I just recently bought and received (yesterday) Premier Elements 3.0. I have never dabbled in this product before so I'm hoping that those of you who have will be able to help me out. To be brief, I am making a project and in the beginning of my project is a picture with music playing in the background. When the project is paused, I can see the picture clearly and sharply--looking like a picture should. But when I press play to preview the project, it gets noticeably less sharp and clear; it looks blurry and smudged. Now, when I press pause it goes back to being clear.

I'm curious if this only happens in previewing projects or if there is actually something wrong. Any and all input will be greatly appreciated.

I figured it out. I just burned a copy of the project so far (which was 30 seconds) and played it on my TV. Looks fine. I'm still curious as to why it blurs while playing in preview, but at least it works.

I use the pro version but my guess is that premiere needs to render that clip to be able to get a full quality preview, normally there should be a red line just above that clip in the timeline window meaning premiere is at that moment not able to show it in full quality which explains the blurry preview. In Premiere pro you just press enter and premiere renders it out for you.