Review by Matt Morgan

CyberLink PowerDirector 10 is a video production application that can be used to assemble all manner of video projects. Normally when I think of CyberLink I think of DVD playback software so PowerDirector was not a product with which I was previously aware. I have worked with other video production software, namely Pinnacle Studio and especially Corel VideoStudio, so I was interested in comparing PowerDirector to these products. While PowerDirector is not perfect it is a good software package.

Installation of the application from the DVD was quite painless. The installer asked me a few simple questions and shortly thereafter I was off and running. The install didn’t take long and ran into no glitches. Once finished, I launched the application and was ready to start working.

First things first - unlike other video editing applications I have used, PowerDirector runs as a native 64-bit application on my system, not a 32-bit application in compatibility mode. For some this won’t matter, but what this really means is that it should run faster as it has the full 64-bit address space. While it is very likely that other applications will be available as 64-bit applications in the near future, PowerDirector is already there.

The similarity of the graphical interface between PowerDirector and other applications of the same type is striking, at least in terms of color scheme and basic layout. All of the applications I have tried (with the notable exception of a single shareware application) have a slate gray color scheme with dark backgrounds, gloomy gray palettes and neutral colors for the menu systems. I am not sure why this has been adopted as a standard. Also, all have a review window in the upper right of the client window, a media palette in the upper left and center and a timeline-style editor on the bottom where you can drag and drop media files and text to compose the video.

Once past the basic layout of the GUI, PowerDirector goes its own way. The basic interface is very clean and uncluttered and the timeline is divided into logical track groupings to make editing straightforward and easy. By the smart use of tab controls everything is very well organized.

CyberLink has included a very generous set of transition effects as well as media files. What really startled me most in this regard is the inclusion of sound clips from which you can build a soundtrack to your video production, all without needing ti import more music files or audio clips. Clicking and dragging to the timeline is all that is required to put together a complete video production.

I decided to use PowerDirector to put together a stop-motion video with a series of still pictures. I have over 500 pictures in the series and the purpose behind all of these pictures was to tell a story and to create a video from them. I was able to import the images, select them all, drop them on the timeline and play them back without any trouble, but I did run into a small disappointment in the settings in the process of putting this together.. Rather than set the image duration on all 500+ images, I instead went into the application settings and changed the default. The installed default was 5 seconds, and I had in mind to change it to 0.1 second, but the application only allowed me to set it to 0.2 and gave me no indicator at all that the setting was invalid.

Another disappointment was that I found absolutely nothing in the documentation or the help file to tell me what I needed to do in order to create stop-motion videos. I finally resorted to an online search which took me where I needed to go.

I have a webcam on my computer and in playing with the interface I ended up in the Capture area. PowerDirector immediately found my webcam, turned it on and I found myself looking at my own face on the screen. This was a startling but good surprise - PowerDirector had no issues with setting up my webcam for capture.

Creating a video from a completed timeline is simple and straightforward. It provides output for AVI, MPEG, MOV, WMV, FLV and more. Of the applications of this type that I have used, PowerDirector has the widest variety of available formats. And, yes, it’s fast.

I have not played with the 3D effects or the disc creation. I have explored a little, though, and it looks like creating a DVD is a straightforward task. I will try this later.

Many reviewers have complained about stability issues with PowerDirector and I have just not seen any issues so far. The application has been fast, stable and easy to work with. That does not invalidate their claims though - there are enough people that have stability issues that it leaves one to wonder what I am doing differently (what what I am NOT doing). From my personal experience, though, I have not had a moment’s trouble with PowerDirector.

There is no question that PowerDirector is a powerful application for creating videos. It is easy to use and it is fast. For me it has been stable. It is not perfect, but I am satisfied with it and based on my own experiences with it I can recommend it to anyone wanting to create video content.