I would rank myself as an advanced amateur (professional ecologist) and not equiped with advanced video editting software nor a budget to get the best hardware/software. My workflow is constrained by being a PC user and my own expertise. So my workflow is pretty simple, & I do most of it in photoshop (CS3) and QT Pro. So I'll do color correction, cropping, etc. in CS3 and create movies in QTPro. This is sort of like Slade's workflow (see Make-shift post).

I'm at the point where I want to do some things that I either can't currently figure out (or are pain to do in CS3) or are completely beyond the programs that I use.

Things that I would like to do include:
1) pan and zoom within a movie to make it more dynamic than holding in a static position
2) the occassional deflicker issues (soln= GBDeflicker) [works with Adobe After Effects and Premiere Pro/Elements]
3) dealing with a camera bump (i.e. break a single clip into two and attempt to rotate/crop to overlap the two so that they will play as one without a noticeable shift in the subject).
Here is an example, about 2/5 through the seqeunce something got bumped so that the subject suddenly moves slightly to the left.
http://www.iecology.net/time_lapse/redbud_small.mov

I'm interested in Premiere Elements but suspect that some of these cabilities may be too advanced for Elements... Any tips &/or recommendations would be greatly appreciated? Again, I'm a hobbiest on a budget.

Maybe download the Premiere Elements and see if these features are available. Premiere Pro can do all the virtual pans and stuff now.

For some odd reason, Adobe seems not be allowing downloads of the Premiere Elements demo right now (for several months now, in fact). Perhaps just bit torrent the program, and if you like it, buy it or whatever.

maybe try looking for a used copy of after effects on ebay or get familiar with virtualdub... actually virtualdub has a wide range of capabilities and you can pick up the MSU deflicker plugin for free so that's probably your best bet!

I'm working on a little perl script that can do virtual panning. you could give that a try if u're keen

Yup, I'd say go for Adobe Premier Elements.
It is cheap, and will do most things you need.

Which option to try.

I'm considering downloading an AE trial version for 30days but want to get my ducks in a row so I don't blow the 30d. Do you think an AE Elements will ever hit the market? Premiere Elements sounds like a reasonable option. Virtualdub also sounds like an interesting option. It came up in the DSLR deflicker discussion. Sounds like a viable option at least for solving the flicker issue. I looked over the features list and didn't see anything that sounded like it covered the other editing options that I would like--stabilize camera bumps and do image editting to create panning/zooming in a fixed frame sequence. However, it may be there and I didn't comprehend it since I don't really understand video speak... Also it wasn't clear if Premier Elements would get all three done either... The features list for Elements was very general so it was really unclear what it could and couldn't do. They probably don't want to say it can do a lot or people will not buy the pro version. It seems many of you are using AE so I'm somewhat concerned that these other (lesser) programs actually will not do all three types of edits.

http://www.virtualdub.org/features.html
http://www.adobe.com/products/premiereel/features/

I'm trying to carefully plan my purchases and/or time spent learning software before rushing into it.