PowerDirector 9 Ultra64

[Svein Berger]

Has anyone tried this app. on 64-bit system yet?

PCMAG.COM claim it is the fastest consumer vidoe editings software made.
It also support Graphic GPGPu graphic card.

I am interested in testing it if it's as good as PCMAG.COM claims.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2372982,00.asp

[Dave McElderry]

Got my attention Svein. Finally an under $100 video editing solution that makes use of the 64 bit OS. If Bob's post of a few days ago regarding the possible direction of PrEl is on track Adobe is going to be left behind. Maybe they don't care. Maybe the emphasis is on their professional apps, but I don't have the need or money to go pro. I see you can download a trial version, so why not check it out yourself? I think I will.

No catalog, clip tagging and analysis? Wouldn't bother me. Never had any use for those anyway. Designated Favorites for effects and transitions! That's a good thing. I probably wouldn't use a fraction of the "gimmicky" effects it has available, but I never use those in PrEl either. One thing that's not clear from the photos and description is if the Properties panel (or equivalent) can be fixed and available without switching in and out of it. I work so much with keyframes that I really miss the ability to have it stay right there in front of me instead of having to keep telling the program to show it to me. The author also didn't mention stabilty. That could be a good thing, meaning that he didn't have any issues, but I wonder how much of a test experience he really had with it.

Adobe makes [arguably valuable] changes in their latest version at the expense of dropping very useful features that were present in previous versions, and its performance gets worse. That doesn't sit well with me. Don't get me wrong - PrEl has been like an old friend to me and I'm one of its biggest cheerleaders, but I can't use version 7 forever. If you can't stay up with the changes in technology by upgrading to newer [better] versions, eventually you'll be a landline in a smartphone world.

[Dave McElderry]

I did download the trial version and played with it some. Today I had some time on my hands and was going to go back in to play some more, but found out that my 30 day trial had alread expired. Wow! That time sure did go by fast. I should have waited until after the holidays to install the trial when I would have had more time.

Anyway, here are some notes that I did take the first time I used it:

It starts REALLY fast.
The program is very responsive and seems to not have the timeline refresh sluggishness that can be an issue in PrEl. This was SD. I did no HD work.
I noticed that the track numbering is backwards to PrEl.
You can lock tracks so that they can't be added to, moved, or edited. I wish PrEl had this feature.
It works directly with FLVs. You can just add them to the timeline and edit. Exporting is slow, compared to similar exports in PrEl, but that's probably due to the source being FLV. I was exporting to AVI as a test. It's not that I have reason to edit a lot of FLVs, but when I discovered that it could do this I got sidetracked and spent too much time playing.
Grid lines is a nice feature.

Overall, in the short time that I played with the program I was encouraged that I would like it. However, I'm not inclined at this moment to spend the $99. If I had it to do over, I would have not purchased PrEl V9, stuck with V7 (which is what I'm still using), and spent the money on this instead.

Svein, did you ever give the trial a try?

[Svein Berger]

Hi Dave,
I bought PowerDirector after I tried it.
And I agree with you, the program launch very quickly. Even with two hours HD footage it only takes seconds to load.
(I have a new computer for video editing, so my signature is not correct.)
I've used it with HD footage and it works very well.
One thing that I really like is that it is possible to preview on your screen in full HD quality.
There is no chopping when I use multiple layers either. Have tested with five teams, all in high definition (HDV) with effects. And everything worked great without rendering anything.

But the functionality here is not exactly the same as in PRE, so I'm still learning every day.

Have not tried exporting yet, but I'll come back with more when I've done it too.

I plan to use PowerDirector in my next project, and it's two hours of HD footage.