Cyberlink PowerDirector 11 Ultra

Excellent video editor! My son wanted to start putting out YouTube videos, and most of the apps that I already had weren't really up to the task (at least not easily). So after doing a Google Search, I came across a review of the popular apps, and this one seemed to be the best deal and had most of the best features. I went with the older v11 because I am not planning on using multiple camera inputs, but I might upgrade later just for the improved rendering speed. When I purchased this I was using it on an older dual core system, but now I have it on a high end Intel i7 system, so I'm already spoiled by the improved rendering speed that came with the system upgrade. To give an idea of the improvement, my son's first video was 12 minutes long 1080p 30fps and it took well over an hour to render on my old dual core PC. On the i7 based PC the same video rendered faster than real-time -- under 8 minutes! Editing is very easy to do. It's very easy to add subtitles and/or annotations, music tracks, voice overs, watermarks/logos, etc. It comes with a nice assortment of fancy transitions, and the enhancements are easy to use (but do slow down the rendering). My video camera isn't anything too fancy -- a Panasonic Lumix FZ200. It does a good enough job that I don't really feel the need to use any of the enhancement utilities. Overall just an excellent piece of software, rather low learning curve (I tried Sony Vegas and PowerDirector is MUCH easier to use), easy to use, fast rendering (on a fast PC), stable, and rather inexpensive compared to the competition.

First the Good news: I have used PowerDirector 8 for several years. It did the job but crashed all the time. But I still used it. I downloaded the trial version of PowerDIrector 11 for a new computer i just bought. This software works 10 times faster (literally) than PowerDirector 8, and hasn't crashed yet. It's so much better! Now the bad news: I bought this from Amazon, from one of their "sellers". The disk was defective. It would not install. Got error messages. (And understand, I'm a professional IT person, so it's not like I don't know how to install software.) I contacted Amazon. They sent me to the Seller. I contacted the Seller ("AndrewSet"). They would not accept a return -- even though it was defective -- because "the box has been opened". (Someone please tell me how I could have determined that the disk was bad without opening the box.) The Seller said I had to contact CyberLink directly. ("We're sorry!") CyberLink does not publish a phone number. So I managed to open a "trouble ticket" on their site. I have gone back-and-forth with their technical support person for several WEEKS now. They wanted me to prove to them one thing after another: "Show us a screen shot of the error; make sure that is's a FULL screen shot!" "Run this diagnostic utility of windows and send us the output file." "Show us the invoice for this purchase from Amazon." "Prove to us that you contacted Amazon about this return; let us see a copy of the email." I gave them everything they wanted. They still won't replace the CD. At one time, the customer service rep said she'd "escalate the issue" for me. (Huh? She isn't authorized to send me a replacement CD?) Amazingly, that "escalation" must have been rejected within CyberLink. That was a week ago. No outcome - good or bad - from it. I replied with 2 replies to one of their questions. Unfortunately, their trouble-ticket software automatically opened a new ticket for me with my 2nd reply. Apparently, this made my request go back to the beginning again. So, they then asked me to prove all of the same things again. (No joke.) I replied by sending them a link to my previous trouble ticket on their own web site, which had all the answers to their questions. With that, they then denied that they even needed those questions answered. (I have all this in writing.) (What?!!!) All of that .. and they *still* won't send me a replacement disk (CyberLink's customer service did offer me a "download", but that's not what I want, and that's not what I purchased; I purchased a *disk*, specifically, because I want a permanent copy of the software.) So ... there you go. It's good software. However, in my case, at least, I still don't have what I paid for -- and I'm tired of fighting these people. I guess "greed" has won the day ... at least as of the date of this review. Is this what America has come to?

After countless hours creating, producing and burning bluray disks of a recent trip, the title frame kept freezing when played on my DVD player connected to our 55 inch Samsung TV. I was able to isolate the problem by using Sony's Play Home Memories software that was actually free with my new Cybershot camera. Ultra only supports 30fps AVCHD video. This caused my bluray player to freeze upon loading a mandatory title page since it and my TV only support either 24fps or 60fps. I've got the Samsung TV that runs at the 120Hz refresh rate. I did find a workaround to save all my effort by running the .mt2s file created from PowerDirector though the Sony Play Home Memories software with add on bluray support. Worked like a charm though the interface is very basic. I've deleted PowerDirector and won't be using it further since it is too clumsy to go this route and the features were really cheesy, obscuring the quality of the video and pictures with too many gadgets. Very frustrating since the trial version of their software doesn't allow AVCHD conversion, only Mpeg2, which worked fine at lower quality. I had to buy the full version to find out it wouldn't work with my DVD player/TV. Beware!

UPDATE 2013/04/04 (April) I did finally get it to work. It seems like it's going to be useful and maybe even fun but I've only had it up and running about a day and a half. It took many hours over several days...trial and error mostly...to figure out what PowerDirector did not remove in the uninstall so it could actually start out fresh. As I've had to do with quirky software in the past, I had to search the hard drive for any folders or files that might remain after uninstalling. Then, I search the Windowws Registry to find things of the same ilk and I try deleting them. Of course, before starting the process, I have to image my OS partition to be prepared in case I massacre the OS files to the point of no return. I don't know which "delete" made the magic because I did multiple things at once...however...it now will launch and run. Cyberlink did finally respond with human (rather than bot) intervention. However, they want me to send screenshots, dxdiag logs, and a whole bunch of other stuff so they can analyze. Well. I'm up and running on my own so I'm going to politely decline their offer. If they had asked for that a few days ago I might have done it but I don't know that would have helped any. I think it would have just been more busy work designed to keep me offline and out of their way. We now know the fix was deleting stuff. Tech support will never advise you to delete stuff from the registry. They know 90% of their customers can't do that. So, the basic install works. But, in addition, there are some additional "content" installers that are part of the Ultra package. One is a separate 1.7 Gig installer called "essentials" and then there's a 0.9 Gig installer that is called "premium". I haven't had the nerve yet to try them although I want to because I guess that's where the snazzy transititions and effects are harbored. I'm just not ready for more installation problems right now. Maybe some day after I've had a few martinis I'll be ready to do the deed. Oh, and get this. The update/patch files at Cyberlink carry a payload. Oh, yes. It's true. You have to carefully decline a Google installer when you run an update. How about that? You're in trouble so you run to get a patch to fix broken software and they slip a Google thing in there. Really? Is that they way to do it? UPDATE 2013/03/30: It did take 12 hours to download from Amazon. So, consider the "download" option to be similar to a "next day" delivery. I still cannot use the program. It did nothing but crash so I tried the uninstall/reinstall routine but now it won't launch as it complains that it is cannot find MFC90U.dll. (Of course, that's a part of Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 runtime and CyberLink installs that runtime as part of its install routine.) When I contact CyberLink support through email, they only regurgitate and reflect my statements back to me or they answer a question that I did not ask. It's as if they have a bot program autoresponding and I think that is the case. CyberLink support is of no help whatsoever but I must continue to hammer away at them hoping I'll eventually land upon someone or something that knows something and is willing to share because Amazon does not accept returns of downloaded software. And, of course, I'm Googling like crazy trying to find a fix. If I figure something out, I'll come back to post. I suspect others will experience this problem. In the meantime, my $58 for the software has only left me with a big obstacle to overcome so I can troubleshoot CyberLink's software for them. MY ORIGINAL REVIEW POST: It will take over 10 hours to download this from Amazon's server. Something is very, very slow. Web page for CPD11Ultra says it's 654 MB but when you fire up the Amazon download manager to get it, you discover it is actually over 3 Gigs. That would be okay because I've got a good fast fiber optic connection but something is dragging the bits through sludgy mud before they get in the stream. The server is doling out the bits so that over 4 hours have passed and I've only got about 1.2 Gigs of the total 3.21 Gigs. The Amazon download manager says there's another 8 hours to go! It's going to be 12 hours waiting for this application. Adding to the anxiety, however, is the expectation that the installer will fail because some bits are whacked and I'll have to restart a 12 hour download again. I'm pretty sure this will make me shy away from Amazon's other download services (movies, software, games, etc.) I called Amazon customer service. They could see what I was trying to download but said they couldn't do anything to speed it up. So, here I sit. 4 hours down and another 8 hours to go but I'll be in bed by then! 2013/03/30 ELABORATION ON TODAY'S UPDATE I still can't use the program. It did nothing but crash when I tried to encode a short movie time line. Naturally, the next intervention was to uninstall and reinstall. Tried that. Now, I can't launch the program. It complains that it cannot find mfc90u.dll. Turns out that's a Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 file. Cyberlink PowerDirector installs an old version of M$ Visual C++ 2008 during the PowerDirector installation process. So, why can't PowerDirector find its own files? I think that's a question that CyberLink should easily be able to answer. I believe my download from Amazon was intact because the Amazon download manager utility ran a MD5 hash check on the files and it reported that all was okay. It's frustrating when I consider that CyberLink has sold thousands of software packages. You know that my problem cannot be unique. It must have happened to many. And, yet, when I contact the people who coded the software, all they tell me is a repeat of the things I say in my email query. I tell them I have already installed, uninstalled, and reinstalled. Their answer is to uninstall and reinstall. Do they think that just because they say it then it will be effective even though I have already done that? Obviously, the CyberLink uninstall/reinstall routine is flawed. That's why it can't find the Microsoft C++ 2008 runtime that CyberLink put there. So, what good does it do to tell me to do that over and over? If it failed, then it will continue to fail. Only CyberLink coders can determine why that is so. But, the problem won't get past the CyberLink bots! The bots just keep saying uninstall/reinstall!!!

UPDATE ! July 17, 2013 The latest patch seems to have improved the stability quite a bit. I still had a couple of app crashes doing a complex video but nothing like it was before. Considering the power that this editor has, it deserves serious consideration now. [Original Review] I've used a few different versions of Power Director now (6,7,8 & 11) and they've all had an easy to use interface and good features but very crash prone. It's a 3.21 GB download and after you install the main program, you need to download and install a free patch. Then there are two content packs to install. It takes a couple of hours. My download from Amazon took a little less than an hour over my high-speed cable broadband. The activation key comes in the folder that the Amazon downloader will create on your desktop. It's an HTML web-browser file. So I decided to test my new PD11 app by editing a short 7 minute video. I have two monitors and two X-fired AMD Radeon 6770 graphics cards. The dual-monitor option doesn't work properly. It displayed on the 2nd monitor only when I played the primary video clip but would blank out when I tried to play all tracks in "MOVIE" mode. With PD8 I was constantly maddened by the app just suddenly forgetting clips in the movie. Often one or more video clips would just suddenly go blank/black and I could sometimes get them back by closing and restarting but usually I'd have to drag the original video source file back into the timeline and spend mucho grande time re-editing things back to what they were. PD11 looks like it has the same sort of bugs, except now it wants to GREEN-OUT some of your clips rather than BLACK-OUT. The app crashed twice during this small job. It crashed when I was done editing and left-clicked on the "Produce" tab and while on the "Produce" screen, when I selected "online" and "Youtube", it produced a perfectly useless/blank/black 720p WMV file and after a long pause decided to automatically upload said worthless video to Youtube. I of course, cancelled out of that. So this is the way of Cyberlink. It's their tradition. They focus on coding new features but never make any sincere effort to stamp out bugs. Perhaps if you happen to own/use the exact same hardware as found in the Cyberlink labs or get paid the same money that PCmag gets to ignore bugs, you'll never experience a crash, but I've used it on two different systems (1 Intel & 1 AMD) and it's just as crashy on both. Thankfully Power Director has the auto-save feature and if you set it to 5 minutes, you can almost always restart the app and get your work back without losing much. One question I had before purchasing which I can now answer is that YES!! you can now output Mpeg-4 in an mp4 container instead of that stupid *.M2TS container that PD8 restricted you to when you output H.264 video. So in summary. Easy to use. Lots of nice features but just as buggy and crashy as ever. I'll live with it, as I have lived with the past versions. The familiarity that I already have from using prior versions crosses over very well to the new version 11. There are some nice new editing features which make things easier. As far as encoding speed goes, it's faster than PD8 for sure! To achieve high speed though, you need to be careful about your settings. Try to match the same frame-rate as your source material. Also watch the bitrate. PD11 will, by default, slap a high & mis-matched framerate and an unnecessarily high bit-rate on you that will result in long encoding times and huge file sizes. This is just my preliminary review based on about an hour of use. I'll edit this later as I get more familiar with it.

I've just recently gotten into video making, and was looking for a step up from Windows Movie Maker. One of the products i came across was this one. After reading some of the negative reviews from users about this product, I was a little hesitant to buy it. So I downloaded the 30-day trial, and I gave it a spin. For basic video editing, I found it to be exactly what I needed, plus a little more. I bought the full version about a week ago, and I still feel the same way about it. I love the system for keyframing opacity, scale, movement, etc. Basic corrections to the color of video are also great. It includes just enough to not confuse a newbie (i.e. no color wheels). Even the titling system is a step up. I've only had one problem with freezing so far. It stopped right in the middle of a render. But, I don't have a lot of RAM, and I had been making a lot of edits before the render, so it shouldn't be a problem in the future. Overall, PowerDirector has made great first impressions, and I look forward to editing some larger projects on it in the future.

PowerDirector 11 Ultra is everything I expected it to be and more. Editing is easy and can be done frame by frame, effects are good and easy to install. Had a problem with burning to disc, but read the book more in depth and found out what I was doing wrong. The wave editor that comes with it is an added bonus for our church as I can take songs and remove lyrics. Like I said this is an awesome easy to use product and the price is outstanding. I looked at other programs that can do half the stuff and cost 3 times as much.

PowerDirector 11 allows me to take my huge recordings of gaming footage and edit quickly. It has essential visual effects, and does picture in picture well. Encoding is fast and the file formats I use are supported. It is very easy to use aside from one thing: audio mixing. Unless I am overlooking some feature, keyframes must be used to adjust volumes which becomes very tiresome when there are many many clips that need adjusted. A workaround is to adjust levels before splitting your media up. An excellent value for a program that gives competitive results.