[Note: This is the second of two articles relating to to the Adobe PhotoShop Elements 6/Premiere Elements 4 Bundle.  Click here to see my review of Adobe Photoshop Elements 6].

My video camera, a Sony Handycam, is slightly over six years old.  I bought it in anticipation of the birth of my first son.  Oh did I have plans for that camera.  I would take videos, capture them on my computer, edit them, and make amazing home movies of my new baby which I could share with friends and family.  Oh the plans. 

Unfortunately, my plans did not account for two significant factors.  First, babies do not really move for most of the first six months.  Pretty boring videos of Ben lying in one place for hours at a time (though I do wish he would do more of that now).  Second, and probably most importantly, babies take a lot…and I mean a lot…of time and energy.  When you have a newborn, you are really in no position to start learning a new hobby.  So, instead of high quality videos which I could share with friends and family, I ended up with a shoebox filled with six years worth of raw footage which I had never had much time to do anything with.

Time passed.  My second son was born, and then my daughter.  With the birth of my daughter, I decided now would be the perfect time to try this again.  One of the factors in this decision was that I had a chance to play with some video editing software and found that the industry had made considerable progress in the six years I had been away.  These programs were much easier to learn and use than the ones I had tested in 2002. 

So, with that background in mind, I set out to find the perfect video editing package.  This was an endeavor which took almost no time.  Like most multimedia programs for Windows, my search started and ended with Adobe.  Specifically, the consumer level Adobe Premiere Elements 4.  Let’s go ahead and find out what this thing can do.

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