PowerDirector Reviewer's Comments

“ACTION”—PowerDirector, the “TopTenREVIEWS Gold Award” winner, can cut, fix, burn and edit video in a flash with its Magic Tools. This video editing software even has a YouTube wizard that can quickly post your video in a few easy steps.

You have total creative control over your video creations. With PowerDirector, you can add music, menus and correct errors easily. In addition, this software makes smooth transitions with a multitude of transition effects choices and special effect filters.

Whether you want to create an art film, capture a family memory or create a "most viewed" video clip for your favorite video sharing site, PowerDirector has the Magic Tools to get you from raw footage to a finished piece faster than you can yell, "CUT!"

If you're looking for software that lets you author Blu-ray discs, or publish to the AVCHD format, you'll need PowerDirector 7 Ultra, the ultimate solution to all your video editing and publishing needs.

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Editing Tools/Options:  

Among PowerDirector’s standout and most powerful editing tools are the Magic Tools. These automated editors allow you to perform complex edits, like creating pan effects or matching the soundtrack to the video length, in one simple step.

The Magic Tools include:

• Magic Movie Wizard, a new feature in PowerDirector 7, allows you to take raw footage and turn it into a professional-looking movie in four easy steps. Simply choose the video, photos, theme and sound—PowerDirector does the rest.

• Magic Motion enables you to select part of a still image or a face in a video clip and zoom in and out or create a pan effect.

• Magic Clean removes common flaws, like shaky video, blurriness and red-eye, in videos and photos to turn amateur-looking footage into a clean-looking cut. The side-by-side comparison tool makes it easy to compare the original version with the new version.

• Magic Music makes it easy to import audio, use one of the 30 provided songs or purchase a song from their vast library of background selections.

Other Magic tools include: Magic Cut, which turns hours of video into a high-quality, condensed version; Magic Style, which takes your video and inserts it into an editable, pre-designed theme; and Magic Fix, which smoothes shaky video and clarifies blurry footage.

Video Capture/Playback:  

We did not experience installation or set up problems with PowerDirector. We installed this software on a Pentium 4 HT with a GB of RAM and this system ran the program and worked with video files easily. Keep in mind the system requirements for this program before installing; you need at least 512 MB of RAM and a Pentium 4 for newer formats. These kind of system requirements are common for video editing programs, since they require multitasking, usually with large files.

Ease of Use:  

Video editing software is, by nature, complicated with many functions and features. Be prepared to spend a few hours playing and experimenting so you can enjoy everything the software offers. Nonetheless, we found PowerDirector to be user-friendly. We only had to refer to the manual a few times to create a short clip with a lot of special effects, transitions and audio editing. 

Ease of Installation:  

We didn’t encounter any problems installing or uninstalling PowerDirector 7. 

Help/Support:  

Cyberlink provides ample help and support. We found the integrated help section to be the most useful. This is an electronic version of the manual, except it doesn’t have any diagrams. Additional help can be found on their website including a FAQs page, searchable knowledge base and tutorials.

Summary:  

Our overall experience with PowerDirector was extremely positive. This easy-to-use software has all of the features you need to create and preserve memories or direct a “most-viewed” clip on your favorite video share website.  

For the ultimate in video editing and publishing, try Cyberlink's PowerDirector 7 Ultra, which lets you publish to Blu-ray discs, as well as in the AVCHD format.