Adobe announced recently the November release of its Premiere Elements 8 package, their consumer video editor. Here’s what’s new.
Version 8 comes a year after their version 7 release, although in reality only 6 releases exist (the version numbering jumped from v4 to v7 last year). The package sells for about $100 USD at retailers, and it’s also compatible with Windows 7.
This new version has a new sync feature that allows you to view pictures and videos on all your PCs at home, automatically. The Organizer now comes with a Fullscreen view, that helps the overall enjoyment of your playback clips, while the auto-analyzer adds “interest points” to your clips based on how much you worked on them, and on their visual quality.
The biggest new features include the “smart” decisions that PE8 takes on your footage automatically. SmartFix fixes the shakiness of your footage, lighting, and color. SmartTrim automatically cuts out the uninteresting parts of the video (based on some analysis algorithm), and the SmartMix makes sure that your music doesn’t overpower the clip’s main audio.
Another major feature is motion tracking. You can now add text or graphics on your video, and have them set to move automatically on the screen depending how your main subject moves. To help you do that, there’s now a big library of animations, objects, graphics to choose from.
There are also new effects, like motion blur, and a cartoon effect, and a number of new transitions.
Overall, Premiere Elements 8 proved stable, and pretty fast (although it takes a while to install, and load each time). It requires at least 2 GB of RAM for HD editing, but that’s to be expected.
However, there is not a lot flexibility regarding the project properties in a way that doesn’t feel canned and pre-determined by the software. While this software is meant for consumers, we should not forget that there are video users who do need the power, but don’t have the thousands of dollars to buy Premiere Pro.
Given that Sony now sells their Vegas Movie Studio HD for $40, and their Platinum edition for $80 (a version that’s much more flexible than Premiere Elements), it really begs the question if Adobe can keep up such dumbed down software for much longer and charge so much for it.
Nevertheless, if you don’t need the flexibility (or 24p support), Premiere Elements 8 will do the job.
Rating: 7/10
I refuse to upgrade until they have a full 64bit version out the door.
sony apparently demoed a 64bit visa version but nowhere on the site says you can buy a 64bit version..
its a shame both companies are seriously lacking on the 64bit front
Adobe is not going to release a 64 bit version anytime soon. Premier elements is the consumer package and they’re doing the same thing they’ve done with Photoshop Elements. Restrict it to 32 bit architecture and limit the number of operations it can perform in 16 bit colour space.
http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/vegaspro
Sure, Sony’s been selling the 64-bit version for about a year+ now. It’s only available for the Pro version though.
WOW..
Its amazing to think whilst users actually gave a damn about how productive software was 10 years ago, that these days all users care about are the technical specifications. If you guys think that 64bit support will change your life in any way, I hate to shock you, but it probably wont. But sure, boycott 32bit software if you want (because it will make SUCH a major impact for a consumer movie editing package that probably would have trouble using 1GB of RAM), but maybe also stop and ask yourselves, what would be gained, other then the smug satisfaction that your memory usage is less efficient, and encoding is slightly (but barely noticeably) faster.
It looks interesting. After the release of Windows 7, I am actually strongly considering upgrading our iMac to Windows 7(because OSX has so many weird bugs).Unfortunately, it is too expensive (compared to iLife) for me to use this. It simply isn’t cost effective
lol your an imbecile you obviously fail to understand about process space and ram mapping and swapping when process size is hit. You think consumer movie editing packages have trouble using a gb of ram? wow.. truly an idiot.
Yes I will not upgrade my version of elements until it can use all 16gb ram on my current box.
EDIT: Never mind
Edited 2009-10-20 20:38 UTC