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| ![Adobe Premiere Elements 4 [OLD VERSION]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/514004mQS4L._SL160_.jpg)
 enlarge | From: Adobe
Category: Software
Buy New: $99.99
New (12) from $44.95
Avg. Customer Rating:  80 reviews
Format: Dvd-rom
Platforms: Windows Vista, Windows Xp
Media: DVD-ROM
Operating System: Windows Vista
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 7.6 x 5.3 x 1.3
MPN: 25530473
Model: 25530473
UPC: 883919136127
EAN: 0883919136127
Release Date: October 5, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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| Customer Reviews:
 Works on my XP computer, Great DVD quality November 10, 2007
21 out of 22 found this review helpful
I bought this software to replace my older Pinnacle 10 software because it had poor DVD quality when viewing on the new LCD flat screen TV's, kind of like watching through Venetian blinds. I re-made some Pinnacle 10 videos using PE4. The DVD quality is now excellent.
When I first used the capture feature, I had trouble with it. I didn't find any info in the troubleshooting or knowledge base, so I called customer support. They connected me with a guy who really knew his stuff. He walked me through some tests and after removing some stray files from the pinnacle 10 uninstall and fixing a windows registry, all was well. A+ for customer support!
As of now, I made five DVD videos using all features without crashes. I like how you can add as many audio and video layers in the timeline as needed. You can pre-render sections with multiple layers to allow for smooth preview. On my older machine, this really helps. I don't have an HD camcorder, but I did import a MPEG4 HD file made off my HDTV wonder tuner card just as a test. I was able to edit it and burn to re-writable DVD. The picture quality wasn't HD, but as good as any store bought DVD.
Hardware/Software:
Camcorder- Sony, DCR TRV950 using IEEE1394 DV capture
Computer- 2.8GHz Pentium 4
Memory- 2G DDR
Video Card- ATI, Radeon 9800 pro w/128M RAM, 8X AGP
Tuner- ATI, HDTV Wonder
Hard Drives- Two 250G EIDE
OS- Windows XP home edition
Video capture and editing- Adobe Premier Elements 4
Still picture editing- Adobe Photoshop 6
Vector drawing- CorelDraw 11
 A Big Disappointment October 10, 2007
19 out of 30 found this review helpful
I purchased this product because I wanted to upload better quality videos to YouTube. The item description for this product states - "Broadcast far and wide by uploading your movies directly to YouTube or your personal sharing page. Adobe Premiere Elements 4 takes care of optimizing and formatting for the specific destination so your movies always look great." Unfortunately, that is completely untrue. The product's presets for YouTube result in a final video stream that is inferior in quality to most of the videos that are currently on YouTube. It is definitely inferior in quality to the MP4 files that I had been previously using. Therefore, it does not optimize for the specific destination. In addition, it does not allow you to adjust the YouTube presets so if you want to upload your file directly from Premiere Elements 4, there is no way to make any adjustments to improve the overall quality. On top of this, I am completely unable to directly upload any videos to YouTube, bad quality or not, since the program keeps giving me an error message that says "Online service encountered an error. The service will now be terminated. 10: unable to send HTTP request with GetLastError of 12002".
Over the past two days I have spent hours on the phone with their technical support staff trying to troubleshoot this connection error. After trying many many different configurations, the problem has not been solved and I can escalate the case to a higher level of tech. support. But of course, why should I bother wasting my time on all of this tech. support if even after the connection issue is fixed, it uploads such poor quality videos? The tech. support staff even agreed with me that the YouTube preset is not of the highest quality or what it should be. Since they are unable to answer alot of my questions, they have referred me to filing a "feature request" on the adobe website and/or emailing their corporate office. So I can waste more of my time being a beta tester on this new product. They really should have worked out all of these bugs BEFORE they released the product.
So basically, Adobe Premiere Elements 4 does not do anything that I purchased it to do. If you are looking to quickly and easily upload better quality videos to YouTube, this product is not for you. Stick with what you have. It probably does a better job.
 Works great for me! Vista, YouTube, and more November 10, 2007
18 out of 20 found this review helpful
I got this program as part of the Adobe Photoshop Elements 6 and Premiere Elements 4 bundle (which I think is one of the best values for the home photo/video editor). I use a fairly pricey video editing (Sony Vegas) package at our business, but needed a powerful yet inexpensive (a relative term, I know) package to use at home. Here are my observations:
Premiere Elements 4:
Since most of my editing is done on higher dollar packages at work, I was just looking for a home software package to quickly assemble clips, make photo slide shows, and to convert clips for upload to YouTube. This package surprised me with it's drag and drop ease of use. It is fantastic for the home user and does exactly what it says it is going to do. One note about the YouTube integration, it is nothing short of fantastic! I had a clip that was just too big to upload and my expensive work software just was too hard to get the file size and quality they require. Using Premiere Elements, I was able to drop in the large clip, indicate it was for YouTube, and the software did the rest...Including logging in and uploading it to my account right from inside the program. No muss, no fuss, just as advertised!
I have a fairly powerful PC: Intel Dual Core, Vista Ultra, 4 Meg RAM, 1 T HD, etc. So perhaps my set up is keeping me free from the crashes that other reviewers have experienced.
I am very pleased with it for my purposes.
 Crash Crash Crash - Awful December 1, 2007
18 out of 20 found this review helpful
I downloaded the trial version of Premiere Elements 3 and it worked great. I have a JVC Hard Drive camcorder that records in mpeg format. Elements 3 worked great for it and was able to create some cool videos. When I was ready to buy at the end of the trial, Elements 4 was out and was the only option to download from the site. I purchased it. Bad move. Every time I try to upload more than one file at a time it crashes, and when I try to generate a final product to video it always crashes during rendering. I haven't completed one project. I have ended up using the software provided from JVC lately to do some things I had to do, but would like to use a more advanced program.
I have complained to Adobe through phone and email and have not received a refund or any help for that matter in resolving my issue. One time on the phone they had me re-install the software and wouldn't wait on the phone to do it. They said to call back if I was still encountering the issue. This is after I told them I already tried that more than twice before calling. I am very literate in software and had tried that and many other options before calling.
How can a company like Adobe release something this bad? February 22, 2008
18 out of 20 found this review helpful
I'd give it zero stars if one could choose that.
The product is not worth the money or the frustration. It is very `buggy' and nearly unsupported. When using standard definition video, it is somewhat stable but still prone to crashing. So, much so that after nearly every operation, one will become a habitual clicker of "Save" because without developing that habit, a lot of work is lost.
Just to be clear, my machine meets the standards on the box for HD video. To rule out issues with installed software and such as their useless Technical Support documents will blame, after having a lot of problems, I took a blank hard drive, loaded XP (to avoid known issues with Vista), all the XP updates and then Adobe Premier. I then started to create a 15 minute movie from AVI files created by converting MOV file with the codecs found only after the XP and PE 4.0 installations.. All the errors occurred here as well. I had to use AVI files because the software crashed consistently when using MOV files (Quicktime files, and no matter what it says on the box about support for them, it is not really true).
The problems get far worse and more frequent when using HD sources of 720i or more. When using HD video the software will crash often with projects greater than 10 to 15 minutes. The crashes can be very frequent and more so when editing titles.
Playback is also problematic and has obvious `memory leaks, because when run too long or too often, the playback will freeze the video and sound will continue. This makes one wonder how much testing was done prior to release of the product since it is obvious that no memory testing could have been done of this would have been found.
The use of various video formats rely on codecs that Adobe does not supply nor does it maintain total compatibility with them. Even something as common as Quicktime (MOV files), which Adobe does not support without a download of the Quicktime software from Apple, is problematic causing crashes when rendering a project or attempting to "Share" (output to DVD or other format). All of the files that were used in project that crash in PE 4, play fine in Quicktime itself. So, they need to be converted, usually to AVI but the code does not link to the Quicktime DLL correctly and crashes.
Another odd thing is that one of their support documents will tell you that if you have problems, to "Share" your project video as DVD AVI. For HD, one would assume this means DVD AVI Widescreen, the most obvious choice. However, this does not result in a full HD AVI, in fact is rendered at only 720 X 480, and actually saved in 4:3 but played back in !6:9. There are no option to change the settings for DVD AVI. You will loose the whole reason fro using HD, resolution.
The HD "capabilities" of the software are not really there, but just added on top of some old C++ code from prior version and it does not work.
Examples of common other failures that Adobe does not address on their web site nor acknowledge follow.
Premier Elements errors when opening some projects after creating all graphic views in the TimeLine, and this while Task Manager does not show any spike or near limit use of memory or page file:
"Adobe Premier Elements is running low on system memory. Please save your project and process with caution."
How Premier is making this determination is beyond me but what is obvious is that it is the first indicator that even their software engineers knew it was about to crash and did this so often, they needed to warn you of the impending doom created by their poorly written code. What is is really saying is, "the code is a bit lost right now and because we've no error handling in the code, it will soon crash but please don't be upset, we warned you!"
An occasional crash when saving a project:
AppName: adobe premiere elements.exe AppVer: 4.0.0.0 ModName: kernel32.dll
ModVer: 5.1.2600.2180 Offset: 0001eb33
A common crash when editing titles. I get this one every 15 to 30 minutes and sometimes after editing titles 3 or for times no matter how much time has passed. Could be just a few minutes.
AppName: adobe premiere elements.exe AppVer: 4.0.0.0 ModName: medialayer.dll
ModVer: 4.0.0.0 Offset: 0033bfb8
There are also C++ runtime errors, indicating also that a lot of the code is legacy cove from MS Visual C++ and even way back then they did not include any error checking or handlers in their code!
You'll get no place with this and if you read their forms and other multimedia forums, you'll find these errors are very common.
Avoid this product.
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