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I would recommend Adobe Premiere Elements 1 because it does everything and doesn't lose any quality. Here's the full review from PC Pro:
COMPANY: Adobe PRICE: £63(£74 inc VAT)
RATING: 5/6 ISSUE: 124 DATE: Feb 05
Verdict: Too complex for the dilettante or absolute beginner, but an amazing amount of power for the money. If you've always wanted Premiere but couldn't afford it, Elements is your answer.
With Premiere Pro facing stiff competition in its traditional high-end market, it's no surprise that Adobe has reworked the engine for less demanding users. The real question is why the company didn't release Premiere Elements sooner.
Elements isn't for the absolute beginner, however. Although Adobe has tidied up the interface considerably compared to its big brother, there's still quite a lot to get to grips with. Anyone used to Premiere Pro will find it familiar. But to help out the newcomer, there's a context-sensitive 'How to' palette offering immediate tips on regularly used activities for the current mode. Buttons on the top right alter the layout context of the app, calling up the media bin during the Edit phase or the filters and transitions palette for Effects. The Capture and Titles modes bring forth separate applets.
The title applet is essentially the same Adobe Title Designer from Premiere Pro, but with a template system attached. Some have criticised the way Adobe has bolted on assistance to Premiere to make Elements, leaving much of the complication intact underneath. However, it's the fact that a large proportion of Premiere Pro's power lies beneath the surface that makes Elements such a ground-breaking release. For example, there are two Effects modes. The first merely lists effects as canned options, which can be dragged to clips on the timeline. But call up Advanced Effects mode and the same finely detailed configuration options as Premiere Pro are revealed, including all the motion control abilities and keyframing of individual parameters.
The range of filters and transitions available is a subset of Pro, but it's a large one and those that are included aren't cut down. Only chroma and alpha keying plus various types of matte system are included, with no luma keys. But you still get the full gamut of Premiere Pro 1.5's automated correctional abilities, such as Shadow/Highlight. The effects can be readily extended because Elements has the same plug-in architecture as Pro. For example, we simply copied the Canopus Imaginate 2 plug-ins from Pro to Elements and were able to use Imaginate's superb image-panning abilities within Elements.
Premiere Elements is also the only app in this price range to offer unlimited video and audio tracks. However, one of Premiere Pro's greatest features has been removed - the tabbed timeline. This means you won't be able to embed sequences within each other to simplify the editing of long, complex projects.
Aside from outputting to tape, Elements can export Windows Media, QuickTime and MPEG. There's also built-in DVD authoring, although it's nowhere near as powerful as Pinnacle Studio's and lacks Dolby Digital 5.1 support. You can create chapter points by marking the timeline, but the menu design is entirely based on templates. Once you've chosen a style, only the text labels can be edited - there's no possibility of altering the embedded background or button graphics.
Although Premiere Pro's real-time rendering engine now lags behind the professional competition, at the sub-£100 end of the market it's relatively sprightly. Canopus' Let's Edit offers true real-time output via FireWire, but Elements at least lets you preview your work by routing DV via your camcorder to a TV. If you're on a budget but still want plenty of editing power, Adobe Premiere Elements 1 is hard to beat. It has a large proportion of Premiere Pro's abilities for less than a seventh of the price.
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