Review by M Cox

Update:nnI uninstalled this software and cleaned the registry for a fresh installation. Previously I had Version 10 installed and when I installed this latest version, version 10 was uninstalled. So I thought maybe some files from Version 10 were not completely uninstalled and were not compatible with this newest release. This time I did not update the Version 11 software from the internet; I just used the software on the disk that came in the retail box.

I managed to render the AVCHD HD video I had trouble with a few days ago. I am just trying to get all the way through to a finished disk now. When I tried to burn the project to a disk, the software crashed within a few minutes and exited me out of the program entirely. It asked me to send an error report. So I rendered it again, but this time just for normal DVD quality. It certainly wasn’t as good as the original HD video, but it worked. When I produced the video for a Blu-ray disk, the video had some flaws. About three or four minutes from the beginning, the video snagged or froze a fraction of a second. And later, the audio snagged, too. Another place, there was a horizontal snow bar that flashed briefly. None of this was on the original video. It was produced by this software during rendering. I compiled the same video in a competitive product and it did not have these undesirable artifacts.

Next I compiled some video clips that were taken with my Canon D5 Mark II camera. The HD video format produced is .mov files, not AVCHD. I didn’t try to insert transitions - just plain video clips to join together. And again - disappointment. While it was rendering, suddenly the video turn solid green for one entire clip and then return to normal when the next clip started. And when I viewed the rendering, the green segment was really there. Again, I rendered the exact same files with a competitive product and the rendering was perfect.

However the real challenge is when it comes time to burn a DVD or Blu-ray disk. This is where most all the video editors fail. I finally had to download a free disk build and burn program called ImgBurn. This is a great program I’ve used for years. I was able to burn a rewritable Blu-ray disk with ImgBurn, but not from within PowerDirector. PowerDirector complained that the disk was incompatible. But ImgBurn had no difficulty at all burning the exact same rendering.

My system has Windows 7 64 bit OS, an Intel i7 920 CPU, 12 GB of 1866 MHz RAM, an OCZ SATA III 120 GB SSD dedicated for the OS, a RAID 0 pair of VelociRaptor disks with 500 GB of storage for the source video, and a Corsair 128 GB SSD for target storage. I am not over-clocking. My system is rock stable - never crashes or BSOD. I used PowerDirector 10 last week to do the very same project using an AVCHD video stream from my Canon Camcorder and it worked fine.

Below is my prior experience a few days ago. I have normally been using Sony Vegas 8 and DVD Architect for the past few years and it always works. Recently I installed Pinnacle and it works well, also.n————————nI am moving my original review to the end of the comments section. You can read it there if you want to see my original issues.