Summary: Adobe Premiere Elements 4 (11/2007)
    Enhancements and Visual Tour

    by Douglas Dixon

New Features Summary
Features and Enhancements
Visual Tour - Interface and Functions

A summary of the new Adobe Premiere Elements 4 -- 
    Key new features and enhancements, and a visual tour of the interface and functions.
    (See also Summary - Photoshop Elements 6)

Adobe describes Premiere Elements 6 as the best-selling consumer video-editing software. This upgrade is designed to offer easy and flexible ways to create home movies with amazing video and audio effects in just minutes, and then share them on DVDs, via mobile devices or upload them directly to YouTube and other social networking sites.

The pricing is unchanged: Premiere Elements 4 is $99 list ($79 street); 
or $149 list ($135 street) bundled with Photoshop Elements 6.

New Features Summary

• Updated interface: clean, easy-to-use
• Tight integration with Photoshop Elements
• Shared Organizer, common database accessible from either application
      Sort video clips and still photos
      Visual tagging to categorize by people, places, events
•  Apply event- or style-based movie themes to make a polished movie
• Audio Mixer like a mixing board in a recording studio
• Edit to beat - Automatically detects tempo of musical soundtrack
      Syncs scenes with the beats for slideshows and movies
• Sharing Center: upload and share on disc, Web, mobile devices, Apple iPhone
• Export to Web sites in Adobe Flash Player compatible video
• Movies in high definition, including Blu-ray Disc

See earlier article on Easier Editing with Adobe Premiere Elements 3
Find related Adobe articles in the Manifest Tech Blog

    Find Adobe Premiere Elements 4 on Amazon.com
Find the Adobe Photoshop Elements 6 & Premiere Elements 4 bundle on Amazon

Features and Enhancements

    Key new features and enhancements in Premiere Elements 4.

Easy / Intuitive Interface

• New - Intuitive Interface, clean, easy-to-use workspace
      Familiar feel of Adobe Photoshop Elements
• Darker appearance, Color-coded tabs
      Images pop out from gray background
      Edit > Preferences > User Interface - Brightness
• Convenient tools location
• Sceneline (storyboard) and Timeline views
• New - Organizer for media management shared with Photoshop Elements
      Common database accessible from either application
• Visually tag video clips and photos to categorize by people, places, or events.
• View, search, sort assets in a variety of ways - file name, tag, date, time
• Supports dual-core or multiple processor systems,
      Advanced multi-threading technology, and Hyper-threading Technology
      on latest Intel Pentium processors running Microsoft Windows XP or Vista

   
        Premiere Elements 4 interface - Edit - Storyline
            - Monitor panel (top left) - Current clip
            - Tasks panel (top right) - Edit workspace, Organizer view of available media
                   Album / Keyword Tags panel in center to apply to clips
            - My Project panel (bottom) - Storyline (storyboard) to arrange clips, apply transitions and effects
            (With interface gray background adjusted brighter)

Movie Making Shortcuts

• New - Movie Themes - Turn a sequence of scenes into a polished movie
• Event-based - including Wedding and Birthday
• Style-based - including Silent Film and Music Video
• Automatically applies transitions, music, layouts for titles, credits, and disc menus
• Apply themes to entire projects or just the portions you specify
• Integrated media Organizer

New and Enhanced Editing Options - Creative Effects

• New - Scene detection - automatically split footage into individual scenes
      Displays as thumbnails in the Sceneline or Timeline
• New - Name files based on time and date shot for fast search
• New special effects and transitions - Hundreds of customizable special effects and transitions
• Over 20 new transitions:
      3D Explosions, 3D Transformations, Art Blends, Motion Blends
• 10 new effects: Old Film, Airbrush, and Earthquake
• Browse effects by visual thumbnails, drag and drop to apply to video,
      modify with slider controls
• New - Image Stabilizer filter for shaky camera
• Blue/Green Screen keying effect - replace background
      New - Automatically detect and remove blue / green screen background
• New - Animated titles - Adobe fonts designed to look great on video
      Customize with shadows, glows, effects
      Animate to bounce, spin, zoom
• New - Audio Mixer - Easy audio mixing and refinement
      Works like a mixing board in a recording studio
      Adjust relative volumes with sliders: dialog, background music, sound effects
• New - Edit to the Beat - Create slide shows and movies that move to the music
      Automatically detects tempo of musical soundtrack
      Syncs beginning and end of each scene with the beats
• HD support, including Blu-ray Disc

More Ways to Share - Share easily in cool ways

• New - Sharing Center - Share in multiple ways
      Disc, Web, mobile devices, direct upload to YouTube
• Share to Web - Direct upload to YouTube or personal website
      Export to Web sites in Adobe Flash Player compatible video
• Share to mobile devices - Apple iPods, Sony PSP, mobile phones, Apple iPhone
• New - Share in HD, including Blu-ray Disc
• New - Burn to DVD and Blu-ray disc in a few steps
• New - Customizable interactive disc menus
• Start with professionally designed menu templates
• Then personalize: type text, drag and drop video clips, images, audio
• Automatically creates scene indexes / chapters with links to video clips

Minimum System Requirements include

• Intel Pentium 4 or Celeron 1.3GHz (or compatible);
      Pentium 4.3 GHz processor required for HD or Blu-ray
• Microsoft Windows XP SP 2 or Windows Vista
• For Windows XP: 512MB of RAM (1GB required for HD or Blu-ray)
• For Windows Vista: 1GB of RAM (2GB required for HD or Blu-ray)
• Microsoft DirectX 9 or 10 compatible sound and display driver

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Visual Tour -- Interface and Features

    A visual tour of Premiere Elements 4 interface elements and associated features.

Interface

• Monitor panel
• Tasks panel - workspaces
      Edit movie - Create Menus for DVD / Blu-ray - Share movie
• My Project panel - Sceneline / Timeline
• Floating panels, hidden by default:
• - Info panel - Information about selected item
• - History panel - Undo list
• - Events panel - Errors / messages
• - Audio Meters, Audio Mixer
• Drag and drop to move / resize / dock (hold down Ctrl)
      Use Window > Show Docking Headers to see names of panels

   
        Premiere Elements 4 interface - Edit - Timeline
            - Monitor panel (top left)
            - Tasks panel (top right) - Edit workspace, Project view
            - My Project panel (bottom) - Timeline with multiple tracks of video and audio

Tasks panel - Workspaces

• Edit (orange) - clips into movie
• Create Menus (purple) - for DVD / Blu-ray
• Share (green) - export / upload movie

   
        Edit - Effects
            - Monitor panel (top left) - View clip with effects applied
            - Tasks panel (top right) - Edit workspace, Effects selected

Monitor panel - Edit and preview

• Preview and edit clips, apply effects, create titles, position overlay images and text
• Trim and split clips, drop filters and effects on a frame,
• Create picture-in-picture effects, type titles and text on screen
• Shows Text tools when editing titles
• Becomes Disc Layout panel for Create Menus workspace

   
        Edit - Titles
            - Monitor panel (top left) - Text tools
            - Tasks panel (top right) - Edit workspace, Titles with presets

My Project panel

• Sceneline (storyboard) - Arrange clips, apply titles, transitions, effects
      Drag and drop thumbnails of clips
      New - copy and paste thumbnails
• Timeline - Trim, layer, ands synchronize multiple tracks of media
      View starting and ending point of each event to synchronize multiple events
      Up to 99 audio and video tracks for sophisticated results

Edit workspace - Acquire, organize, arrange, edit media

• Media - view, sort, select captured and imported media
      Project view - media
      Organizer view - shared w/ Photoshop Elements
      Get Media view - Acquire from hard disk, camcorders, Internet
          DVD, Digital Camera, Mobile Phone, Hard Drive Camcorder, Card Reader
          DV Camcorder, HDV Camcorder, Webcam
          Files and Folders
          Internet
          Stop Motion
• Themes - apply automated movie themes
• Effects - Effects and presets
• Transitions - Transitions
      Select and click Edit Effects / Transitions to edit - Properties
• Titles - Preformatted titles

   
        Edit workspace - Add effects - Audio
            - Tasks panel (top right) - Edit workspace, edit Effects properties
            - My Project panel (bottom) - Timeline with audio tracks expanded to keyframe waveforms

Create Menus workspace - DVD / Blu-ray

• Media - same as Edit workspace
• Templates - Preformatted menu templates

   
        Create Menus workspace - Scene menu - Design DVD
            - Tasks panel (top right) - Create Menus workspace , Templates for main and scene menus
            - Monitor panel (top left) - Scene index menu template, edit to customize

Share workspace

• Export on disc, upload to Web, share on mobile devices, Apple iPhone
• QuickShare - Save preset options
• Disk - Burn DVD and Blu-ray 
• Online - Direct upload to YouTube, FTP to other websites
• Personal Computer - Export for viewing on PCs
      Adobe Flash Video
      MPEG
      DV AVI
      Windows Media
      QuickTime
• Mobile Phones and Players - Export for mobile devices
      Apple iPod and iPhone - H.264 640x480
      Audio Podcast - H.264 / MP3
      Creative Zen - WMV 320x240
      Microsoft Zune - WMV 320x240
      Pocket PC - WMV 240x176
      Smartphone - WMV 224x128 landscape, 176x144 portrait
      Sony PSP - H.264  320x240
      Mobile Phone - 3GP - MPEG4 176x144, 320x240, 352x288 H.263
• Tape - Record to DV or HDV

 
    Share - Upload to YouTube

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