A couple of weeks ago Cyberlink announced that to go alongside their full featured video editing package PowerDirector11 they have released PowerDirector Mobile to the Windows Store. The app is designed for quick editing and production of home videos clips that can be uploaded to Youtube or other sharing sites.

The app is installed via the Windows Store and is designed to work with touch as well as keyboard and mouse, the buttons are large so it works well on a touch screen. I tested it on my HP TouchSmart which it worked very well on, unfortunately it’s x86/x64 only so that means no editing on a Windows RT device like the Surface which is a real shame as the it’s something the Surface is lacking.

Having said that after using it for a couple of videos I have found that it’s not really suitable for the videos I produce and it’s only really a basic system for uploading and cleaning up video clips. It would good for getting a video taken from a phone, trimming it and uploading to a site like YouTube.

Here is how it works:

Step 1 you select the clips you want to be included in the video, these seem to come from the My Videos folder.

Next you select a template which are very much like DVD like menus, Slideshow seemed to be the only one that produced a basic video the others do fancy starts and graphics.

The next step you can trim the start and end points of the clip, you can’t actually edit the clip which is a big limitation for me but for simple clips may be ok. You can also add background music and depending on which template you use you can add titles.

Next you produce the actual video, you can create an mp4 file, share it on Facebook, share on YouTube or export the project so you can open it in PowerDirector 11.

When you product the video it created an mp4 which you could manually upload to a sharing site.

As a concept I really like the idea of a touch friendly video editing package in the Windows Store but in practice it’s limited, if you have small clips that you just want to share on YouTube or Facebook it could be a product for you. The app costs £10.99 on its own which is a bit on the expensive side given its limitations but you can get it as part of PowerDirector 11 Combo where you don’t pay for the mobile app.

So overall great for basic trimming and uploading of videos but for editing videos you need the desktop app.

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