Review by Jerry Saperstein

My personal favorite these days.

I have Adobe Creative Suite and know my way around Adobe Premiere and AfterEffects.

But the reality is that most of my video editing needs are light-weight ad don’t require the power of those two programs.

I have used Adobe Premiere Elements (an excellent program) and Magix Movie Edit Pro (which has never had a stable version) and the execrable Pinnacle (awful no matter who owned the company, Avid being the absolute worst). Buy Cyberlink PowerDirector after years of constant refinement is now the best in class.

They boast of dozens of main features, most of which like faux 3D videos, I will never use.

Rather, PowerDirector will handle just about any video format I throw at it, has a clean, function-oriented interface that lets me edit video on a timeline with a minimum of hassle, will let me manage my audio tracks with a fair degree of simplicity, has a more than adequate tilter built-in and a zillion effects which most videographers will studiously steer of.

You can do Ken Burns style videos, produce slideshows if you want and much, much more. Happily in the boxed version, they include a usable 250 page manual. You don’t have to read it: just repeatedly browse it and you’re learn a lot, not only about how to use PowerDirector, but about creating video as well. Good stuff. If you’re just considering a purchase of PowerDirector v12, you can download the entire manual from the CyberLink site. Do it and youll see how powerful this software is as you read the detailed description of each function. Even were I to spell out the major features of PowerDirector here, I would not be doing the reader and prospective Cyberlink customer justice. Download the manual, set aside an hour or so and patiently read the manual (lots of pictures).

Like I said, this has become my go-to software for day-to-day editing. Give it a try.

Jerry