Seriously...the Adobe Classroom in Book of CS5 is the only book available? It's a bad book too, since it just wants you to follow all kind of 1,2,3 steps without explaining anything, not to mention that I can't stand doing those kind of spoon-fed lessons. I looked at the video courses of VTC, Lynda, Totaltraining...shockingly bad. They're so basic that I can only assume that I would fall asleep, plus they seldom talk about issues that I want to know. I can't for example discover in their course outlines where something substantial as masking is explained.
Why all this rubbish?
Check this out. I found it helpful in my transition from FCP to Adobe Premiere Pro...
http://www.amazon.com/Editors-Guide-Adobe-Premiere-Pro/dp/0321773012
Tutorials
http://forums.adobe.com/thread/913334
http://forums.adobe.com/thread/845731
-and http://forums.adobe.com/message/3234794
Encore http://tv.adobe.com/show/learn-encore-cs4/
A "crash course" http://forums.adobe.com/thread/761834
A Video Primer for Premiere http://forums.adobe.com/thread/498251
Premiere Tutorials http://forums.adobe.com/thread/424009
CS5 Premiere Pro Tutorials http://forums.adobe.com/message/2738611
And http://blogs.adobe.com/premiereprotraining/2010/06/video_tutorials_did acticiels_t.html
And http://blogs.adobe.com/premiereprotraining/2010/06/how_to_search_for_p remiere_pro.html
CS5 Tutorials http://bellunevideo.com/tutlist.php
PPro Wiki http://premierepro.wikia.com/wiki/Adobe_Premiere_Pro_Wiki
Tutorial http://www.tutorialized.com/tutorials/Premiere/1
Tutorial http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/forumdisplay.php?f=21
Tutorial HD to SD w/CS4 http://bellunevideo.com/tutorials/CS4_HD2SD/CS4_HD2SD.html
Premiere Pro Wiki http://premierepro.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page
Exporting to DVD http://help.adobe.com/en_US/premierepro/cs/using/WS3E252E59-6BE5-4668- A12E-4ED0348C3FDBa.html
And http://help.adobe.com/en_US/premierepro/cs/using/WSCDE15B03-1236-483f- BBD4-263E77B445B9.html
Color correction http://forums.adobe.com/thread/892861
Photo Scaling for Video http://forums.adobe.com/thread/450798
-Too Large May = Crash http://forums.adobe.com/thread/879967
-And another crash report http://forums.adobe.com/thread/973935
After Effects Tutorials http://www.videocopilot.net/
Authoring http://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials/dvd_authoring/
Encore Tutorial http://www.precomposed.com/blog/2009/05/encore-tutorial/
And more Encore http://library.creativecow.net/articles/devis_andrew/
Surround Sound http://forums.adobe.com/thread/517372
Regions and NTSC vs PAL http://forums.adobe.com/thread/951042
For easy searching, download the product user guide PDF(s)
The individual CS5 pages also have links to the earlier user guide pages
CS5 User Guides - online and PDF (right click PDF link to save PDF to your hard drive)
> I can't for example discover in their course outlines where something substantial as masking is explained.
That's probably because there is no masking in Premiere Pro. That's a feature for a compositor (like After Effects), not an NLE (like Premiere Pro).
There are a lot of resources linked to from here for learning Premiere Pro:
North America
Europe, Middle East and Africa
Asia Pacific