About to give up

[i_am_jim]

I spent a day prepping pictures for a video.  After loading them into Premiere Elements I'm about to conclude all that effort was for naught.  Either this is a user unfriendly program or I simply don't know how to use it.  After loading  my ~30 still images I've encountered the following issues.  Struggling with these issues when essentially all of the pictures have to be reorganized/moved at least once and maybe multiple times makes this job impractical.

1. The pictures on the Timeline are so tiny I can't see them well enough to tell what they are. 
2. When I move a picture it leaves a blank space where it was.  I can delete them but after every move?  If I leave them they begin to accumulate with picture moves. 
3. Sometimes pictures expand their clip such that there are two versions of the same picture making it more difficult to see where to place another picture near it.
4. When I add a new picture sometimes it renames it to the same name as another picture already included.  It displays it but now which picture's which is confused. 
5. Some of the pictures are in a white space.  I know it's there because when the CTI moves over the white space a picture appears.  But I can't move/delete/do anything with the white space. 
6. Similar to #5, some pictures are hidden behind other pictures and I can't see them on the timeline or get to them to do anything with them.

[Bill Sprague · Accepted solution]

All of your issues are resolvable.  Premiere Elements makes great slide shows with lots of options.  

1.  Enlarge the timeline.  Grab the upper line imediately to the left and drag it up.  You can make it quite large. 

2.  It is not that hard to delete and close a gap.  Click it and press Delete.

3.  In video editing the time line can show the beginning image and the ending image of a clip.  If it is a still image, they will match.

4.  Not sure what you are doing.  I've never seen PrE change file names.  Can you provide a screen shot?

5.  PrE has multiple video tracks.  (99) They view from the top down like layers.  You've probably put one of your picture on line above what you are seeing.  Scroll up.

6.  See 5.  Get them all on the same video track.  

[i_am_jim]

Thanks for your reply.

> 1. Enlarge the timeline. Grab the upper line imediately to the left and drag it up. You can make it quite large.

MUCH better!  I had tried to enlarge it, but I was in the wrong place on the line.

> 2. It is not that hard to delete and close a gap. Click it and press Delete.

I am doing that, but with the number of moves it I have to do it a lot. The image is gone, why is it leaving these blanks?

> 3. In video editing the time line can show the beginning image and the ending image of a clip. If it is a still image, they will match.

I knew what was happening and now that I can see the images I don't think this will be a problem.

> 5.& 6. PrE has multiple video tracks. (99) They view from the top down like layers. You've probably put one of your picture on line above what you are seeing. Scroll up.

After this suggestion I looked at all the vidio tracks and see no images.

Ignore this reply.  You were right. The images were only showing as a thin blue bar and I didn't realize they were images.  Because the images were so tiny and I have tremor I must have moved them to the upper video. 

In my next post I will show some screen shots of problems.

[i_am_jim]

I didn't return because once I could see the pictures I was able to understand and fix all the problems.

[Bill Sprague]

"I was able to understand and fix all the problems."

Thank you for responding.  The fun here is knowing when something works!