User guides

[#1]

Remember when you had an actual User Guide? When you could SEARCH and cross reference subjects from the source that has all the answers? Get all the information you needed, not vague references to some forum entry that usually has no resolution? Now your stuck with videos that may loosely relate to what you need , but rarely reveal the answer what you need.

This is what Adobe does. Take the website "user guide" and convert to a PDF. Videos are awful to learn from when you have a specific question.

[#2]

Remember when you had an actual User Guide? When you could SEARCH and cross reference subjects from the source that has all the answers? Get all the information you needed, not vague references to some forum entry that usually has no resolution? Now your stuck with videos that may loosely relate to what you need , but rarely reveal the answer what you need.

This is what Adobe does. Take the website "user guide" and convert to a PDF. Videos are awful to learn from when you have a specific question.

[#3]

You mean this User Guide?

https://helpx.adobe.com/premiere-pro/user-guide.html/premiere-pro/using/welcome.ug.html

The table of contents on the left should let you zero in on what info you need.

[#4]

Yep. try doing a search there. Unfortunately you can't. Instead you go down the rabbit hole of forum entries. The system searches all of adobe, with few to no "hits" from the actual thing your trying to search from. Do a search on surround 5.1 setup and see what happens. Been using Adobe products for over 20 years...Used to be a simple process to get answers. 

[#5]

I see your point. 

A PDF would be nice. 

[#6]

Gull Wave Studio,

You mean the search widget at the top of the page here?

Checking the box on the left for "Premiere Pro" seems to help a little. Very sorry for the frustration. I'll bring this up with the design team.

Thanks,

Kevin

[#7]

Wow! That was difficult. I just spent 45mins trying to find it. I've never not been able to find it reasonably easy, not this time! Seems like Adobe wants to hide these or something and just use the online help??? I even went into chat, and the fellow gave me a few links that weren't working, then from one of them, I finally found another page, which then led to the PDF manual.

Here's the page with all the product help links:

https://helpx.adobe.com/x-productkb/global/offline-help.html

Here's the actual Premiere Pro manual/guide/help:

https://helpx.adobe.com/content/dam/help/en/pdf/premiere_pro_reference.pdf

[#8]

I know! I keep that on both my laptop and desktop, and have the links in a doc file to hand out.

Why is is so durn hard to find? Sheesh!

Neil

[#9]

MyerPJ, thanks for reminding me that I needed to update my pdf list. 

Note that the PR pdf link is for the 2020 release version 14.0, document date 11/4/2019.

Stan

[#10]

PDFs are not going to be updated anymore.

From now on its online only.

And its a big pain in the butt to find something in the online Help. Most of the time I cannot find it.

They changed the content. Here and there some bad explanation. Deleted good info/screenshots.

If i want to look up certain info I have to resort to pdf of older versions...

[#11]

It's a start. But not like an actual software user guide that goes through every function. The info is there.... they wrote the program. Most of the reference docs are still more like quick start guides.

[#12]

The Offline Help reference files are good, and they have a date references on them! I get that the programs are always being developed; so the info is somewhat fluid, but why not just put the guide files (Full User Guide/ reference guides/ Topical Guides), along side the video guides in the support section all with rev codes? Not wanting to perpetuate the rant session; but it should not be this difficult to learn how to use the software in the most efficient way. A simple ask, but quite a bit of work implimenting. None of the current info on-line replaces the full/ complete user guide. Thank you for the discussion. Be safe out there.

[#13]

The entire ACP group has been pushing for years for better documentation for all the Adobe apps. From my experience, I've never met a program manager or engineer that disagreed.

But the M&E types are the ones making such decisions. And they answer that according to their metrics, those types of things are not used and therefore not the place they should be putting efforts to support their users.

So besides posting here, everyone should go to their UserVoice site, search for requests for full user manuals, and UPVOTE them. Those posts and comments are metrics that do get to the M&E people. Nothing in this forum does.

Add comments to the requests for documentation. Detailed!

And post a link back here. I'm on my tablet or I'd add a couple.

Neil

[#14]

Bring back the printed book.

[#15]

getting cheaper and more lax seems to be the future for just about everyone, not just adobe.

My resolve paper manuals don't use chrome stock so printed screenshots bleed into the paper a little, and they are hard to see sometimes, even with magnifying glass.

Oh well, I guess that's why this forum is helpful for adobe users, but certainly not as fast as good help files that are current for the version in use.

On a tangent, here is some info on editing oscars 2021

https://www.msn.com/en-us/movies/oscars/oscars-2021-best-editing-predictions/ar-BB1cASjW?ocid=msedgn... 

[#16]

The PP user guide (PDF) was quite good. It had a ton of info in it. I was reading it every Sunday for about 1/2 hour until March when the shutdown closed the coffee shops - at least sit down dinning. And since I haven't exactly felt like going sitting there even if it was available. I was about 1/2 way thru and picking up tips from it. I hadn't heard the PDF are being discontinued @Ann Bens , that's not very good. They are way better than the online help.