Adobe Premiere Pro Classroom in a Book

Rating:
Summary: Good for first timers but watch for errors!
Review: As a first time user of Adobe Premiere I'm glad I bought this book because it certainly shows a lot of features and how to use them. However!!! There are several errors and OBTW I'm only through Lesson 5 of 14.
Another complaint I have about the book is that in many cases it could be improved if the authors would tell you why you are doing a certain thing. In many cases they do but in many others they don't. By leaving out an explanation of the reason you are doing a certain action it makes it difficult to apply steps to future videos you want to create.
It would be very nice if Adobe or Adobe Press would have a place to go to discuss or ask questions about the lessons in the book so you could get feedback from either them or from other users.
This is an almost great tutorial if they could eliminate the errors or refer you to a website where you could get an up to date list of corrections before you start using it.
The bottom line: I'm glad I bought it. I will finish it and I will keep it for reference, but I'm making notes as I go along on all the errors I find so I don't repeat them when I refer back later.

Rating:
Summary: Not as good as others in the series
Review: I was disappointed by this entry to the 'Classroom In A Book' series. I've used other members of the series, and I have generally found them to be a relatively quick and inexpensive way to climb up the learning curve for Adobe products.

Most of what the book teaches comes under the heading of 'Video Editing 101'-- what's a ripple edit, how do I lift frames, and so on. I can find most of this stuff pretty quickly in the User's Manual.

There is a lot of repetitive material in this book. I counted a half-dozen places where the book shows how to remove a gap in the timeline, even though it's a simple procedure.

Intermediate topics of the sort that I had hoped to find get less attention. Color correction only gets part of one chapter, and there's virtually nothing on Premiere's waveform monitor and vectorscope beyond how to open them. I'd really like to know how to read and use them!

Premiere's audio capabilities get their own chapter, but the Lesson on the CD-ROM doesn't match the chapter in the book. There were at least a half-dozen files needed by the chapter's project that Premiere couldn't find on the CD, rendering the chapter all but unusable.

When Premiere Pro comes out, I hope Adobe goes back to the drawing board on this volume. It needs a lot of work.

Rating:
Summary: Very good, especially for a newbie
Review: The book does a good job of "hand holding" while you acquaint yourself with Adobe Premiere Pro.

The only complaint I have is that there are a few steps that are missing in some of the lessons. It isn't too hard to figure out what is supposed to happen, but still it would be nice for it to be a little more accurate in the details.

I would recommend to any newbies out there like myself that you begin by skipping "ahead" and doing Lessons 1 and 2 and then going back to the beginning of the book to do the "Tour". I did the Tour first and it involved some concepts that were a little beyond me and I think I would have benefitted from going over the basics that are covered in Lessons 1 and 2 instead of the sink or swim tour, if you know what I mean.

Anyway, all in all, it has been a very satisfying book.