CyberLink PowerDirector 5: Complete video editing/authoring in one program
Written: Nov 18 '05 (Updated Jan 19 '06)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Full editing and authoring package in one
Cons: Limited DVD authoring capabilities.
The Bottom Line: wants to capture 8mm video from 1936.
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| Gr8ful's Full Review: CyberLink PowerDirector 5 for PC |
CyberLink has taken one of the easiest video editing tools available today and made it even better. PowerDirector 5 is definitely the easiest software I have used for editing and creating videos and movies. It even comes with a burning engine for making video CDs and DVDs from your edited movies. It is a complete package from capture to burning designed to make video editing easy enough for anyone to accomplish proficiently.
PowerDirector 5
PowerDirector 5 is designed with an interface very similar to PowerDirector 4. If you are familier with PowerDirector 4, learning PowerDirector 5 is no problem. PowerDirector allows you to capture video or audio and import video and audio files into a compilation that you create into a finished video project. You can add music and still photos or record narration for the video.
The rendering time for compiling the completed video seems to take less time than the previous version and you can use a wide range of video and audio compression (including Dolby Digital) for the final compilation.
Installation
The software is easy to install. If you have a previous version of PowerDirector installed you must uninstall it before installing PowerDirector 5. After uninstalling any previous version, reboot the computer to clear any information that was in use by the registry. You may want to delete any folders left over from the previous installation as well. Now you can insert the PowerDirector 5 CD and installation will launch. After a few minutes you will have the program installed with a few simple clicks, the installation program is self explanatory.
System Requirements:
(Respectfully obtained from CyberLink’s web site)
* Operating System:
Microsoft Windows XP or 2000
* Monitor and Graphics:
Capable of 1024 x 768 resolution, 16-bit color or above
* Processor:
AVI Capture/Produce: Pentium II 450 MHz or AMD Athlon 500 MHz
VCD Quality (MPEG-1) Profiles: Pentium III 600 MHz or AMD Athlon 700 MHz
DVD Quality (MPEG-2) Capture/Produce: Pentium 4 2.2 GHz or AMD Athlon XP 2200+
High Quality MPEG-4 and Streaming WMV, QuickTime, RealVideo, DivX) Profiles: Pentium4 2.4 Ghz or AMD Athlon XP 2400+
MPEG-4 AVC and MPEG-2 HD Profiles: Pentium 4 3.0 GHz with HyperThreading or AMD Athlon 64 recommended
Note:
PowerDirector 5 is optimized for CPU’s with Dual Core, MMX, SSE, SSE2, 3DNow!, and HyperThreading technology.
* Memory:
512 MB RAM
* Hard Disk Space:
1 GB required minimum (note: 400 MB is for Magic Music Library)
2 GB (4 GB recommended) required for VCD and SVCD production
10 GB (15 GB recommended) required for DVD production
* Video capturing device
PCI or USB 1.0/2.0 capture device compliant with WDM standard (i.e. PC Camera and TV tuner with WDM driver)
DV camcorder connected via OHCI-compliant IEEE1394
DVD camcorder connected via USB 2.0
Sony MicroMV camcorder
JVC Everio camcorder (GZ-MC100, GZ-MC200)
Sony HDR-FX1 (HDV)
Sony HDR-HC1 (HDV)
JVC GR-HD1U (HDV)
* CD/DVD burning device:
CD or DVD burner (CD-R/RW, DVD+R/RW, DVD–R/RW or DVD Multi) is required to burn VCD/DVD/SVCD/MiniDVD titles
Note:
PowerDirector 5 supports dual layer DVD drives and media
Capturing Video
Capturing video is very easy from DV camcorders. You simply plug in your IEEE 1394 cable to your device and to the computer and turn on your camcorder to VCR or playback. Click on the “Capture” button and PowerDirector will detect the camera and you can begin capturing from the tape. You will see an interface similar to a VCR that you can control fast forwarding, rewinding and playback as well as capturing with the record button. Once you click the record button the tape will play at normal speed and be captured to the hard drive.
You can choose the format of the video to be captured by choosing a profile or creating a custom profile in the capture window. You can also choose where the captured file will be saved and have it imported to the “Media Room” where your project files are. PowerDirector supports capturing to MPEG-1, MPEG-2 and DV-AVI with various degrees and types of video and audio compression.
Editing Video
Editing is as simple or complicated as you want. You can use the provided Magic tools to create a very professional looking video and have complete control over the process. The editing interface provides you with a timeline for viewing the sequences of video, audio, effects, transitions and titles all at the same time as the video progresses. You can also switch to a clip view to see each individual video clip on the timeline.
You can use captured video from DV camcorder, VCR, or live TV provided you have the hardware to capture the video or you can import video and photographs from files on your computer. Once the files are captured or imported you simply drag them to the timeline in the order you want them.
Transition effects
There are many different transitions you can apply to smoothly transition from one video clip to the next. These include fades, wipes, shapes, spins, slides, rolls and special 3D effects. Most of them look very nice indeed. Transitions are nice to use when going from one video sequence to the next without having an abrupt change from one to the other. Adding a transition is as easy as dragging it to the desired place on the timeline. You can also set the duration of the transition as well. There are 173 transition effects available.
Video effects
This version of PowerDirector has some really neat video effects that you can apply anywhere in the timeline, even across a transition effect. There are a lot of effects but I will just list my favorites.
* Bubble effect – The bubble effect makes a series of bubbles stream upward with a small copy of the video image in them. You can set the amount of bubbles and the size variation of the smallest and largest bubbles. This produces a really neat effect.
* X-Ray – The X-Ray effect makes the video look like a negative. This is really neat when used during dark scenes or night shot scenes. It makes the world look white with strange purple, blue and black shadows where the light is. Really cool effect for music videos.
* Ripple – The ripple effect makes the video look like a reflection in a pool that someone just dropped a rock into. If timed right, the ripple effect really works well when used with the 3D ripple transition effect. It starts out looking like a ripple in water but then the ripples get very intense and when it is over, you are at a new scene.
* Delay – The delay effect gives trails to moving objects in the video and works especially well with the fade transition effect. You can split a video sequence at a certain spot and slide the right side of the video forward like 10-12 frames and add the fade effect in between, then add the delay effect. What this does is make things look like ghost images slowly fading into a new position and leaving ghostly trails the whole time. People moving on the video will fade into oblivion only to fade back in a new position but the really neat part is that they reappear in the new position before the old trails have disappeared making it look like there are double images for a second. This effect came in real handy for the Halloween music video I made. It is hard to describe but it is a really eerie effect.
These are my favorite effects but there are many more that are really cool also, I just have not used all of them yet. There are 57 different video effects available in the software.
Magic Tools
Magic tools are great for beginners and also have some benefit for advanced video editors as well. They perform tasks such as cleaning up the video and audio automatically and offering simple ways to complete some of the more complicated tasks such as trying to find music the right length of time to fit a video sequence.
Magic Clean
You can instantly enhance your videos and photos by having the contrast and brightness set automatically as well as color balance. You can also easily remove unwanted noise from video and audio clips.
Eagle Vision Technology or CLEV-2, will allow you to enhance the brightness and contrast of videos. The Magic Clean tool enhances video for a sharper and brighter picture by balancing colors, brightness, and contrast. PowerDirector 5 now allows manual control of Eagle Vision.
Magic Cut
Magic Cut automatically analyzes the video footage and selects the best video scenes. It looks for videos with pan and zoom shots, lighting exposure, background dialog, natural colors, faces and moving objects, appropriate video length, and objects in the foreground.
Magic Cut will automatically calculate and tally each factor according to a preliminary set of parameters, and then retains the best scenes of the movie. These settings can be manually set for your personal tastes too.
Magic Fix
Magic Fix can correct unsteady videos and blurry photos. It can also reduce red eye in your photos as well. Magic Fix works similar to Sony’s “Steady Shot” and can seriously reduce unwanted wavering in video scenes.
Magic Motion
Magic Motion allows you to create slide shows with transition effects from one photo to the next. To create a slide show, drag your photos onto the timeline and apply Magic Motion to the first photo then check "apply to all photo clips". Automatic motion effects are then applied to the photos on the timeline. Magic Motion uses a smart “image analysis” that locates the main subject of a photo and adds special transitions according to the photo contents.
Magic Music
Magic Music give you a wide range of royalty-free music (not copyrighted) and can adjust the length of the music to fit the video sequence perfectly. If you set the duration of the music to match the length of the video sequence, Magic Music will synchronize the music and video with fade-in and fade-out.
Magic Style
Magic Style applies a general theme to your video. If you don’t want to have to spend hours setting transitions, effects, frames and length of clips you can use Magic Style to do all that automatically. Magic Style uses a smart video analysis algorithm to determine clip length and you can apply it to the captured or imported video with nothing else to have to do. This is a good feature for beginners or people who do not want to spend hours editing video.
Rendering the video
Rendering to a file
The time it takes to render the video compilation to a completed video or movie file seems shorter than the previous version and much shorter than other programs I have used in the past. You can render the compilation down to a file, streaming video for the web or you can write back to DV tape.
Rendering to a file gives you the option of saving the video as an AVI, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, DivX, PSP MPEG-4 or AVC MPEG-4. After choosing the format you want to use you can also modify the compression settings for video and audio by changing the profile settings in the same window.
You can also add CLVS (CyberLink Virtual Speaker ) which allows you to enhance the background music to sound like it is in a living room, theater or stadium. The next step renders the video to the desired format.
Rendering to streaming video
You can choose between Windows Media, RealVideo and Quicktime video formats for streaming video. This will create a file that can be streamed over the Internet from a web server. You can also send the file in email provided it is not too big. You can not add CLVS to streaming video but you can customize the compressions settings for these formats.
Writing back to DV tape
This allows you to send the finished video back to your camcorder to be recorded on DV tape. I would recommend using a fresh tape for this because if you overwrite the original tape and remove the captured video, you may decide later that you don’t like the final edited video and wish to remake the video. If you loose the original video from the DV tape, you may be stuck with what you have.
Create Disc
You can send the edited video project directly to CD or DVD with this software. PowerDirector 5 has a burning engine in the software and does not require any other software to make a CD or DVD video disc. You can create a VCD, SVCD, or DVD disc using PowerDirector 5. DVD disc sizes supported are 1.4GB, 4.7GB and 8.5GB. PowerDirector does support dual layer CD drives and media and allows you to create high definition and widescreen DVD movies.
Using PowerDirector 5 you can create a simple menu from templates and customize your menu by changing text fonts and font colors. You can add more video from files from the computer as well as the video you recently created into the disc compilation. When you are satisfied with the menu, text and video selections you simply click the little burning disc symbol and the writing operation begins. Depending on the speed of your burner and the size of your compilation you should have a CD or DVD in a short time.
Personal Use
I have created two videos with this software so far and I really like it. PowerDirector 5 is not the sole editing program I use but it is one of my favorites. I created a Halloween video using music from my band and video from a Halloween party I went to. The result was actually entertaining. I also created a music video from clips over the last year set to music from my band and my own solo stuff. The result was also entertaining (although I am biased :-).
Conclusion
CyberLink PowerDirector 5 is a great video editing program that is a full editing/authoring package in one. I recommend it highly for beginners and people who want to get a decent video quickly without a lot of hassle. You can capture, edit and burn all with one program.
Thanks for reading,
Gr8ful :-)
Recommended:
Yes
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