularly speedy on anything but computers with an abundance of resources.(www.smartcomputing.com)