Adobe Premiere Elements 10

Pros: I should preface this review with the statement that I've had no formal education or training with movie editing - everything I know has been self taught from tutorials online. I am BY NO MEANS an expert at this kind of thing!

I've been using free movie editing software (avidemux) for a while, however I needed something with more options - and this has had all the options I've needed so far, mainly the ability to add text at the beginning and end, and having transitions between clips. I can see a lot of options for cutting clips, modifying lighting, options for editing audio, etc.

I have no complaints with the versatility of the options in this program - it's delivered in spades in that regard.

Cons: Only snag I ran into so far (and still trying to get a handle on) is actually saving your movie. It's far too complicated.

First, it's under an innocuous tab called "share", which took me about 20 minutes to figure out (I don't want to share my movie with anyone, I just want to save it!). Then it asks you unnecessary questions related to what you want to do with the movie.

Then after you choose something that's closest to what you want, it sets you up with settings that are absolutely NOT what you want.
That means you have to dive right into the advanced options and micromanage every little thing about the clip.

I've spent hours and hours trying to figure out the optimal settings, researching sites online etc. and frankly, I still haven't figured them out. Even when I try to manually match the original settings as closely as possible, down to the codec, FPS and bitrate, I always get something undesirable, like black space on the sides, or filesizes that are way way too h

Other Thoughts: I can see what you were trying to do with the save ... or "sharing" (why would you call it that!?) ... options, but you failed miserably. If you had an option to "match original clip settings", or at the very least match them as closely as possible, I would've jumped on to that and never let go. It would've gotten you 5 eggs from me as well.

Also, the "hand holding" interface is a bit much in this program - it just slows things down (not enough to take away another egg though). Give us an option to turn that off!

Lastly, for anyone new to movie editing, you do need a relatively beefy computer to do so - at least a quad core CPU and a GPU with at LEAST 2 gigs / 128 bit OR 1 gig / 256 bit. It'll still work if you don't have that kind of hardware, but you'll have very very long render times, i.e. over an hour to render (save) a 5 minute HD movie.

As usual, newegg services were awesome!

Pros: does what it says it does

Cons: save money if you want both and get the dual pack. Or if you can get this at a discount and dont need both grab it.

Other Thoughts: This software comes in adobe photoshop elements and adobe premier in one package. If you can get either for a discount and dont want/ need the other grab it. Also Video editing requres a lot of system resourses. If you have minimum requirements and programs running in the background, you might have problems. So follow tech support suggestions top companies like adobe usually have good support.

Pros: None. Cannot get it to run on a machine that meets the system requirements.

Cons: Cannot get it to work.

Other Thoughts: You apparently need a supercomputer to get it to run. Our machine met the basic requirements and it just hangs. Tried to get advice from the Adobe forum and their advice was to "tune" my computer to get it to work and they criticized the fact that our RAM was too low - even though it met the system requirements. So if you want software to edit your home videos and you do not have a degree in computer science and/or have a super computer - STAY AWAY, FAR FAR AWAY!

Pros: I've been using Adobe Premiere Elements Vers. 2 and 3 for quite a while. I love those products for editing the dv-avi files I use.

One of the nicest things about Adobe is the ordering of their timeline. #1 is below #2 and so on. So when you place a video on the timeline above another video, it covers the underlying video just the way it is supposed to. Not like most NLE programs that for some crazy reason have it all backwards.

Cons: I gave it only 3 eggs because in this version 10 they fluffed it all up for newbies and doing the simplest of things like I did in Vers. 3 is now cluttered with user cuteness. I didn't like that compared to Vers. 3.

If all you do is dv-avi files go find vers. 3 But, if you do all the newer Web mp4 stuff, get this one.

If you never used Adobe before, the fluff won't even bother you cause you won't know its there.