Power Director v6 video editor?
Red Fox
http://video-editing-software-review.toptenreviews.com/
This product appears to be sold only by the developer Cyberlink and by
another web site:
http://www.hermanstreet.com/store/smarthtml/powerdirector-land.html
I'm considering buying it ($80-$90) but I'm a bit suspicious of this narrow
review and would appreciate comments of, and experiences with, it.
TIA
RF
Smarty
sluggish, and lacking in creative tools. Support from the developer is
essentially non-existent. I would not recommend it, despite the recent good
review you have cited, unless the product has undergone an extreme re-write
or repair process, and even then, only after seeing more definitive reviews
elsewhere.
When it comes to comparably priced software with comparable pricing, take a
look at the offerings from Sony (Vegas Home edition), Ulead (Video Studio 11
Plus, or Adobe (Premiere Elements), all of which sell for about the same
price (below $100) and are vastly superior in most respects IMHO.
Smarty
"Red Fox" <Red...@NoDen.Con> wrote in message
news:%repi.52958$5j1....@newssvr21.news.prodigy.net...
Red Fox
be true.
I run Win2K which makes the choice more difficult but I'm still looking
around.
Thanks again and have a great weekend :-)
RF
"Smarty" <nob...@nobody.com> wrote in message
news:i96dnX9jseLb3Tvb...@adelphia.com...
Smarty
I went hunting for the review after our last exchange, to see where it was
written and who wrote it. For whatever it is worth, the PC Magazine review
in one of their most recent issues, written by Jan Ozer, was indeed highly
complimentary to Power Director 6, and I am guessing this may be the
comparison you are referring to.
Jan Ozer writes for another, more professional magazine in video editing
called "EventDV" and has done several very extensive and very well
researched comparisons of higher end video software (Vegas 7, Final Cut,
Avid, etc.) and is a very impartial and thorough reviewer. I must admit that
this opinion on software has influenced me in some of my selections, and he
is pretty accurate in what he reports. I am mentioning all of this to
"back-pedal" a bit in suggesting that the Cyberlink Power Director 6 may
have had some really needed improvements since the version 5 I own and never
use because of its problems.
If you have a free trial opportunity (not sure if they offer 30 day trials
any more) you might download it and check it out. I would certainly
encourage you to try Video Studio 11 Plus from Ulead in their free trial
download.
I used most of these products with Windows 2000 starting in 2001 or so, but
they were early versions designed for W2K. I am not sure if they now run
properly with it or not.
I also wanted to offer you the comment that many older computer systems with
hardware from the W2K era are very marginal for doing video editing. Be sure
your hardware is consistent with the manufacturer's recommendation from the
video editing software company or you may be in for a lot of frustration.
Good luck and glad to try to help you,
Smarty
"Red Fox" <Red...@NoDen.Con> wrote in message
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je...@jonesgroup.net
Don't get me wrong.
I still consider the stuff he writes valuable and informative to a
certain degree.
But I would emphasize "to a certain degree."
I have learned that one must constantly temper one's conclusions with
real experience before trusting ANY of the reviews that are written in
the popular online magazine sites.
The truth -- in my opinion -- is that virtually all of the PC platform
video editing programs are plagued by bugs.
It is also my opinion that consumer video editing software is about
two times more expensive than is justified.
There's a hidden tax that I call the "mediocrity tax."
I've been a Ulead (now acquired by Corel) product user for years.
But bugs exist in the Corel programs that should have been fixed years
ago.
I'm growing increasingly skeptical they will fix these issues anytime
soon.
After supporting Ulead products for years on a volunteer basis, I
landed a consulting position with that firm for one year... 2003/2004.
During that time, I became increasingly disappointed when developers
in Taiwan seemed unable to respond to my repeated requests for a fix
for the DVD camcorder MPEG loss of video/audio synchronization issue.
It took weeks and weeks for any Ulead software developer to respond to
me even though I was working for the company!
Finally, after weeks of continued e-mails, I got this e-mail response
from one of the Ulead developers (who copied a lot of fellow Uleaders)
on November 6, 2003 as follows:
__________
Dear All,
After check this video, it is known bug about audio gap. So the render
video (Smart Render) created by MSP is sync but it is async after
burning on the disk.
Dear Jerry,
Please try to add the following setting in [All User]\msp.ini to test
again.
[VIODRIVER]
CloseAudioDTR=1
__________
So that was the reponse I got.
Well, I would point out...
1. The developer indicated it was a "known" bug in 2003; yet it still
exists in 2007.
2. The MSP .ini fix that he suggested did, in fact, solve the issue
for me, but this kind of fix is technical and doesn't work for some
users.
3. It is a fact that more and more people are buying DVD disc and HDD
camcorders that record standard definition long GOP MPEG-2 and they
are attempting to edit these files.
Yet, to this very day, FOUR YEARS LATER, this very bug continues to be
reported on the Ulead Web board:
Recently, I visited the Sony Vegas Movie Studio Web forum to see what
customers were saying about that new product.
Wow.
More serious bugs.
Apparently, there's a significant "issue" with Cineform .avi files:
Here's a link to the Sony Vegas Movie Studio bug:
...and...
I consider this a major bug.
And the Sony rep confirms it:
__________
"Eugenia has found a bug (pixel aspect ratio detection for some file
types, like HDV intermediate .avi)."
"Sorry about that, we'll fix it in the next update (update release
scheduled for August '07)."
"-SCS Dev"
__________
Let's hope they do fix it.
Meanwhile, all of the key players...
1. Sony Vegas Movie Studio
2. Corel VideoStudio 11 Plus
3. Pinnacle Studio Ultimate 11
4. Magix Movie Edit Pro
5. Corel MediaStudio Pro
...seem to offer products with fairly significant bugs.
Adobe is supposed to be releasing a new version of Premiere Elements
soon.
It'll be interesting to find out if they can make that program better
than the current flawed version.
I'm thinking about writing a long article on my Web site about my
experiences editing video on the PC.
I never expected perfection, but I did expect people working in the
software industry to at least TRY and I get the impression -- after
all these
years -- that many may have actually stopped TRYING.
I own the Pinnacle Studio Ultimate 11 program.
I expected to find bugs in that program... and I did.
1. It can't properly transfer certain DVD camcorder disc MPEG-2 files
to one's computer hard drive; the transferred file's video freezes
while its audio keeps playing as if nothing is wrong.
2. There's an amazingly annoying Bias SoundSoap audio plug-in for
Pinnacle Studio that slaps your face with an ugly error message if you
switch your Web access from your computer's ethernet DSL connection to
your computer's wireless modem.
3. Pinnacle's version of Smart Render really seems to not be working
at all; this software seems to render and render and render.
But its transcoding quality is tops; MPEG-2-to-DV and vice-versa...
far better than that of the Corel products.
The Magix software... bugs... just visit their forum and read about
what happens when people try to edit long GOP files.
It's kind of disappointing; it seems to be a sign of our times.
I have no problem accepting the fact that all software has bugs.
But I think the *kind* of bugs that are not being fixed prior to the
release of these products suggest there may be a great deal of
mediocrity in the video software development business.
The quality isn't there.
The attention to detail isn't there.
The customer service isn't there.
They seem content to offer medium-quality products and they jack the
prices up.
Are they even capable of producing world-class products?
I'm not so sure.
Apparently, consumers must lower their expectations.
It's a lot like going to the grocery store.
Where I live, you can go to any major chain grocery store and if you
attempt to find truly nice fruit and vegetables, you must lower your
expectations because what they offer is banged up or too ripe or tough
or whatever.
We seem to live in an era where mediocrity is the best that can be
obtained.
Shoddy housing construction practices, faulty automobiles, cameras
that are broken right out of the box, rip-off student lending... you
name the industry.
Some offices are even having to go back to Windows XP after buying all
new systems with Windows Vista.
These are the kinds of significant costs that every consumer now needs
to factor when shopping for any product or service.
It's a hidden tax.
I call it the "mediocrity tax."
What's the end result?
Well, I suspect these industries are in for a nasty surprise.
The day is coming when the consumer will wise up and stop buying this
stuff until the quality improves dramatically over what's available
today.
I sense consumers are getting smarter and more wary.
So I would be surprised if many companies who do business the way they
do today will still be in business in the future.
Jerry Jones
http://www.jonesgroup.net
Smarty
I am a retired engineer, and managed many technical groups, some as large as
165 people, and have also managed ISO 9000 quality implementation in a very
software intensive business with literally dozens of developers. I entirely
and totally share your opinion that the attitude and products reflect a very
low standard generally in terms of bugs, development schedules, and product
performance. The video editing packages on the market are definitely a
shining example of this mediocrity.
I own and use the latest full editions of Vegas 7, DVD Architect, Final Cut
Studio Pro HD, Video Studio 11 Plus, Power Director 5, Nero Express Vision,
Magix MEP Pro 12, dozens of other video apps, and tons of photo / image
processing and rendering programs. The vast majority have lots of small bugs
and some have major bugs as well. Price and quality are only weakly related
in this type of product.
So I know what you mean, and I really do agree.
Having said all of that, I have been editing HDV hi-def video for several
years now, and making HD DVDs for a year and a half, as well as doing
several thousand standard def videos and DVDs, so I will fully admit that
the programs, despite their bugs, are useful and mostly functional for their
intended use. I will also admit that I have spent a huge amount of my
retirement dealing with forums, newsgroups, customer service people, and my
own relatively high level of computer expertise to try to get these things
to work properly. The average consumer is basically screwed as I see.
On the bright side, the trial versions do allow a very complete evaluation
before spending a dime. Thus I can honestly recommend these products to
others feeling that they too may get their intended use as I do with little
or no risk of disappointment.
PowerDirector 5 was and is one of the worst programs I have encountered, and
their customer service is exceptionally bad as well. I thus felt obligated
to reply to the original post, since I found it hard to believe that they
made a major turn-around with version 6, but this is indeed possible.
Pinnacle has had a lot of improvement in its' latest rev, but earlier
versions were also very poor.
Regarding Ulead in particular, I own most of their products (my serial
number list on their support web site is 5 pages long) and I have dealt with
them from the start. They are poor both via email and in direct calls with
Torrance California, where most of the people there seem like robots reading
from a script.
I must say, however, that their user forum within the last year or two has
become amazingly well populated with knowledgeable users. Unlike their
previous support web which was a total mess and very hard to use, this newer
support environment has been extremely helpful to me and others with
problems. The software does have its problems, but I have been almost
entirely thrilled with both performance / quality and lack of bugs in their
latest versions of VS, MF, PhotoImpact, etc.
In defense of the crappy programs now out there, I will admit that writing
video editing apps which properly run and scale on all sorts of processors,
video cards, sound cards, codecs, camcorders, burners, etc. is not an easy
job. Having Windows as a host and development environment doesn't help. And
keeping up with new DirectX, DirectShow, h.264, AVCHD, HDV, long GOP MPEG2,
ac3, and all the associated interfaces and changes makes the whole process
quite daunting.
As the mergers and sales of Ulead, Intervideo, Corel, Avid, Pinnacle, etc.
reduce the total number of players, my fear is that reduced completion
rather than a consumer uprising with limit choices, perhaps raise prices,
and may worsen rather than improve quality. Not at all sure and only time
will tell.
Smarty
<je...@jonesgroup.net> wrote in message
news:1185565976.2...@e9g2000prf.googlegroups.com...
nappy
> The truth -- in my opinion -- is that virtually all of the PC platform
> video editing programs are plagued by bugs.
>
Compared to?
je...@jonesgroup.net
flew down to Ulead's L.A. offices to meet the staff in 2003. We
discussed it during a videoconference with staff in Taiwan. Ulead
software users at that time were literally scattered all over the Web.
The knowledge and skills of the current users on the Ulead Web Board,
in my view, is a reflection of the fact that many Ulead (now Corel)
video editing consumers are improving their skills and are constantly
testing and using their software to try new techniques that they
observe in the media. This is good. They'll continue to put pressure
on the developers to perform. But I think they should also begin to
think about how they can put pressure on shareholders of these video
editing firms. When consumers find a way to communicate their
frustrations directly to shareholders, the shareholders will really
start to put the heat on the senior managers. There got to be a way to
show shareholders how some (not all) senior managers are sitting on
their well-padded behinds and collecting six-figure incomes and not
producing.
So that's the new idea that I'm exploring currently. How to skip over
obstructionist management teams and target pertinent information about
quality control failures directly to shareholders.
Yes, technology is constantly changing and that's challenging, but
much of the change is often something that can be seen in advance.
When I was consulting for Ulead, I tried to communicate with them the
importance of fixing the problems associated with editing long GOP
MPEG files because the numeric facts are that consumers are buying
increasing numbers of DVD, HDD, and SD camcorders and they are
attempting to edit the files produced by these new types of
camcorders. Some at Ulead understood this trend. Others within the
organization didn't seem to understand at all and they appeared to
stand in the way of progress, in my view.
Jerry Jones
http://www.jonesgroup.net
Smarty
editing software programs on the PC, Mac, or other platforms, or if you are
asking / saying that the reliability of video editing software is no
different from other types of PC software, or if you are asking for some
other type of comparison?
There are many examples of extremely complex software which run without
problems for extended periods of time.
"nappy" <sp...@spam.com> wrote in message
news:9luqi.24694$RX....@newssvr11.news.prodigy.net...
Smarty
achieved very successfully but at great expense to the company. Carnegie
Mellon University established a very rigorous "Software Engineering
Institute" with a structured method of developing reliable software through
the use of a "Maturity Model" which measures the immaturity or maturity of
both the team building the software and the product they are building.
So-called "Level 1" companies / teams have essentially no process, and are
called "Chaotic", "Level 5" teams are called "Mature", and the levels
in-between represent increasing skill and proficiency at producing reliable
code. Software process improvement is a formal, trained system which takes
an organization from Level 1 through Level 5, very much like ISO 9000 or
other quality initiatives are used to improve the way a business / process /
system operates. The system is labor-intensive, is filled with audits,
inspection and review processes, standardized tools, training, and a
cultural change which may take years to achieve. I have personally witnessed
and participated in this process from start to finish, and the company I was
employed by went from Level 1 to Level 4 in about 3 years, still striving
for Level 5 when I retired.
When Motorola built and deployed the Iridium satellite constellation, they
were at Level 4, and thus achieved a very reliable and robust system which
was subsequently purchased by the government. The number of lines of code in
this system was very high, somewhere around 570 million lines of code. This
is well below the complexity of the systems deployed for such things as the
Apollo Space program or other major defense systems, but is still a
complexity at least 1000 times greater than a video editing program.
My point in all of this is that methods and tools exist and are being
successfully utilized to build very large and complex systems which deliver
very high reliability / high availability performance, and that such
techniques have just not reached (and may never reach) the programming world
where PC / Mac consumer software is marketed and used. Software engineering
is a very established and disciplined area and a lot of people has spent a
lot of time and money learning how to make really solid software, but
consumer products most often are developed by relative amateurs with no
managed effort to force / train software quality. Microsoft leads the world
in delivering a bad role model in this regard, IMHO.
Consumer pressure on stockholders is indeed a way to exert the force needed
to make these changes, as is an all-out boycott of shabby goods.
Regrettably, most company boards are too far removed from the actual
management needed to run a really good engineering effort, and especially in
the U.S. make profitability rather than long-tern sustainable customer
satisfaction the basis for their decisions and actions.
I have sat on one such board of directors, and know the mentality all too
well.
Smarty
<je...@jonesgroup.net> wrote in message
news:1185595017.5...@d30g2000prg.googlegroups.com...
Red
It seems like I missed most of the fun. I was deluged with problems,
including my computer, and now I'm free to get back to that video editing
theme.
Huge thanks to you both for those fabulous posts. They have taught me more
than I would have learned in a month of searching. If I could, I would
award you both Nobel Prizes :-)
Thanks again and good luck with your endeavors.
RF.
"Smarty" <nob...@nobody.com> wrote in message
news:PrKdnTsySNMsbzfb...@adelphia.com...
> ---
> avast! Antivirus: Inbound message clean.
> Virus Database (VPS): 000769-0, 08/27/2007
> Tested on: 8/27/2007 1:15:58 PM
> avast! - copyright (c) 1988-2007 ALWIL Software.
> http://www.avast.com
>
>
>
Smarty
questions. It's a pleasure to help.
Smarty
"Red" <Red...@NoDen.Con> wrote in message
news:1GGAi.307$ZA5...@nlpi068.nbdc.sbc.com...
Tricky Dicky
> Glad to help Red and please don't hesitate to come back with further
> questions. It's a pleasure to help.
>
> Smarty
>
> "Red" <Red...@NoDen.Con> wrote in message
>
> news:1GGAi.307$ZA5...@nlpi068.nbdc.sbc.com...
>
>
>
> > Hi Jerry and Smarty,
>
> > It seems like I missed most of the fun. I was deluged with problems,
> > including my computer, and now I'm free to get back to that videoediting
> > theme.
>
> > Huge thanks to you both for those fabulous posts. They have taught me more
> > than I would have learned in a month of searching. If I could, I would
> > award you both Nobel Prizes :-)
>
> > Thanks again and good luck with your endeavors.
>
> > RF.
>
> > "Smarty" <nob...@nobody.com> wrote in message
> >news:PrKdnTsySNMsbzfb...@adelphia.com...
> >> I'm not entirely sure if you are asking if there are any bug-free video
> > are
> >> asking / saying that the reliability of videoeditingsoftwareis no
> >> different from other types of PCsoftware, or if you are asking for some
> >> other type of comparison?
>
> >> There are many examples of extremely complexsoftwarewhich run without
> >> problems for extended periods of time.
> >>news:9luqi.24694$RX....@newssvr11.news.prodigy.net...
>
> >> > <je...@jonesgroup.net> wrote in message
> >> >news:1185565976.2...@e9g2000prf.googlegroups.com...
>
> >> >> The truth -- in my opinion -- is that virtually all of the PC platform
>
> >> > Compared to?
>
> >> ---
> >> avast! Antivirus: Inbound message clean.
> >> Virus Database (VPS): 000769-0, 08/27/2007
> >> Tested on: 8/27/2007 1:15:58 PM
> >> avast! - copyright (c) 1988-2007 ALWILSoftware.
>
> - Show quoted text -
Now I'm really confused! As you say Red - fabulous posts and an
invaluable insight into the industry of software development.. I've
worked for ten years in a tenuously related industry; wide area
communications and remote access in a technical aspect, and trying to
get any kind of coherant approach to way in which networks are
designed, implemented and supported is akin to herding cats!
Anyways...! I'n new to the world of home video editiing having just
bought a JVC GZ-HD7 fully HD camcorder. The thing is, it came with
Cyberlink's PowerDirector 5 Express - which seems just terrible to
use.
Do you think I'd get on better with the Ulead product you guys were
talking about? I've lots of review lately and have seem that a lot of
vendors still are not supporting full HD burning to Blu-Ray. I don't
have a Blu-~Ray player yet, but when I get my PS3(!) I will have. So
I'd like to get some software that will support burning to Blu-Ray in
the future...
Any ideas?
RedFox
"Tricky Dicky" <TheTrick...@googlemail.com> wrote in message
news:1188933621.2...@r34g2000hsd.googlegroups.com...
Hi Tricky,
You're missing the boat. Head for the group alt.video.dvd.authoring where
there is a great thread DVD Authoring and Burning Program? Do a few Tools |
Download the next 300 or 500 etc Headers to see earlier posts.
Great discussion. Good luck!
RF
