Ok - now the book

Jan Ozer is a senior IT and video journalist from the USA and has many publications and columns to his credit. This new book, part of the Classroom in a Book series from Adobe is one of his latest offerings.

Don't get this wrong - these books are not intended for a fireside read with your feet up and a glass in hand of any one of the many brown liquids you might fancy. (Anyone for tea?) These books are about seriously getting to grips with your software and as such, while easy to follow, require the appropriate amount of time to be set aside for each 'lesson'.  However, the process is simple.

Like other books in this series, there is an accompanying DVD in a sleeve inside the back cover.  Early instructions in the book will have you copying the Lessons folder from the disc to your hard drive, from where you will import the required video/audio/still image assets into your timeline for the various projects.

Each lesson begins with a 'what you are about to learn' summary along with a list of specific learning goals that it is hoped you will attain and retain.  There is also an estimate of the time it will take to complete the lesson as laid out in that chapter. 

The book is highly graphical, with many screen shots and highlighted paragraphs of particular importance or relevance. At the end of each lesson/chapter, there is a Review panel where a series of questions are asked of you in order you can self-assess your success with that chapter.

A wide range of topics is covered. After a brief intro including instructions for installing the program itself, there is a chapter on digital video which goes on to examine the Premiere Elements 8 workspace with particular attention being paid to the Organizer (see article on Premiere Elements 8).  Jan then moves on in the next chapter to setup a project and diagnosing setup related problems. This is very important for inexperienced editors and helps get around a potentially major obstacle early in the piece. Nothing could be more disheartening in this pastime that hitting a brick wall built of aspect ratio quandaries and frame size conflicts. Been there! Done that!

Then in subsequent chapters are covered the capture, importing and organistaion of assets,  editing, effects, transitions, titles and credits, audio, themes and menus.  Finally, distribution of your product (sharing) is the penultimate chapter before a brief introduction to Photoshop Elements, the picture and paint editor that comes with Premiere Elements in one of the retail products.

One minor drawback is that all the projects are in NTSC standard definition format so for these exercises, you will need to set up the Project Properties to that format. However detailed instructions how to come to terms with that are given early in the first hands-one lesson.

While at the time of writing this book was not available from Adobe directly, it is advertised by some Australian online retailers at between $45-55.

By Frank McLeod

Dr Frank McLeod is a specialist physician who in his ‘day job' works in the area of Addiction Medicine. Frank reckons he ‘dribbled' into video as a way to get information across to his patients and their families in an accessible way that avoided information overload. From there, the monster just grew. With a long-time interest in things technical and gadgetry of all kinds, he had been writing tech review-type-articles on a casual basis for a medical publication for some time, when an introduction to David Hague led to his continuing this level of activity in the field of video.

Frank says that one of the parts he likes best about his involvement with Australasian Camcorder is the opportunity to play with other people's toys. The downside, he says, is having to give them back at the end of ‘playtime' that precedes publication of the resulting review.

"I suppose I want to present information from the non-professional point of view, which is not difficult, given that I am the only amateur punter in the camp," he says. With a strong commitment to the amateur video club movement, he is the Secretary of his local video club. In part because of this, and with a long time history as an avid DIY-er behind him, Frank has an interest in the do-it-yourself construction of devices for the amateur videographer and strongly wishes to continue this type of contribution as part of his future involvement with auscam