RC plane video part 3: Adobe Premiere Elements.

Adobe Premiere Elements 10 is a pretty powerful piece of kit.  It has loads and loads of features and does quite a few things that other consumer-level video editing suites don't.  The offset?  It needs quite a good computer to push it and some experience to come to grips with.


http://www.adobe.com/products/premiere-elements.html


It's up there in features for your RC plane videos;

• a large range of titles, credits and transitions.
• a large range of output formats.
• direct upload to Youtube, Facebook and other video/social networking sites.
• multiple video and audio tracks.
• image stabilization effect to take out shaking from hand-held cameras.
• easy to use zoom effect.

However, it does have it's drawbacks and foibles.

• It needs a fairly high-end computer to run it smoothly with high-def video
• The image stabilization is good, even when there's little in the background for it to reference. It has reasonable options allowing you to tailor the stabilization to your needs bit it DOES take a lot of zoom to operate well though.  Otherwise you end up with black strips popping in and out on the edge of your video.
• Titles are powerful but messy for newcomers.  If you choose not to use a stock title it can be fiddly to create your own and it's definately not "entry level" stuff. 
• It has many issues even on reasonably powerful computers with playback in the preview.  This can make it exceptionally fiddly to time everything correctly.   

It's a great program all up but if you are just looking to throw together a RC video it's way overpowered and over complicated IMO.  I had reasons outside of RC videos to purchase this and I really can't recommend it for lower-end systems or video beginners.


Overall the output quality is high and the file sizes are often much smaller than many other programs even though you pay for it in the time it takes to compress the video.

 Although it's "consumer level" video editing software, Adobe Premiere Elements is not the easiest for you or your computer to drive.  It's one of those programs aimed at enthusiasts with the expectation that they spend their "toy money" on cameras and computers capable of high-speed editing instead of using it as an add-on to your RC plane hobby.

Given this I simply can't recommend it for the masses.  IMO you are much better off with Powerdirector or Windows Live Movie Maker unless you have some special reason to want Adobe Premiere Elements.