[Shimrod]

I bought the photoshop 5/premiere elements 3 bundle last year, and whilst I use photoshop a lot, I've not yet really got into the video editing, beyond transferring all the tapes to hard drive.

I upgraded to Vista 64 earlier this year, and elements 3 is not compatible - I've downloaded the demo of version 4 and that works fine.

At the time, the bundle option seemed the best option, but as I've now got to buy premier elements again, is it still the best 'starter' package, or should I be looking at something else. I don't want to do anything fancy beyond getting several hours of holiday footage down into a short enough film we can then force the family & friends to watch!

[senu]

Its called ver 7 actually
The packages are generally as good as each other and the differences are more about Hardware requirements, GUI and how you get on with it. No one package has it all

Up till recently Première Elements did not support AVCHD and it wasn't felt to be as newbee freindly as some and but that is about it


HTH Sorry if it is a bit vague

[Shimrod]

Well fancy that, they've updated it again while I wasn't looking. The bundle was definitely photoshop 6 and premiere 4 when I downloaded them - I guess it was longer ago than I thought.

I'll download the latest versions, and if the interface is still ok, I'll probably stick with adobe.

Thanks.

[senu]

They skipped nos with Permiere elements to make it & along with Photshop Elements

HERE


I never even got to use Ver 4 ( it remains in its packaging in my study with PShop E6)

[Shimrod]

Well I see version 7 isn't available until mid October - I'll put off my upgrade until it comes out and check out the trial version then.

[brookie]

I got Sony Vegas on Amazon for <£30 (not always that cheap) having previously used Premiere Elements 1 and 2.

Once I forced myself to learn the new package I found it stable and faster.

Worth at look if you can get a good price. There's a free trial of course.

Will probably migrate to Final Cut when the new Macs come out in the next few weeks.

[mircea]

Definitely something else!
If you don't use advanced editing, there are NLE far more easy to use.
For now I use Nero Vision 5 (comes with Nero package). It's very easy to use, has smartrendering even for AVCHD (unlike many other expensive NLE, it does nor render output file if it's nor necesarry), supports many formats, it's fast and reliable.
You could download a trial and check if it's ok for your basic editing.

[senu]

As much as I like Nero Vision (5), its simplicity and low system load are more attractive to me than features

I agree that complicated NLE is a PITA but most can be learnt and Vegas is remarkbly easy once you get past the initial unfamiliarity of it GUI
For AVCHD , definitely Nero scores high
but for DV AVI from MiniDV tapes , Im sure APE is OK

Whichever you chose, it has to work with 64bit Vista though