Saturday, June 23, 2012

Cyberlink PowerDirector 10 Review

I have never written a review of any kind before but I have been a long-time fan of Cyberlink since I first started using their editing software many moons ago. The most recent addition to the family is the PowerDirector 10 and is the product I am focusing on in this review. As an experienced editor I had been frustrated for a while with the limited software options that were available to me that could do what I needed them to do.

Many times I have started a project using software from different tech companies and have been repeatedly let-down by their failure to deliver what they promise on the box. A lot of the problem is that editing software companies seem to battle with each other in order to offer the most amounts of different functions to their customers but many of them simply do not make the software able to deliver the effects that they promise.

I have always found Cyberlink to be different as they seem to understand better than other software companies that what customers are really after is performance and reliability. There have been many times before that I have been in the middle of a complicated editing process only for the software to be so slow it struggles to keep up. Cyberlink however seem to have been able to design software that does not suffer from this problem.

Upon first using this version of their editing software I was taken by how much of a pleasure it is too use. Normally I would find that the software I was using would often crash when switching between the different processes. This was very annoying and meant that many times I would lose work that I had previously been working on and had to start all over again. Since using this software I have noticed a significant improvement compared to the editing software I used to use. Also the previous software that I used to use was almost double the price that I paid for this product by Cyberlink. If you have not used any type of editing software before then I would also recommend this product based on how simple it is to use.

My youngest daughter and her friends have actually mastered it even quicker than I did and use it work on editing they work from their drama class. I think for the amount of editing tools that you get for less than $70 that this product offers a fantastic alternative to the other more expensive products that are for sale. I would also highly recommend taking advantage of the free trial that they offer for 30 days as this is more than enough time to get accustomed to the menus and you will be a pro in no time.

More reviews and comments about CyberLink PowerDirector 10 can be found in the comments below at the end of this article.

12 comments:

  1. I do not find PD 10 user friendly and after printing out the 300 page manual, I am no further ahead. After using a couple of other products and returning to PD I was able to figure out how some of the features worked, still unable to find the directions in the manual that explain this. Perhaps if I had a month or two to waste and play with the program, I could give a better review

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  2. The only real draw back to video studio is that you are unable to make your copy right, I realy enjoy working with corel products, found them almost 2 years before finding cyberlink; even though power cinema, power producer and power director came with my digital camcorder I never realy enjoyed the software at all. I gave media suite 10 a try and within a week I loved it. Sure some stuff is a little harder to learn, but I can do all the things I want to do in power director and power producer that I can do in video studio x4 and a few things I have never been able to do.

    I enjoyed your ebook on PowerDirector 10, very informative, and this story here though I read very slowly and have to read things 2 or 3 times to understand them, I read a little of the info on this page and have not found what you were reffering to on not figuring out. Being a disabled certified computer tech, I have a little time to experiment with things, but can only work while at the desktop right now. I am hoping to be able to get a second copy of media suite 10 for my laptop

    Please keep up the good work on the tutorials and maybe after I get things read I may put something together as well.

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  3. I really wanted to like PD 10, but it has been so frustrating to use. It is not intuitive and it crashes constantly. Yes, I have updated all drivers, etc. I have a current, fast PC with plenty of RAM. The menu creation for the DVD is just horrible. It has some funky quirks and irritates me to no end just trying to format the sub menus. There is no spell-check, you can't copy-paste text. Garbage! After purchasing the product, you still get "advertisements" in the product to buy other CL products. WTF! It makes the product feel cheap and sleazy. Shame on CL!

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  4. I was one of the early testers that got the program free if you tried and and gave some feedback.
    I have not used the program at all since I got the full upgrade version about a year ago. My reason is it's virtually un-usable since it's so slow. I didn't have that problem with ACR, Photoshop Elements, testing Lightroom or Canon's DPP programs but just as soon as I used this one my PC would slow to a stop every time I ran it, there was no multi tasking and it would take 5 to 10 minutes to work an edit I made. I have a Dual Core PC with 4 meg of memory running Windows 7 and enough hard drive space to to make a computer geek say "Dude"!

    There is no way I would ever pay for an upgrade to what ever the latest release is.

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  5. On the contrary I find PD 10 to be among the best of the same pedigree. In fact, it is easy to maneuver yourself if you spend time on it. In addition to that PDtoot's contribution makes the use of the software interesting.

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  6. I agree! After using Power director for well over a year I still struggle with how the darn software works. It needs a good tutorial badly. Given enough time I can usually figure things out, but who has time?

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  7. I am happy to read these positive comments ....

    But ...
    Since many months now I have been trying to purchase the power Director 10 in the box version!!!
    However WITHOUT SUCCESS!!!!

    It seems there is no possibility here in BELGIUM to buy this version!!!

    No good example of marketing strategy!!!

    SORRY!!!

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  8. Well written and said CSSZH 是什么.

    I have been using Power Director since about Version5/6. This latest version written for WIN 64 bit OS is amazingly stable and with the right hardware can take almost any amount of heavy-duty editing/rendering/converting all in the one process. Previously I would have to apply different editing processes layer by layer, but this version can take edits, effects, stabilisation, speed variation, picture in picture and other processes all with the one render including converting from MPEG 2/4 to my preferred format output HD WMV. You really have to see it work under a heavy load to believe it - and no crashes!

    No doubt for price and on-going innovation and upgrades you cannot beat this product.

    Others might say they find the interface a bit lame, but once you have worked and experienced it over a few months, you will not go back to any other Mickey Mouse editing software.

    Cheers Roy

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  9. I will say thank you very much to Power Director because almost all of my 300's videos on YouTube edited using Power Director. I used Power Director since Power Director 8, 9 and 10. The newest edition is faster than previous edition. There is improvement in capability of Power Director 10 in submitting video to YouTube, in previous edition we cannot upload videos that more than 15 minutes but now, Power Director will submit video with 15 minutes slices.

    I suggest Power Director can recognize YouTube user that have privilege to upload more than 15 minutes.

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  10. Nice to know an experienced artist using PD10.
    I bought it years ago and still struggle to use PD10.
    Can you advise me to find a good book about PD10 ?
    The DVD Menu always allows only 2 titles.
    How to increase to 10 title in the DVD menu ?
    How to increase duration of one frame of picture ?
    PD10 may be a good software, perhaps it is my fault not knowing how to use it.
    Thank you very much for your advice.

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  11. PD10 may be a good software in editing video.
    But the DVD menu always limited to 2 chapters (Titles).
    How to increase to 10 or even more titles on DVD menu?
    I like to have some particular frames of slide show to display longer duration. If PD10 has such feature to allow a frame of slide show display longer would be great !
    Any suggestions or advice are greatly appreciated.

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  12. Dear Nussbaumer:

    Where did you print 300 pages manual ?

    Do you know how to increase more than chapters(Titles) on the DVD menu ?

    Thank you for your advice.

    Best regards,

    Richard

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