Premiere Elements 8: The Missing Manual

Several years ago I used Premier 5 or 6 when I learned video editing. I recently installed Premier Elements 8 and wanted to get a couple of books to help me figure out how this program handled the basic editing tools. I bought "The Missing Manual," "Classroom in a Book" and "For Dummies." Generally I found "The Missing Manual" to be quite helpful with the basics and oriented to quickly making a template driven video, but less helpful with "create your own video every step of the way." The Classroom in a Book was better at showing details through their project lessons. For instance, I wanted to fade a title in and out for my opening. The Missing Manual has a chapter about titles which never specifically mentions how to accomplish this basic task. Classroom in a Book showed exactly which buttons to click to do this, and how to find them. For me, the two books are complementary and neither is enough by itself.The "For Dummies" book is closer in its approach to the "Missing Manual" in that it is more general. Its strength is that it explains more about using HD cameras that are not tape based.Bottom line is that all three books have different strengths and I find them all useful for my projects.

I am new to Adobe Elements. This book is helpful, or should I say, necessary, for a beginner like me. I'm not computer illiterate, but am not motivated to sit here for hours figuring things out. So the book is helpful to get started. However, I sure wish there were other books on the market to fill in the gaps of this book.It is easy to read and understand, lots of helpful suggestions. Just doesn't 'cover it all' for me. Guess that's not unusual for this type of manual.

This book is easy to read and the step by step directions with pictures make it a fun learning experience. The chapters are well-organized and the information provided is complete--no skipping over important steps. There is an appendix that lists each menu separately and describes each of the items in each menu--a very handy reference.

Adequate manual. I think I actually prefer the "dummies" version. Neither could tell me how to do a very simple "cut out and save" a short clip from a long clip. Luckily found [...] which is a fabulous forum.

I have found the book suffiiciently detailed to enable me to edit a suite of home movies converted from 16mm film to DVD. Note that I am almost 90 but have used comuters for over 40 years!

Not that photoshop is not a good program, but it can be hard to understand. This book made it easy and a great value.

This is my third "Missing Manual" and like all of them very helpful. It's much easier to use than Adobe's "Classroom in a Book", especially when you need to quickly find a specific topic. I only wish that Premier Elements 8 itself was stable enough to use with confidence. Great book supporting a bad program.

Great book for the money. Easy to read and informative. I need a book like this to get around Premiere Elelments 8 and it has been very helpful.

I've used a couple of other manuals in this series and found them excellent but I found this one a little disappointing.It may be because I'm not interested in producing home videos with lots of title gimmicks destined to be exported to a DVD and run on a PC or TV. I suspect - but cannot judge - that the manual covers this application area thoroughly.My interest is in editing video material, perhaps adding voice overs and finally converting it to a FLASH flv file for use, as a streaming video, within FLASH marketing and promotional material. If your interest is similar you may find the organisation of the manual less than optimum and much of the content somewhat irrelevant.But I'm probably in the minority !

Unfortunately the Adobe Premier Elements and Photoshop Elements program is now into version 11 but the Missing Manual publishers advised me (March 2013) that they have no plans to update this version 8 manual. Thats a shame. PLEASE can we have an update soon?