Premiere Elements 9 Downgraded

Question

It's amazing how Adobe manages to make newer versions of Premiere Elements worse than earlier versions.
I've been playing with Elements 9 for 15 minutes and I'm already totally turned off.
In the latest version (Premiere Elements 9) you can no longer use the left and right arrow keys to scrub through a clip. This is rediculous. These arrow keys have been an integral part of Premiere since its first incarnation released in the 1990s.
Adobe has also removed the thumbnail view in the Project window. I really liked the thumbnails because you could use them to "Storyboard" a program. Not any more.
The Motion Tracking feature simply does NOT work on my computer. Place a clip on the Timeline, click the clip to select it, and then click the Motion Tracking burtton. Absolutely nothing happens. Very impressive.
In my opinion, Premiere Elements 3 was the best version of this software that Adobe ever released. Since then, it's been nothing but a series of hopelessly buggy crash-prone applications in versions 4 though 9.
This should be an embarassment to Adobe, but they really don't seem to care.
Thank goodness I have Premiere Pro CS5 and this IS a reliable product. However, we use Premiere Elements in the courses I teach at a local University. Every year I have to tell all my students to "wait for the next release, maybe it will be better." It never happens.
Myron Achtman
Vice President
ADITA Video Inc.

Answer 1

I do agree that PrE 3 had a lot going for it, if for no other reason, than the GUI was more like PrPro 1.0 and 2.0.
However, I have never found PrE 4.0 to be crash-prone, but then only use DV-AVI material, and my laptop is very stout, plus well-tuned. I do feel that the streamlined GUI is a step in the wrong direction, but then I use PrPro most often, and am just much more comfortable with that GUI. To a new ueser, the streamlined GUI is probably much more friendly and useful, once they find where things are located. They are much more the target demographic, than I am.
Over the last several versions, the reviewers have generally liked the newer interfaces, and the ease of doing many common tasks. The only real complaints, that I recall, were with PrE 8, which was, er, well the Vista of Premiere Elements, at least from my research. Here to fore, the biggest issue posted on with PrE 9 has been a Bug with adding new graphics to Menu Sets (when it has been installed on a properly spec'ed. computer and fed the Source Footage that matches one of the expanded Presets). To date, the Menu Set Bug has not been addressed.
Depending on the students, I feel that learning on PrPro would likely be better, as it is more manual, with fewer Presets, and the students will get a deeper appreciation for what goes into editing video. However, I am not teaching video editing at any level, so that is just my personal feeling. When I did teach photography, I always used manual, mechanical cameras, even if the students had access to newer automated, and partially electronic cameras. I wanted them to experience f/stops, see DOF and understand the relationship between f/stops and shutter-speed, for exposure. Then, they could move up (?) to the automatics and to all of the electronics. They never say any type of automation, until we'd worked up from 35mm to 6 x 6 CM to large format. Heck, even all of my old Hassleblads and my Cambos, are fully manual, with but a motor on one Hassleblad. That's as automatic, as it got. I wanted the students to understand all of the mechanics, before they ever saw a "Program Mode," so that they could relate to what that Program Mode was doing, and why. If I was theaching NLE work, I'd want the students to know everything about the mechanics of video editing, and then perhaps move up to Presets that hid much of that, behind a big-button.
As John T. points out, the forum reaches users, such as we are, and seldom, if ever, Adobe's engineers. The Feature Request/Bug Report is the way to do that.
Good luck,
Hunt