I admit, I can be really cheap about stuff. I buy quite a few things from the discount resellers like Tuesday Morning, Big Lots and even a horde of dollar type stores. Sometimes I find some really good things for cheap and sometimes I get crap. Sometimes I buy cheaply because I’m too lazy to deal with the full version of something or if it doesn’t work with what I have at home. Mostly it’s just out of curiosity.

In the not too recent past I managed to snag a great copy of Adobe Premier Elements 2.0 from Half Price Books. Greatest buy ever even if it only runs on my 4 yr old net-book. It was worth being able to edit movies from my DVR discs to get rid of ads and such. Finding out I could do such was a Godsend for me. I also use it to get clips for gifs to post to sites. Great buy for $20 bucks when it’s worth at least twice that. So when I tried to load it on my newer Lenovo recently I was told by my PC that it was NOT compatible. Kind of odd a 5 or so year old program isn’t compatible with my new PC while a 10 yr old version of Adobe Photoshop 6.0 (yes I have a version that old) actually runs without an issue on this box. Well I didn’t sweat it but it was annoying. I’ve been too lazy to set up my KVM switch to hook the laptop up to the monitor but I still need to clean up to get a table to get all these things to be near each other and work, so for now, I just deal.

So today I went to Best Buy (Saturday that is) and I randomly bought a package which included both Adobe Photoshop and Premiere 10 Elements in one box for cheap. Notice I used the word “cheap” here. That’s important to note. So I could have just bought Premiere Elements 10 alone but it was $70 by itself so I figured this was a good deal getting them for about $50 each. I get home, load Premiere only up and find that while it’s “cheap” and I saved 40 or so bucks, it is freezing up my machine which normally doesn’t freeze up. Plus it’s nothing like the version I got 5 yrs ago which was easier to use.

Background: My understanding (and tell me if I’m wrong) but isn’t the “Elements” version of Adobe supposed to be

• 1) for people who can’t use the full version
• 2) for people who don’t know and have no patience to LEARN the full version
• 3) for people who don’t want all the crap that comes with the full copy
• 4) for people who can’t afford the full copy (technically I get the academic discount but choose not to use that at this time)

Ok so getting those items out of the way, and the fact it’s supposed to be “user friendly” this is about the LEAST user friendly software I have ever encountered and I am a big fan of  Adobe. I am always getting people to use / buy their software. I am recommending it to everyone I could because I love it. I can’t say I like this program. Premiere 2.0 was a lovely updated copy of the ancient version. I liked that. It was clear cut and easy to figure out even without much effort. Version 10 is NOT friendly in the least. First off it froze up three times while I tried to upload clips off a DVD which it is supposed to be able to do. The disc is from my DVR so it’s not a professional disc but the old copy on my laptop, while a slower machine, never froze up on me taking media off a disc. So finally I had to just save the VOB files to my desktop and it still acted up but accepted the files.

HINT: DON’T import directly off a disc. I know it’s not my PC because it’s been acting fine up until this moment before I installed THIS software.

And the quality sucks a bit. Not sure what was up but the menu quality is lacking and I put it at high quality and on the editor it looked quite clear. Playing it back afterwards on the PC it looked fuzzy. I’m going to investigate if I can make my own backgrounds for the menu. I have a pet project and a show I like to record so I might make something special for that series to add to the discs. Otherwise the actual show quality seemed ok. It was just the menus were fuzzy so that was disappointing. I don’t have HD yet so that could be part of it.
Comments are welcomed. I want to know if I am the only one who thinks this newer version of this program is not that user friendly when they sell it as something any person off the street could use. That has been my impression of these “Elements” programs. If that’s changed, I’ll shut up on that part. I’m still not happy it’s freezing up. That’s just bad programming on Adobe’s part.

/rant