Customer Reviews

PowerDirector 5

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(15)

 

 

I'm a Pinnacle Studio 8/9/10 refugee (avoid at all cost!!), who tried PowerDirector 5 out of desperation. Thankfully, PowerDirector 5 software works quite well. The software is generally solid, has good performance, and you can really get work done. The functionality is quite good, though the user interface is a little quirky and takes a little while to get used to for a former Pinnacle user. The software is *quite* efficient at getting miniDV movies on the computer, it appears to be multi-threaded and can efficiently download data and recompress it into .mpg files simultaineously - even when running in non-real time mode. It is at least 3-4 times faster at this process than Pinnacle software (which completely copies the raw miniDV files onto your computer using multi-gigabytes of storage and then goes back and reprocesses the data into .mpg, which takes forever). The capture clips are clean. I haven't yet tried many of the advanced editing features of the program, but I'm really happy that the basic functionality of getting raw mini-DV footage into good quality .mpg files that are smartly divided up into seperate clips, can easily be edited, and rendered onto DVDs. In a couple of weeks of using this software, I've managed to catch up to 3 years of miniDV tapes that hadn't been processed because of the nightmare of using Pinnacle 8/9/10/10.1. PowerDirector is not perfect, I have experienced a couple of crashes in 30 or so hours of processing -- I've learned that after rewinding a miniDV tape to the start to let it play for a second or two before starting the capture process because the program will hang if you try to capture from the very start of a tape - not a big deal once I figured it out. Bottom line, I've been able to get everything I set out to do done with a minimal amount of dupicate effort. My productivity at getting miniDV tapes processed with PowerDirector 5 is somewhere between 10 and 20 times better than it was with Pinnacle Studio (PStudio has very bad performance and severe stability problems). Suggestion: it would be nice if the software would name captured clips with a datecode (shooting date, not capture date!)like YYYYMMDD(XX) instead of the default capture(XX). I've found that the only way to be able to reasonably manage a lot of video clips is to manually rename the clips with the date the video was shot on. Can't the software do this for me? If you do captures from different tapes shot over a long period of time it will result in duplicately named files by default (though you can change the default, you can only give every clip on an entire capture the same name -- since I use the same tape over a long period of time for multiple events, giving every clip off the tape the same prefix is not that useful). If the software used the shooting date as part of the name, you wouldn't have duplicate file names and you could easily seperate the clips from Thanksgiving from the clips from Christmas just by looking at the names of the files!

A couple of years ago I inheritied the task of producing video of public meetings for a local government. My normal way of learning something new is to gather all the available programs and tinker with each and decide which does the job for me.

As a result I've used high end products like Adobe Premier 2, and Sony Vegas. I hae also used Pinnacle Studio 9 and 10, as well as Cyberlink Power Director 4 and 5.

For almost all your home and small business editing needs Power Director gets the job done with, at least in my experience, the smallest learning curve.

Here are some importants points. All of these products are memory and speed intense. You will be disappointed with the results if you have less than 1 gigabyte of memory and a video card with less than 128 and preferably 256 meg of memory.

If you are capturing from multiple devices in addition to a digital video camera I got the best results from a Canopus ADVC-110 digital video converter box. This box connects to your computer via a Firewire/1394 connector. I used various Pinnacle devices all with no better than minimaly satisfactory results. In additon Pinnacle capture hardware often only works with Pinnacle software. The Canopus box gives me good quality conversion and few dropped frames.

Power Director's manual is bearly adequate and there is not much in the way of third party books or manuals. But, the program is relatively simple to use and quite powerful.

The program enables you to import and edit video, add titles, transitions, voice-overs, and then generate output to either digital tape, dvd, or video cd disks. With the Canopus converter you can also take digital output and write it back to an analog VHS cassette tape. Version 5 includes some really neat sound and video enahncement tools that will help you clean up color that needs enhancement or sound that could use some cleaning up.

Finaly one word of caution. If you have a computer with Windows XP and you are updating it by adding Service Pack 2, be mindful of one potential glitch. I don't know if Microsoft corrected this, but the installation upgrade to SP2 changed your Fireware 1395 port to it's slowest possible speed which is too slow to capture video. As a result a machine that was capturing video without problems suddenly experienced dropped frames. When installing SP2 go to the Microsoft website for an update that corrects the problem.

I like PowerDirector 4 and 5 better than Pinnacle Studio only because for me it was simpler to learn and get up and running. Studio is not a bad program, but in my experience slower (especially ver 10) and a tad more complex.

Good Luck!

Believe it, believe it, believe it! This program is rough and almost useless. I have installed it on a beefed up Dell as well as some other computers to make sure it was the program and not my computer. It is the program. This uses almost all of your resources on your computer and LOCKS UP, SHUTS DOWN, LOCKS UP, CORRUPTS FILES, AND LOCKS UP !!! It is the most frustrating thing ever. You are constantly saving your work and re-opening the program. It takes 5 minutes each time to shut is down and open it up. Their help is is non-existent. You have to email them and they will tell you each time that it can take up to 3 days to respond. Also, it is a canned response that sometimes doesn't even come close to addressing the question you asked. Is there and online update of fix to download? NO! To make it function, you have to shut down all other programs such as internet, firewalls and antivirus software as well as set your monitor setting to a lower resolution. Just what you want when you are making films and looking at photos right? As you tell the program to perform tasks you will have to go very slowly. If you get proficient and move too fast it will just lock up. I made files and saved them on one computer, installed the program on another computer and guess what? When I tried to open my saved files it gave me errors and won't open its own file. More hours lost. This program does exactly what you would expect (if it worked) it to do and nothing more. It is easy to use because it does not do that much. Oh, this is great, if you would like to save your work as the best quality output, just hit the button to produce it and it will give you a link to purchase more software to accomplish that task BECAUSE IT IS NOT INCLUDED IN THIS SOFTWARE! Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh!
I hate it and should have listened to the reviews. Maybe it works on a Mac or something else but definitely not a brand new beefed up Dell or any other computer I own. Trust me, just don't do it.

I bought Power Director 4 in May 2005. I loved it and made many projects with it. It is slow and so simple that after awhile you wish for something more to mess with but for the cost it was an incredible program.

I happily upgraded to Power Director 5 in August of 2006 so I could have more to mess with. It took me several weeks to put together a quality product and attempt to burn the DVD. The burn failed. First time for that to ever happen. I have changed nothing on this computer between PD 4 and PD 5.

I contacted Cyberlink customer support and they responded pretty quickly. Said to update several drivers, uninstall PD5, reboot, reinstall PD5 and let her rip.

This time the project burned. But when I played it, the audio and video were slowly getting more and more out of sync the longer it played. Another coaster.

I contacted customer service and was told to update my drivers, uninstall PD 5, reboot and reinstall PD5. And oh, yeah. Make sure nothing else is running and turn down my monitor resolution from high to average because PD 5 doesn't like really high screen resolution. What?

Fine. Another wasted evening, another coaster. Back to customer service. Try changing my DVD burner speed to as slow as it will go. And don't forget to turn off all other programs. Try turning off your internet firewall while you are at it so you can be sure that PD 5 gets all the attention your computer has. Am I on Candid Camera here?

But what the heck. Another coaster. Back to customer service. Who wrote on a Sunday by the way, that I should delete every other burning program on my system, reboot, and then try burning the project. Yes, that makes sense after all the success I have had so far. I'm going to delete programs that work for....what?

In the end, I produced the folder to a file as a very large .avi movie. I then downloaded ULEAD Video Studio 10 Plus and imported that .avi movie to ULEAD. I rendered it and burned 3 copies to disks that ALL worked!!! It was an amazingly slow process, but it worked!!

I loved Power Director 4 and am sad to see it go. But Power Director 5 is a bug ridden monster. If you buy it despite this review, make a quick project and try to burn it. Do not do like so many other have done (including me) and invest countless hours on a project that can't be burned to a DVD.

I'll let you know how ULEAD works out. I'm moving on.

In early July I started working on a project for my mother's 70th birthday in September - a photo DVD chronicling the life of my generation and the following generation. I did extensive research on available DVD creation software and kept finding PowerDirector 5 listed in the top five - often as #1 - so I purchased it on-line.

The creation process was easy, intuitive and fun; I was very pleased. The third week of August I tried to Burn my file into a DVD. The application crashed repeatedly. I then tried to produce an MPEG format - the application crashed repeatedly, although every once in a while I could coax it into completing the creation.

As of September 18, 2006 I have contacted CyberLink 17 different times trying to resolve my issue, with no luck. Although their web-based response is slower than molasses, they do respond eventually, and we've tried all kinds of things - including checking my computer's hardware and software for incompatibility - but we never found a solution.

The end result is that I was never able to burn my DVD using their software. I have a brand-new high-end Dell, with which they could find no fault, but as of last week CyberLink decided that the problem is with the operating system (Windows XP 2)...and they want me to perform a clean install of the OS. They've thus far not convinced me that they know what they are doing, so no, I am not going to take the time and go through the hassle of re-installing everything on my computer....

I found a workaround using another application that allowed me to burn an MPEG file into a DVD-compatible format, but unfortunately since PowerDirector doesn't add the "play" menu until the Burn process, my DVDs don't have a play menu, and cannot be watched on any home entertainment DVDs players that do not have AutoPlay.

It's unfortunate that this application has these flaws, because the things it can do are really amazing, but what good is it if you can't produce a DVD?

Out of all the top selling video editing software (Cyberlink, Pinnacle, Ulead...) this is the easiest to use. Like all similar programs it can be computer entensive so don't bother if you have an older machine.

Ballet Boy is probably having problems because he bought a Dell. Though Dell's are nice everyday computers they are not built to handle graphic entensive programs. That being said PowerDirector should still run OK on a Dell just slower than many people may like.

I use this and Pinnacle Studio 10. Pinnacle has more bells and whisltes but it is quite a bit slower. PowerDirector can do almost anything and is quite a bit faster. It is very easy to use. The layout is well organized and all tools and buttons are easy to find.

I have read some really bad press about PowerDirector 5, lockups etc. I Tried several others, Ulead Video Studio 10, ShowBiz 2.0 and Sony Vegas 6.
Each has its issues, strengths and weaknesses. I Finally Downloaded PowerDirector 5 Premium.. I got to say, that it works really well. I like it the best. A few items could be more intuitive, but all in all, Im impressed. Plus, the price is right at $79.00. Plenty of control for me! Exports to many common formats including Divx.

UPDATE..
after using the product for a couple of days, Im less impressed. Its locked up a few times, and sometimes operates very slowly. Its kind of a pig. Nice features, but doesnt appear to be real stable. I think at this point Im voting for 'ShowBiz 2.0' as best product. Ive evaluated about 10 of them.

I'm no Cyberlink basher--I've been using their programs for at least ten years now going back to their first version of Medi@center. I found this program to have remarkable potential and as others have cited, it is MUCH more user friendly than a lot of the others where you need an MIT degree to work through all the technical jargon/work. I'd made several DVD's including from some of my old VHS tapes, and the capture--sometimes inconsistent--does work okay--USUALLY. The folks who refer to its penchant for "PDR has encountered problems and will shut down/close" are absolutely SPOT ON. It does this so much on my machine that just out of paranoia of losing a project, I save my project almost every time I put in a completed worked on change. It was POINTLESS to write to customer support because indeed all you DO get is a "rubber stamp" condescending response that offers little to NO help at all. It's ALWAYS, make sure your anti-virus is off... all spyware detectors are off... all other media programs are off.. ad-nauseum; and then the list of hoops they figure you can jump through in troubleshooting would make PT Barnum blush in shame. One included me completely deleting some of my files where I had work I had absolutely no intention of losing that work--they were working FINE!... It is SO impersonal as to be embarrassing.
Finally, after my most recent project, and one on which I'd worked for literally 30 hours plus, (saving it many times for those periodic crashes).. and it always loaded fine--I finally was ready to burn the thing onto DVD... what message did I get? "FILE IS BROKEN"... Now you figure THAT one out! WTH is a "broken file???" I was furious. They DO have a forum for registered members; but have found NO resolutions to this "broken file" problem, although I did find others who've encountered the same problem. I have a very up-to-date HP Media Center, with XP Media-center edition (which they claim is a platform that supports their software--and has until the file "broke".)
Just a word of caution to those of you reading all these "it's the best thing since sliced bread" recommendations. I'm certainly not questioning their experiences; but I am very heavily into multi-media---for years; and while I truly LIKE the potential of the program, I find it's "bugs" to be of a sort that would try the patience of a saint--and forget tech support--too slow--too impersonal--too cut and paste with a "do what we told you to do last time" sort of attitude. Were it not for the crashes, and now this MOST frustrating of all "Broken File" penchant, it COULD be the best video editing program available--however with them... well, I just hope you're not hypertensive because it is frustrating in the EXTREME!

Tried the trial version & liked it. Especially liked the interface & the ability to add music easily. More importantly, it worked, so I bought the retail version. After spending upwards of 50 hours and a dozen emails to tech support trying to get the retail version to work, I've given up. Burned DVD video quality is extremely poor and, more recently, I can't even get it to import video from my camcorder. Email tech support is curteous, but absolutely usless. Most recently they wanted me to send them a screen shot of a 6 character windows error message that pops up when trying to import video (google "PDR.exe" and the first entry will be complaints about this product). I decided my time would be better spent trying to warn other folks about the flaws of PowerDirector. If you're still considering buying this product, please take a few minutes to review comments from other dissapointed customers that are posted on the web. Unless you've got dozens of hours to waste and enjoy throwing away $, I'd suggest that you steer clear of PowerDirector.

Somebody in Cyberlink should be shot for using old DLLs. I saw 2 old DLLs in the program directory, comctl32.dll and msvcp60.dll. Try copying these 2 dlls from your Windows directory and paste them into the PowerDirector directory. After I pasted these 2 DLLs, the program could at least load nicely. Don't know about crashes at other places.

I am giving a middle score of 3 stars because I haven't played much with it yet. Just writing this message to help anyone reduce its possibility of crashing.