5 comments about Adobe Premiere Elements 2.0 [Old Version].

1. After collecting many reels of digital video tape, I was in the market for an editor to compile them. I bought Pinnacle 10 and was sorely disappointed in that it was supposed to be an improvement over release 8. Not so.
   
   I bought Adobe Premier Elements 2.0 and was a little concerned at the outset in that it seems to have a long learning curve. After using it to produce serveral DVDs I have come to the conclusion that, "old version" or not, it has by far meet my requirements in ease of use, features, and function. The transitions, video effects, ability to control brightness and contrast in individual clips, title editing, and many other features have made my editing a whole lot easier that with other products. One thing that does take time is the burning process. I use the highest possible quality and pay for it with extended processing. Have never experienced a "hang" with this product using 1 Gig of memory on an HP Pavilion, 2.6 Gig processor. This is a great buy.



2. I've been doing video editing for several years now. This package is easy to use and powerful. Loaded with preset effects and templates. The two cons to this program are that it can be picky importing video that it doesn't have a codec for (that's normal, but you can't get the codecs from Adobe or anywhere else in most cases, for example trying to import avi's from Camtasia), and about 50% of the time when you "burn to disc", the burn never completes and ruins a disc. You can get good results though by burning the image to harddrive and using a third party DVD burning software like Nero to render the disc. I would buy it again despite these cons. Hopefully V3 solves some of these problems.



3. I purchased this program along with the package that bundled Photoshop Elements. Both of them are good value for the money for what they do, while they do not have all the features of their bigger cousins they have powerful features for basic and semi-professional looking work depending on your needs.
   
   I work with professional programs and use them on professional works, for basic videos or things that need to look a bit more than basic I use Premiere Elements and Pinnacle Studio which I both own.
   
   While Pinnacle Studio (version 9) has various powerful features including some advanced tools which have various advantages over the very basic editing programs (say iMovie or Windows Movie Maker) like adding professional looking transitions, sound effects filters, more advanced DVD authoring, outputting video in various formats, and even some advanced video transition and effects it is sometimes not enough if you need to add more than two layers of sound or video or require to add a few more advanced video effects.
   
   That said, while I like Pinnacle Studio and various of its advanced features over the more simple programs it is heavily directed towards the standard consumer who just wants to make his/her videos look well. Premiere Elements on the other hand seems to be directed toward the more advanced, enthusiast and semi-professional crowd.
   
   While the manuals and help topics help you get started quickly, I see that it is better to have prior experience with more advanced video editing to be able to understand and use this program better and exploit its capabilities.
   
   Various advantages of this program are the ability of adding and working with more advanced video masks, mattes, more than two layers of video and sound, as well as more control over the sound and video itself in regards to be able to perform and add various effects, not to mention some of the more advanced text and titling tools.
   
   While various aspects of the interface is more simplified than its bigger cousin to make it more average user friendly, various tools could look complicated to the non experienced user (in fact, some of them are meant to be due to their advanced nature).
   
   While quite advanced for the money and its capabilities, Adobe Premiere Elements is not enough for professional or really complicated projects as it may have issues handling those due to lack of tools or a very lage projects complexity.
   
   I would only recommend this software for semi-professional users or video enthusiasts with more than average video editing knowledge.



4. I decided to buy Adobe, partly because of the brand name. As it turns out, I'm looking for another video editing program because this one is so bad.
   I struggled through the capturing and editing steps. Throughout, I ran into snags and error messages. Sometimes a caption or picture would show in the timeline and sometimes not. Sounds like a shortage of memory problem, you're probably thinking. Well, I have 1 G of RAM and plenty of free Hard Drive Space (over 50GB), and yet, I constantly ran into problems.
   I made sure that all other applications were not running and restarted to clear the memory constantly.
   Finally, after struggling through, I completed my project,only to find out that it would NOT burn a DVD. I kept getting "transcoding" errors and "System memory" issues. I followed the troubleshooting guide without success.
   There is no Tech Support unless you pay for it!! What a RIP!! Make a defective product and then, charge to get advice on how to fix it!!! What a racket!!!
   I would have thought Adobe could do better.



5. Started with this software but the new upgrade ( Adobe Photoshop Elements 6 and Premier 4) are vastly superior. Go for the new upgrade, it's great and far superior to his version.

No comments about 3d Home Design Suite Deluxe 3.0.

1 comments about Teach Yourself To Play Guitar.

1. Through amazon I asked CyberCitySoftware to send this product to my brother. It would not run so he sent it to me, more postage. I tried it here and it would not run for me. I was so disappointed I had to go to another vendor to send him an other product he could use. I have all ready spent $17 more to sent a gift that will work. I found no number to call and my first e-mails were returned undelivered. I left a complaint in feedback about my experience with this vendor. Then I was sent me an e-mail saying (I promise you a complete refund once you remove the feedback. If you would remove the feedback that you left we will send a prepaid envelope so that you can get a complete refund). I wrote back (I will be happy to remove my feed back if you will send a prepaid return envelope to the billing address. Then refund the account. In fact I would be very happy to write a positive feedback). They wrote back (Our problem with your solution is that we have found in the past that once customers have there money refunded there is no reason for them to take the time to remove the feedback). I removed the feedback and e-mailed them back that I had. I have gotten no return envelope and no more e-mails.

5 comments about Sony Vegas Movie Studio + DVD.

1. This software is to complicated for the average DV camcorder owner. After reading the full manual all I could produce on DVD was sound no video. I spend weeks reading and following the manual insturctions (poorly written) waisted 20 DVD discs. You need to be an experienced professional who understands how to edit time lines and video tracks and markers. I gave up I deleted it from my computer and the software sits in the box. This is not the software to buy if you only want to put your vacation videos form a DV camcorder onto a DVD. Try using Ulead Movie Factory 5 for slower computers or Movie Factory 6 for faster computers, it is easy to use and understand.



2. Unfortunately, this program does not work at all if you're trying to use movies taken on a digital still camera, because the movie format used on still cameras - Motion JPEG - is not recognized on this program, even though it is recognized on most other video editing programs. I was told by Sony to download the free "CODEC" file available online to solve that problem, which I did, but to no avail. It still doesn't work. Of course, Sony doesn't warn you about this problem when you buy the software.



3. Once I learned how to use the product, it worked great. You may want to have some knowledge of editing software before you use this product. I had done some editing in High School so I had a little knowledge to start with. This software has a lot of features and effects. I have no idea how to use them all, but my movies come out fine.



4. When I looked this over very carefully I ascertained that I was not good enough on the computer to figure this out. I can do most anything I want on my computer but this was too technical.



5. I came from using Adobe Premier 3.0 then later upgraded to 4.0 in December 07 only to find that it was very unstable on both vista and xp platforms (more so on vista). Having lost many hours to crashes I decided to look into Vegas. The result has been a failrly steep learning curve going from Premier to Vegas. Trimming clips (events) and basic editing is pretty standard within both programs. I think vegas is intuitive to a degree as in slow motion and splitting clips but takes some memory to recall all of the key board short cuts. I recently purchased a shuttle express for 45 and man does that aid in scrubbing the timeline quickly... In terms of stability it is excellent. One unexpected close in over 50 hours so far... I would seriously look at this product if you are looking for a stable and very functional product that may take a good week or two before you are comfortable.. but well worth the time invested.

No comments about Adobe GoLive 5.0 Windows.

5 comments about 3D Home Architect Design 6.0 Special Edition (Jewel Case).

1. This program is deceptively packaged so that it appears to do a wide range of building and designing tasks. In truth, the only thing it does is draw a basic floor plan-- no interior design, no interior remodeling, no landscaping, nothing. No where on the product is this stated. In fact, the tutorial TELLS you that the program has landscaping and interior design capabilities. And, it cannot be returned because it is a computer program. So I am complaining to the company. I encourage others who have been mislead to do the same.



2. Tells about being able to add furniture, and other features... but it's not included in this version of the program.



3. This software is crippleware, and at best it is a good DEMO version. They should not be charging for this software. I will not buy another broderbund program again, I really feel like I was given the shaft on this one.



4. This software was sent to me as a $9.95 software package. I thought it would be "no frills" software, it turned out to be the "lite" version, and basically incomplete for my needs. Overall it does not do the job. I had the original 3D home architect which was a fine product, this new one pales by comparison. Indeed virtually worthless. There was no indication that this would be the "lite" version.
   
   I am sorely disapointed.
   
   Further I am getting telemarketing calls using Broderbunds name to sell "junkware"! Overall, a extreme disapointment.



5. if you want to do much with this program it requires you buy more stuff for it to get to a complete design. it is only good for walls and outlines and not that great at that.

No comments about Adobe After Effects 5.5 Production Bundle.

No comments about ClickArt Fonts 15,000, plus 300 Handwritten Fonts.

5 comments about Adobe Creative Suite CS3 Master Collection [OLD VERSION].

1. Adobe CS3 is the most powerful seamlessly integrated creative suite EVER. There is nothing that even remotely compares to this suit. To list feature by feature would take volumes and would not do it justice.
   
   If you are SERIOUS about ALL aspects of web production including multimedia video and audio, special effects, animation, and authoring, this suite does it all.
   
   This is powerful software. You will need a solid system. Because this software is so integrated you will often want 2 to 4 hefty programs running for one project.
   
   For example, I often have Photoshop, Premier, and After Effects running as well as Adobe Bridge. Adobe Bridge is what brings the whole package together. Not only does it make file organization a breeze, it allows you to move a single project from application to application.
   
   I'm running CS3 on a Dell XPS 710 w/ twin 10k hard drives, a 2.4GHz Intel duo core, an NVIDIA 8800 GTX video card and 2GB ram. It handles it, but I will be upgrading to 4GB ram so it will handle it better.
   
   Bottom line, Adobe CS3 AMAZING.



2. This baby was required for my Graphic Arts class. My first thoughts were "What's wrong with my Abode Photoshop 7? & why do I NEED a $965 piece of software?" Well, it turns out that my school's supplier was charging less than half of the retail price, so I shut up.
   .......................................................................
   When it got here, I wasn't happy that I had to install 8 dics that wanted 32 gigs of RAM or that it had more system requirements than a high-end video game. But it does make sence, concidering you're getting InDesign, Illustrator (which I've been wanting), Acrobat 8, Flash (been wanting that too), Dreamweaver (heard good things about it), Fireworks, Contribute, After Effects, Premiere, Soundbooth (if it's like Sound Forge, it's a boon), * Encore as well as Photoshop, so I'll be exploring this stuff for months.
   ....................................................................
   On the plus side, there are Flash tutorials on how to use this stuff; great for people who learn best by watching, doing, & hearing & get distracted when reading. Who knows what kind of cool artistic things I can make, I can even learn to make webtoons!



3. We did discover that the installation of the DVD did not work properly and that the hacks published on Adobe's website did not apply to us. For us to install it we had to put a CS3 map into the root of the station with exactly the same name as on the CD. It is important to maintain exactly the names and all files of the first three application DVD's. You don't have to copy all the other data to that folder, just the application directory content. From there you can run it. All other tips and tricks simply didn't work but this one did. After the intial application install you can add the other components at will directly from the DVD's.
   
   The software itself, well what can you say. It delivers what it stands for and is the #1 in this area. We rather use this then the free ware or cheaper alternatives to save money at the end of the day.
   
   I hope this is helpful for others. GZ



4. If you have Production Studio Premium or other such suites this really is not worth the massive difference in price. Adobe CS3 Master Collection is more hype and fluff then substance. I might have upgraded to this suite from my modestly priced Production Premium $799.00 upgrade if Adobe had not slapped such an outrageous $1999.00 price tag onto it for doing so. Come on, $1999.00? I paid less then that for my original full version of CS Production Studio Premium! Seriously Adobe, $1200.00 more for 5 or 6 added programs of which 2 or 3 I will probably never use? Give me a break! No, I mean it, give us ALL a break! Save your money and just go with CS3 Production Studio Premium, minus Adobe Audition 3.0 of course, you'll have to pay extra for that one since Adobe felt compelled to replace it with Soundbooth, a lesser quality program (thanks a lot Adobe!). In the end I'll say this, Adobe makes some of the best software for film, animation, entertainment, graphics and web design, they just need to work a little bit on better customer service and work ethics and a good place to start would have been making the upgrade for CS3 Master Collection a lot more affordable.



5. Anyone who gives the Master Collection less than five stars obviously doesn't know the product. I spent 4 months in a CS3 Illustrator class in college just learn advanced basics of Illustrator alone.
   User friendly, intuitive and the industry standard over ANY Microsoft product, CS3 Master Collection if for serious geeks like me.
   I cannot imagine trying to handcode HTML or XHTML without the wonders of Dreamweaver. I am much more productive and can crank out large websites in a matter of days instead of weeks. For serious Web designers, this product will pay for itself in the time you save hand coding and such. Worth every penny.
   I would, however, recommend buying Adobe's "Training from the source" books to go along with the software. You can get them cheap used on Amazon or eBay. The books are invaluable in learning the software.

5 comments about Optics Pro Standard v5.2 Software.

1. IF YOU SHOOT WITH A DSLR YOU HAVE TO HAVE THIS PRODUCT, IT'S AUTOMATIC!!



2. Did the DxO press release state that their software will not run on a 64 bit Windows operating system? If so, I missed seeing it... I'm running 64 bit Windows Vista.
   
   After repeated attempts to install from the DxO CD Rom -- without any success -- the installer simply "went away" each time -- I finally got up on a 'DxO Image Science' web page where, after much searching,I found an obscure FAQ column which stated that DxO Pro5 will not run on a 64 bit system.
   
   "Sorry about that" say the DxO people. "We will let you know if and when we update to 64 bit." I wouldn't want to hang that long.
   
   Microsoft, where are you? These people at Image Science actually make your people look good!!! Forgive me O'Lord!!



3. A difficult one to review. First I was sent version 4 even though I clearly bought, as you can see, v5. Luckily I managed to use the v4 activation key to do a manual activation on the web site, get access to v5, and download and install that one instead.
   
   Once you get v5, it's a mixed bag. It appears to be quite a buggy product, failing at random - but when it works it's outstanding. v5.0.4 seems to be a reasonable improvement on the earlier versions, which were dreadful to start with.



4. When DXO works its great. Once again, DXO decided in the middle of my work, that it was a demo copy and had expired!! It would not activate and their web site would only produce "EZ Publish" errors. It activated the next day after two attempts. I work in the field and do not always have access to an internet connection. This is a professional product and after it has been bought and activated I think that I have a right to expect it to work and not get in the way of finishing my projects! This is the third time in about 5 months that it has reverted to a demo copy. It apparently the uses Pace Interlock DRM which can cause all kinds of problems if it decides you are a pirate.
   
   My computer is running XP-Pro, with current patches, DXO was the only application I had running, and I was in the field and NOT connected to the internet.
   
   If wasn't for this problem I would give it 5 stars but it has let me down twice in the middle of a project and I had to use other tools to finish because I couldn't get it to reactivate in a timely manner.



5. This is lazy man's dream: using pre-calculated tables it fixes all distortion in all supported lens and camera bodies. But that's just the start. It saves even the pictures otherwise ruined.
   
   It's especially great for those who can't be bothered with investing half a lifetime in mastering Photoshop. It's a lot easier and more intuitive that Lightroom and any other RAW converter. Works with tiff/jpg as well.
   
   It's the best piece of software I ever purchased. Period :)