Premiere Elements Version question

[AVITRY]

I've grown familiar with PE2 but I may have to try a newer version for reasons of compatibility with another program I use. My question is this.

I like very much the idea of stacking tracks on the timeline over previous tracks. In other words track #2 sits above track #1 on the timeline as I believe an OVERLAY track should. So many other NLE programs have this backwards in my opinion and I don't like that.

Do the newer versions of PE keep the timeline the same or have they too gone backwards

At what point does PE stop doing justice to itself? Are the newer versions worse or better? I'm not concerned about operating system compatibility as I will have this on XP.

thanks...

[John 'twosheds' McDonald]

I never got beyond PrElv2 and only recently stopped using it (after my move to Win 7 64 bit).

I appreciate that you need a newer version for compatibility with some other software but in my case I never did find a good reason for following the annual 'new version' path (and v2 was the best, most stable version IMHO).

[Chuck Engels]

The big difference is that the audio and video tracks are together in later versions, 4 and above.
I believe in version 2, like version 3, all of the video tracks are together and then below those all of the audio tracks are together.
Version 2 & 3
Video 3
Video 2
Video 1
Audio 1
Audio 2
Audio 3

Version 4 and above
Video 3
Audio 3
Video 2
Audio 2
Video 1
Audio 1

The users fought against this but lost. Versions 2 and 3 are still very similar, version 4 and above a quite different from 2 & 3.

[AVITRY]

Thanks Chuck, can they (2&3) live together on the same computer without a problem?

[John 'twosheds' McDonald]

.....can they (2&3) live together on the same computer without a problem?

Yup!

[Chuck Engels]

Very nicely I might add