A quick look at Cyberlink’s PowerDirector 11

When it comes to editing videos I have used Windows Movie Maker which while it does the job is pretty basic and iMovie which is a bit more advanced but OS X only.  Cyberlink’s video editing software is called PowerDirector and I have given version 11 a try. PowerDirector is a rich video editing tool and I have only just scratched the surface of it so I thought I post my impressions after using it for couple of videos.

Getting started with PowerDirector is actually pretty easy, when you launch the program there you have the option of using the full featured editor or the Easy Editor which is actually a wizard for producing a basic video. In the first step you select your source files, you then apply a basic style to video, fill in some titles and your done.

I found that it that wizard was ok for a very basic video but if you need to do any editing you need the full editor but the wizard is a good starting place for you to then go to the advanced editor to complete the video.

In the editor you can do all the things you would expect, you can edit the video, create transitions, add music and picture in picture overlays

You can have multiple tracks of video and audio, plus you can have titles and transitions. Most of the videos I have produced so far I have used video from a Flipcam, a extra track for a logo overlay and used blur transitions in the edit points.

PowerDirector has lots of effects you can add to the video, personally I can’t see me using them that much for an unboxing video but they could be used for fun videos. There are things like Sepia effects, old movie effects and pencil effects. There are loads of transitions, there are fades, wipes, checkerboard and lots of others and adding them is very easy it’s just a case of dragging in them to the edit point.

For the audio side of things there is a multi-track equalizer and normaliser for levelling out the audio. There is also a voice over feature for helping the recording of audio voice overs and subtitle editor. For the video there are tools for adjusting lighting, image stabilization, enhancing the video and controlling the while and colour balance. I am sure there are many other tools I will find when I spend more time with the application.

There is also 3D support, you can edit and produce 3D videos most of the transitions and effects support 3D.

You can capture directly into PowerDirector, it will capture video from cameras, TV tuners, webcams and audio devices and place them straight into the editor.

When it comes to producing the final video there are lots of options. You can produce AVI,MPEG-2, H264, WMV,MPEG-4,MOV and MVK files. Each type has it’s own profile, you can go from basic low resolutions up to 4k 4096 x 2304, most of the video I have rendered have been 720p at 50hzv but there is a profile for just about every video size. There are options for Dolby Digital 5.1, hardware encoding, profiles for devices (like the Xbox 360 and Apple TV) as well as direct uploading to sites like YouTube, Facebook, DailyMotion and Vimeo.

All these options do put a load on the editing PC, my test machine was a bit under powered only having 2GB of RAM and a Core 2 Duo. The editor was a bit sluggish and on my machine at home which has more memory was much more responsive. A 10 minute video rendered to 1280 x 720 AVC took around 2 hours to produce.

So far I have only produced a couple of videos (here and here) with PowerDirector 11 and it’s actually very easy to started but it is also a very flexible program with lots of production options.

Cyberlink PowerDVD 11 Ultra is priced around £51 on Amazon