Premiere Elements 15 Issues with blank spaces and more

Report · Dec 25, 2016

Hi,

I just downloaded the trial of Premiere Elements 15 with the intention of buying it and tried making one project.

I had the following problems in the hour I was using it, are they typical or bugs or am I doing something wrong?

1. There was no easy way to change the duration of all still images in my clip once they had been added.

2. After changing the duration of the images and deleting some clips I was left with a lot of blank spaces that I could not delete. Even though I had no additional audio tracks or anything at that time, just stills and some video clips.

3. In quick mode you cannot click and drag items on the timeline as a group so that you can drag them to close the gaps, so I had to keep switching to expert mode just to select multiple clips to drag back over the gaps.

4. When exporting my video there was 6 minutes of blank space at the end of the video, even though there was nothing visible on the timeline for those 6 mins! I was able to export only the WorkArea bar, but that option was not present on the quick export screen. And there was nothing there!!

5. I did a pan & zoom on one image, but afterwards, several other images had been zoomed in and panned. I had to delete them and reinsert them.

Are others finding the same problems or do you have any workarounds or tips to avoid these things happening?

Honestly the program feels like an old word document or something. If you did too much editing, things would get messed up and the formatting would go all over the place and the only way to deal with it was to start over with a new word document and paste the text only. That's what if felt like for me using this program, I expected it to be solid. It didn't take long for things to get out of whack while just cutting some simple video clips and adjusting the duration of still images.

Are other people having a better experience with the program than I am? I'm seriously on the fence now about buying the program.

Report · Dec 25, 2016

I've had a great experience using this program through 4 versions over 6 years. I tried a couple others and didn't like them.

I just spent parts of 10 days working on a travel summary from a trip as a Christmas gift for my wife. (She got more important things too!) According to the counter, 480 files were involved and the 23 minute output file was 16GB. It was all in 4K. There were no bugs or hiccups other than a couple of my own mistakes.

1. Set the default duration before you import your photos. After that, it is one at a time.

2. Right click and select, Delete and Close Gap.

3. I've never used the Quick mode. You shouldn't need to close the gap that way.

4. Normally the cause of that is there is a stray clip or sliver of a clip somewhere. Try using the PgDn key to skip from a clip to the next clip. Do it at what you think is the end.

5. Can't explain that without more detail. I've not seen it happen. You may have inadvertently copied an "effect" and pasted it to others.

Video editing is considerably different than anything else I've done with a computer. I spent a year trying to figure it out. One day in frustration I spent $25 on an online course. A hour or so a day, and a week later it all made sense.

My suggestion, tip or work around is to NOT buy the course until you've take a course, read a book or otherwise figured out how it is supposed to work. Intuitive trial and error based on your favorite word processing program is only going to cause confusion and frustration.

There are only 4 or 5 good products that compete in the under $100 market. I would be happy to list them for you if that is where you want to go. They are all about the same in terms of power and complexity. I've not found any of them to have the learning/training resources available that Premier Elements has.

Good luck with your projects!

Bill

Report · Dec 25, 2016

Cheers, thanks for your reply!

As far as right clicking on a blank space, delete and close gap was greyed out and there were no extra tracks above or below the track in question and it got really annoying quickly. Especially as it happened basically at random.

Thanks for the tip about using page down to find any last piece of clip.

Even after ticking render workspace only and the preview showing that the clip would be 6 mins long, it still rendered at 12 mins long with 6 mins of blank space. No video, no sound!

Thanks for your input though!

Report · Dec 28, 2016

Actually I found some purple filled-in boxes on video track 10 & 11 that were up to 12 mins long, while my project was only 6 mins long.

They were really hidden and I did not put them there myself. They were automatically added and look like it was these that were causing my problems. I had no reason to scroll to video track 10 or 11 as I was only using 1 video track and 1 separate audio track.

I'm not sure why they were automatically added without any notification or why they were added to video track 10 & 11 instead of 2 & 3 where they would be more easily spotted!

Just in case this might help someone else in the same situation!