Audio and Photo Editing:  

The music and sound of a movie can make or break the end product. So whether you’re using a full soundtrack, or just a few sound effects, it’s important to be able to easily add audio elements. You can import your own music (MP3, WMA, or WAV but not AAC) and add them to your movie timeline easily with PowerDirector 8 Deluxe.

The timeline features 4 audio tracks, which should be more than enough to accommodate all the music, voice, and other audio elements you want to use. Fading out/in is done just like fades to the video. You can adjust the volume by opening the integrated audio mixer.

Images can also be added and adjusted directly the PowerDirector software. Upload JPG, GIF, PNG, TIF, or BMP files and then adjust them as needed in the included PhotoNow software. PhotoNow is far from a full-function image editing software or online editor, but it’s nice to have some basic image tweaking built-in.

PowerDirector also features some great picture-in-picture capability. This lets you add static images or motion objects to your video. But the picture-in-picture feature doesn’t just mean static overlay images (think Blind Date); you can actually use picture-in-picture of videos (think Pillow Talk). PowerDirector lets you use up to 9 PiP videos (3 more than version 7), so you can create a 3x3 video wall (think Brady Bunch).

Help and Support:  

CyberLink offers a number of useful resources for getting additional help with PowerDirector if you need it. The built-in help file is pretty thorough, and you can find several additional resources online (FAQs, User’s Guide, and tutorials) that certainly come in handy.

PowerDirector 8 Deluxe continues to deliver the superior quality video editing experience we expected from CyberLink, with new features and functions to boot. PowerDirector is perfect for beginners and intermediate movie-makers looking for professional results.

With powerful tools, an easy to use workflow, and advanced video output and sharing capabilities, PowerDirector 8 Deluxe is near perfect. We also recommend looking at the Ultra edition of PowerDirector 8, which adds Blu-ray authoring and AVCHD authoring.