Premiere Elements 8 Initial Impressions

[A_T__Romano]

Premiere Elements 8 First Look: Part 1.

Photoshop Elements 8 and Premiere Elements 8 are now installed on my Windows XP SP3 with about available 1 GB RAM and 70 GB free hard drive space and the virtual memory controlled by the operating system…not great for a heavy duty project, but adequate to overview the programs.

1. Download & Installation. Both programs took about 3 ½ hours to download, using high speed DSL. Premiere Elements 8 downloaded and installed without problems. Installation went much quicker. But, Photoshop Elements 8 download did present challenges, first, it kept downloading Premiere Elements 8 instead of Photoshop Elements 8. Finally in the early hours of the morning, the download from the Adobe site was named Photoshop Elements 8. Great, except, once downloaded it would not launch. The launcher did not know what to do with the .7z  file. Download and use of WinZip took care of that. My default browser Mozilla Firefox was worthless for the download of either Photoshop Elements 8 or Premiere Elements 8, but no problems with my Internet Explorer 6. I had this same problem with the Photoshop Elements 7/Premiere Elements 7 downloads last year.

2. Premiere Elements 8

a. Organizer. I would take exception to Steve Grisetti’s picture of the Organizer in “What’s new in Premiere Elements 8?”, but maybe I was overly optimistic by “The most visible change to version 8 is that the Organizer is no longer a sub-program of Premiere Elements and Photoshop Elements. It now lives as its own, separate, pretty much independent program – behaving more than ever like its professional big brother, Adobe Bridge.” He went on to say “In version 8, both programs have equal access to a single, full-featured Organizer.”

Here is my dilemma for some who want a separate video and photo catalog. If you had Photoshop Elements 7/Premiere Elements 7, you could create additional catalogs in Photoshop Elements 7. Premiere Elements 7 could use one of these catalogs, but could not create new catalogs. So then, you could have a photo catalog displaying in the Photoshop Elements 7 Organizer and a video catalog displaying when you opened Premiere Elements 7. You cannot do that anymore, and File Menu/Catalog is gone in Premiere Elements 8. You still cannot create catalogs in Premiere Elements 8, so, if you just have Premiere Elements 8, you have ONE catalog. If you have Photoshop Elements 8 and Premiere Elements 8, you can create additional catalogs in Photoshop Elements 8 that can be used in Premiere Elements 8, but these programs will display the same ONE catalog.

b. Project Presets. The “New Preset” button is gone. The categories of the presets for NTSC and PAL remain the same: AVCHD, DV, “Hard Disk, Flash Memory Camcorder”, HDV. However, two choices have been added to the “Hard Disk, Flash Memory Camcorder” categories. Now we have HD 1080i30, HD 1080i30 (60i), Standard, and Widescreen. Here I have a problem reconciling the names and the descriptions. It was my understanding, in Premiere Elements 7 for standard and widescreen in this category, this preset category reverses the Fields: from Upper Field First to Lower Field First in Premiere Elements edits. So, now with these new choices described as follows:

HD 1080i30: 1920 x 1080i; pixel aspect ratio = square pixels (1.0); camcorders like JVC GZ-HD7; 16:9 interlaced HD video at 29:97 frames per second.

HD 1080i30 (60i): HD video from 1440 x 1080i camcorders; 16:9 interlaced HD video at 29:97 frames per second HDV 1080i Anamorphic.

When thinking HD 1080i30 preset….the JVC camcorder captures to a progressive sensor, assumed at 30 frames per second, and can record to it’s built in hard drive as 1920 x 1080i with 30 frames per second each frame with 2 fields. So, what prevents us from calling this preset HD 1080i30 (30p) Square Pixel?

When thinking HD 1080i30 (60i))…the camcorder involved captures to an interlaced sensor at 60 fields per second, and can record to it media as 1440 x 1080 with 30 frames per second, using a HD Anamorphic. So, what prevents us from calling this preset HD 1080i30 (60i) Anamorphic?

When I start comparing preset choices, the only reason for using these “Hard Disk, Flash Memory Camcorder” new choices appears to be, like for standard and widescreen, to have the Fields reversed. Do you agree? Any comments on the nomenclature for these new preset choices?

3. Adobe Folder, folders and files

If you go to the default location of the Adobe Folder (My Documents\Premiere Elements\8.0), there are some differences there:

For Premiere Elements 7 and earlier versions there were:

Adobe Premiere Elements Previews Folder

Encoded Files Folder

Media Cache Folder that piled up with conformed audio files (.cfa and .pek)

Project Prel file

Styles Folder

And sometimes 2 .log files

Now in Premiere Elements 8, the Media Cache Folder is gone and we have the arrangement:

Adobe Premiere Elements Previews Folder

CA Object Track Results

Encoded Files

Layouts

Styles Folder

(You no longer see the endless conforming of DVD Menus (not even used) at the beginning of the project. But, I am still trying to figure out what they did with the conformed audio files (.cfa and .pek). More on that next time, along with Premiere Elements 8 Exports as well as Photoshop Elements 8/Premiere Elements 8 intergration.

ATR

[Guest]

Wow! When you promise to do something, Tony, you certainly deliver! Thanks very much!

I did mean a camera-filmed panning shot, not a "Ken Burns type" pan of a still image. I pictured a scene where the camera pans left to right on a "live" landscape and as it pans, we see a building enter into view on the right side and then pass out of view on the left side, just as a real building or any object would do if it was really there.

Your example makes it all perfectly clear now. Except that I wouldn't need to convert a still shot, since I'd begin with a live pan. The single crucial clue is where you say, "A bounding box should appear in the Monitor. Use its corner for positioning and sizing of that bounding box to target the place where you want the building to remain as the landscape scene panning progresses." Such an obvious move, but it never occurred to me to do that.

Thank you very much indeed for your trouble and time. It's much appreciated.

Cheers,

Kurt.

[A_T__Romano]

Premiere Elements 8: First Look, Using with ClipMate Software

ClipMate and Copying Timeline between Premiere Elements Projects

Summary. I have found that use of ClipMate DOES works consistently for copying Timeline (video/audio/effects/transitions) for Premiere Elements 8. In contrast, with earlier versions, such as 2, 4, and 7, the copying/pasting process will handle video/audio/effects, but NOT transitions. How to details for ClipMate 7.3 and Premiere Elements 8 are given below.

Workaround by Peter F. Duke and user comments, posted in 2007

Using Clipmate to copy and paste between projects

http://forums.adobe.com/thread/390807

Muvipix Community thread chat, posted Aug 2009

Copying timeline between projects

http://muvipix.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=6001

I take away from online comments such as those cited above that ClipMate use for copying Timeline between Premiere Elements projects has problems in the copying of audio and transitions. In the Duke link, he suggests a workaround for the audio issue, but not one for the loss of transitions in the copying/pasting. Some may go as far to say the process works for “Premiere Elements”, but does so only sometimes and without rhyme nor reason. So, I decided to download a tryout of ClipMate 7.3 and see for myself what was going on in this matter.

http://www.thornsoft.com/download.htm

1. Open ClipMate 7.3 and leave it open.

2. Then open your saved Premiere Elements 8 project .prel whose Timeline you want to copy to another new project .prel.

3. In Premiere Elements 8, Edit Menu/Select All, Edit Menu/Copy. Minimize the Premiere Elements 8’s workspace to see the ClipMate 7.3 workspace.

4. In ClipMate 7.3, Edit Menu/Capture Special. That will bring up the Capture Special dialog.

5. In the Capture Special dialog, you should find just two options for check marks. Make sure that there is a check mark next to “Premiere Elements OSClipboard Format” as well as “Premiere Exchange”, and then click OK.

6. You should then see an entry for your copy in the ClipMate list which includes: Title, Sort Key, Date/Time, Size, Source. The source should say “ADOBE PREMIER…”, not WINDOWS. Highlight that entry.

7. Go back and Maximize Premiere Elements 8 project .prel which has the material that you copied. To create the new project .prel to paste into, go to the File Menu of this current project.prel/New/Project. (I clicked Yes to the Save message that followed, just in case…). After setting up the new project dialog for the new project .prel, I was now in the new project .prel’s workspace.

8. IMPORTANT: Using minimizing and maximizing windows, go back and make sure that the ClipMate entry for the copy is highlighted. Then with the Premiere Elements 8 again maximized, go to the Premiere Elements 8 Edit Menu and select Paste Insert. The job is done, video, audio, transitions, and effects wise.

Check it out and see if you found what I observed.

ATR

[A_T__Romano]

Premierel Elements 8 First Look: Conclusion

Miscellaneous observations about some new Premiere Elements 8 features and locations were interesting in view of what I had read and expected and what actually is the case.

I. Audio Tools….

Let us look to the top right of the Timeline in the Timeline View (or the top right of the Filmstrip in the Sceneline View) to where it says “Audio Tools”.  Under that tab, the Adobe designers have tucked away: Smart Mix, Audio Mix, Add Narration, Detect Beats, and SmartSound. The only new feature here is the Smart Mix.

Smart Mix. Did you ever have audio with dialog linked to video OR have added narration to a slideshow and needed to keyframe the volume of the background music on the Soundtrack so that you could hear the dialog OR narration better? Well, now Smart Mix attempts to set keyframes to lower the volume of the background music for you so that you can better hear the dialog OR the narration. You designate the track whose dialog or narration you want to hear better as “Foreground” and the track whose volume is to be keyframed (lowered) as “Background”. The catch here is the significance of its use with dialog and narration. It will not work if your “Foreground” track is music or some non dialog sound and your “Background” track is music. In that type of situation, you will get a message “Cannot perform Smart Mix. Missing dialog in foreground track.” But, if you had a dialog in audio 1 (you designated it “Foreground” in options) and music in the Soundtrack (you designated it “Background” in the options), it works fine. In the later example, with tracks content in place, you click on Audio Tools/SmartMix and select Apply or Options (where you would set “Foreground” and “Background”) and then click apply in that Options dialog). The job is done. This also works with narration as “Foreground” and Soundtrack as “Background”. I will leave it for you to test out its possible usefulness and limitations in your workflow.

I need to comment on use of this feature for Sceneline users with an audio 1 “Foreground” and Soundtrack audio “Background”. In the Sceneline View, the audio 1 is not seen, but its content is heard whereas the Narration track and Soundtrack are seen as well as their contents heard. But, SmartFix does work in the Sceneline View. You just do not get a good idea of what is going on if you use that view instead of the Timeline view.

All and all, it does a pretty good job. Respect its limitations and just do not get any mumblers in your video audio.

II. Smart Trim…

Features locations for this are:

Timeline Menu, Smart Trim and Smart Trim Options

and

Smart Trim scissor icon just above Timeline in Timeline View and just above Filmstrip in Sceneline View. I would have thought that Adobe could have selected another icon for Smart Trim since the Split Clip icon at the bottom right of the Edit Mode Monitor is also a scissor. (They did point the scissors in different directions for each, the Smart Trim scissor is blue!)

Typically once in the Smart Trim mode, you set the quality and “interest” criteria that you want the feature to use to point you to the lesser quality and “interest” portions of the video that it is suggesting that you weed out. I will leave it for you to check out the mechanics of it in a very well written description in the Premiere Elements 8 Help PDF. I am still not sure what they mean by “interest”. “Interest = Content”???? Any questions, please ask, and I will share with you my 2nd to 100th look at the feature and program.

Based on my first look, I do not consider this a replacement for trimming the “Preview Media View” clips with In and Out points in the Preview Window and/or making subclips by dragging the trim from the Preview Window to the Preview Media Palette. I found Smart Trim time consuming and felt that I could have gotten the job quicker “the old way”. Comments?

III.

Clip Art

I found that Clip Art as a new feature in Premiere Elements 8 interesting since earlier versions had a logos section in their program files that did contain a good amount of clip art type media.

IV.

The Effects Mask

The goal here is to place an Effect in just a portion of the video frame. You right click the video on the Timeline, select Effects Mask, then Apply. You obtain a bounding box that you can size and position. You go to Effects, apply your Effect and end up with your Effect applied only to the area within the bounding box.Further, the process calls for the program to duplicate your video on video track 1, to place the duplicate on video track 2 along with the Effect. Both the video on video 1 and the duplicate on video track 2 are grouped by the program in the process, but you can ungroup the two track contents by right click the highlighted tracks and selecting Ungroup.

My verdict is still out on this, although it does seem to have more potential that some other new “make it easier “new features.

V.

Other

Based on the number of questions on how to apply more than one transition at a time to media already on the Timeline and how to change the still image duration of more than one still image at a time once still images already on the time, the means to do that in Premiere Elements 8 should make a lot of users happy.

Another popular request is a transition selection that would apply transitions randomly across the Timeline content. I cannot find it in this new version. If anyone can, please let me know.

The rest of the features and location of features that I have not mentioned in this thread will be addressed when the need arises in individual threads which will be topic related. I had hoped to tell you of my adventures with importing and exporting of my 3g2 videos from my cell phone. Great photos, rotten videos, but I do not believe Premiere Elements 8 or earlier versions are the culprits. Did a lot of troubleshooting on that.

Tonight my tryouts come off the computer. Can I recommend generally upgrading to Premiere Elements 8? I still do not know. Do I need it to advance my photo video work? No. Do I need it to troubleshoot the problems of others. Yes. If I were a newcomer to video editing and was going to buy my first video editing program, I would buy it. Then I would not be coming with the baggage of comparison that we all are so prone to have. Sometimes we can (me included) compare something to death.

Please check out for yourself what works for you in your specific computer environment. Tryout before buying.

Thanks for following my first look at Premiere Elements 8 and related matters.

ATR

[Guest]

Great analysis Tony, thanks very much. I look after about 60 journalists using APE, mostly v7, a few v4 remaining, and i have my first user on v8. The main difficulty with this is that he is in South Africa and I am in London! We normally get them to export their finished piece using File - Export - Movie to create a DV AVI file for compression and delivery using a seperate application but this option seems to be unavailable in APE8 - is this the same for other APE8 users? Do we have to use the Share tab instead?

Thanks again

Richard

[Steve Grisetti]

In Premiere Elements 8, you use Share/Personal Computer/DV-AVI to export an AVI movie.

[A_T__Romano]

Richard

Thank you for your comments.

Yes, in Premiere Elements 8, Share/Personal Computer/AVI is the route to your DV AVI. The Adobe designers have left the Edit Mode File Menu/Export, but that is just for saving Titles as detailed earlier in this thread. We got accustomed to two choices in earlier versions, Edit Mode File Menu/Export/Movie and Share/Personal Computer/DV AVI. Someone at Adobe must have decided it was time to consolidate.

Please let me know if you need any more details on this new Share/Personal Computer/AVI and the DV AVI export using it.

ATR

[Guest]

Thanks Tony and Steve, I'll have a go with that and report back.

Richard

[Guest]

Exported DV AVI exactly as described, problem solved, many thanks folks.

Richard

[DougWeir]

Romano,

Thanks for the post.  Have you had any trouble with the Nvidia driver that people are having trouble with?  Also, I heard that which avchd video, it doesnt matter what kind of computer you have, it is terribly slow.  Has that been your experience?

Doug

[A_T__Romano]

DougWeir

As I said at the onset of this thread, my setup is not great for a heavy duty project, but I felt adequate to overview the program.

Bottom line: No NVIDIA card related issues and no performance issues (as defined below).

I have been doing my first look at Premiere Elements 8 in a computer environment which includes:

Windows XP Professional SP3 32 bit (single processor, 1.70 gHz)

Available RAM about 1 GB

Free C: Local Drive Hard Drive Space about 70 GB (Premiere Elements 8 scratch files directed to Seagate 250 GB external hard drive (formatted NTFS)

Virtual Memory controlled by the Operating System...looks like about 1.96 GB Available Virtual Memory
NVIDIA GeForce4MX440 with AGP8X (Premiere Elements 8 Edit Menu/Preferences/General with "Enable GPU Playback" is disabled)

Monitors: Acer 19" Widescreen (native resolution 1440 x 900 pixels) and DiGiview 13.5" Standard (resolution set at 1024 x 768)

Premiere Elements 8, with Background Rendering and AutoAnalyzer disabled.

Daily optimization of the computer: defragmentation, clear out unnecessary preview files, ccleaner as indicated, etc. All start up programs except Microsoft Services are disabled. Absolutely no multitasking...only Premiere Elements 8 open.

I do not have a camcorder that shoots AVCHD or HDV, so I have been using clips of these formats (file extensions mts, m2t, and m2ts) which have durations up to 60 seconds. I have not experienced any problems keeping within the confines of a very small project (about 1 min) and have seen marvelous "test only" DVD-VIDEOs whose source was those clips. So, for these high resolution formats, I did OK without running into crashes, slow down of operation, etc. Any real in depth comments about AVCHD or HDV editing and its limitations for heavy duty projects would need a higher level computer environment. Until that time, please refer to the comments of cyber and others and how they have dealt with issues related to editing AVCHD with Premiere Elements 8.

I hope that clarified the background for my comments. Please let me know if you need additional information.

Thanks for reading the comments.

ATR

(After posting these comments, I noticed the thread that you started on your issues. I will give them an in depth look and post additional comments later in that other thread.)