Integrating still photos, videos and audio into a photo show - Part 3

Link to Part 1 and Part 2.

I received the Adobe Photoshop Elements 5.0 and Premiere Elements 3.0 bundle. I installed both applications (I had to manually uninstall the trial version of Photoshop Elements).

So far I am very impressed with Photoshop Elements 5.0, it is definitely ahead of the game compared to Microsoft Digital Image Suite 2006, however Microsoft has just released their Anniversary edition of Digital Image Suite. Unfortunately, Photo Story is still version 3.0 which means this feature is still behind what Adobe offers. The Slide Show feature in Photoshop Elements 5.0 provides very sophisticated image handling capability and the ability to add videos, however as I mentioned in my previous posts, its ability to manage soundtracks is lackluster and behind what Microsoft offers with Photo Story 3. In order to remedy this issue I purchased the bundled which includes the video editing application Premiere Elements 3.0. The migration of a Photoshop Elements Slide Show to Premiere Elements is performed using one click. Premiere Elements 3.0 is simple to use and provides basic video manipulation and DVD creation. I was able to add soundtracks using aac and mp3 music files from my iTunes library and control the volume of those tracks against narrations and video audio. This is exactly what I was looking for. The creation of DVD menus is a breeze with the ability to automatically create chapters and associated menu elements. I did find the preview to be slow and out of sync, Premiere Elements generated an video card error stating that my preview mode was reset to standard because my video card did not support advanced function. I just installed the ATI X1600 video card so I don't think so. Based on the Adobe user forum this seems to be a common problem when the whole video has not been previously rendered. I went forward and started the DVD creation, the rendering to create the DVD was very very slow. It took almost 4 hours to create a 6 minute DVD. The audio in the end result lacked fidelity and the slide pan/zoom and transitions seemed to be faster than what I had selected in the Photoshop Elements Slide Show function. I went back to the Adobe support forum and found 2 threads addressing the slowness of the product with advice to use Premiere Elements 2.0. It looks like Premiere Elements 3.0 is not ready for prime time. How a company could release a video editing product that renders a DVD so slowly is beyond my comprehension. I do have to say that everyone loves Premiere Elements 2.0 and a post urged me to try it. But 3.0 really leaves a bad taste in my mouth, especially since I tried Sony's Vegas 6 video editing application. The Sony Vegas 6.0 application is more advanced that what I need, but it works very well (I created my 6 minute DVD in less than 15 minutes), I decided to return my Adobe Photoshop Elements/Premiere Elements bundle. Given the integration between Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements It is too bad they could not get Premiere Elements to work correctly. I went ahead and purchased Sony's Vegas 6 and will purchase the Photoshop Elements 5.0 upgrade.

The process to create a DVD slide show works as follows:

1. Create Slide Show in Photoshop Elements
2. Output to .wmv file
3. Import .wmv file in Vegas 6
4. Add and manipulate soundtracks
5. Create DVD menus in DVD architect (this is not as easy as in Premiere Elements)
6. Create DVD

In conclusion, this is not the perfect solution I was looking for, but I think I have come up with a process that creates excellent quality DVD slide shows of our travel memories.

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