Adobe Upgrades to Premiere Elements 4.0

September 24, 2007 – This morning Adobe announced a major upgrade to their popular consumer-friendly editing software, Premiere Elements. The new upgrade to version 4.0 strikes an uncanny resemblance to the new features in Apple iMovie ’08, including improved organizing tools for clips and one-touch themes.

It seems that most every manufacturer of camcorders and editing software has their sights set on the same target: optimization for online video sharing. The press release from Adobe quotes John Loiacono, senior vice president of Creative Solutions at Adobe, stating explicitly that the upgraded Premiere Elements 4.0 has “the ability to upload movies to the Web in Adobe Flash Player compatible video, the ‘YouTube ready’ format.”

 

Channeling the name of YouTube into press releases has been a major trend this year as companies vie to associate themselves with the enormously popular site. From the Sony NSC-GC1 to the Pure Digital Flip Ultra to numerous editing platforms, every company is aiming to ease the path to video uploading. Premiere Element 4.0 also offers export settings for video iPods, iPhones, and Blu-Ray discs.

 

One of the other significant upgrades to Premiere Elements 4.0 is the Organizer tool. Similar to the one found on Photoshop Elements 5.0, the Organizer is designed to help group and classify video clips, and to simplify the movie creation process. In practice, the Organize function looks similar to the iMovie ’08 interface, replacing a timeline with a clip track. While this certainly makes the process more intuitive for beginners, critics railed against the changes in iMovie, citing that the interface had been too simplified.

A screenshot from the Organizer tool

 

While the sample videos on Adobe’s product page do come off a bit hokey, the level of sophistication that the company has reached in their automation tools is impressive. The new version of Premiere Elements includes an audio feature that detects the beats in an imported audio track, then edits the clips according to the beats. Also included in the upgrade are improved one-touch themes that automate graphics, transitions, and titles for events like vacations and holidays.

The Detect Beats tool

 

Adobe Premiere Elements 4.0 is available as a standalone download for $99.99, or as an upgrade for $79.99. The software is also available as a bundle with Photoshop Elements 6.0, also released today. Both programs are available immediately for download.