Cyberlink Power Director 8 Ultra - A Train Wreck

[Al Sudy]

This new release now incorporates the >2gb switch and is more stable as a result.

[Peter Holzel]

Hi David,
Excellet work using stabilization. I have been fiddling with your workflow for a while with skiing videos but can't get it to work well. Did you use something other than the default settings mentioned in the Deshaker guide? Also, what shutter speed did you use? I have been using 1/1000 with my HF100.

I have been doing HF100 AVCHD 30p to NeoScene AVI to Deshaker to Sony Movie Studio with bluray output.

By the way, I have found that the best way to film skiiers is to hold the camcorder with both hands while skiing behind the subject, while skiing using the dorky "snow plow" technique (I just hang my ski poles on my left hand and let them drag behind). I will post my results with this technique on vimeo if anyone is interested.

[David Douglas]

Hi Peter,
Thanks... well, I did a lot of optimization of the deshaker settings, actually. Check out these pages for tutorials how to fine-tune it:
http://www.guthspot.se/video/deshaker.htm
Deshake, Rattle, and Roll! Make your shaky video look much better.

Since mine is helmet mounted and yours is handheld, you'll probably need some different settings than I do. But a few tips:

>Use the rolling shutter mentioned from the HV20 in one of the pages
>Use "Adaptive+Fixed only" as this gives no black borders, and also has the least amount of annoying zooming in & out while still stabilizing quite well
>Adjust the ignore pixels settings a bit based on moving background / etc as discussed in one of the pages ("Camera is Moving" heading)
>Up the zoom smoothness
>I didn't use previous/future frames fill-in at all

As for the shutter speed, on the latest one (see here, Dave's Photo & Travelblogue Snowboard Carving – Feb Craziness! ) I used 1/500. I might try 1/1000 next time, but it's got to be really sunny for that I guess. 1/250 was also not bad, probably because I have a Kenko 0.5 wide lens, but if you get any slower you'll notice blur.

Cheers,
Dave

[Paul Rosco]

I'm having great luck with the stability and quality of PowerDirector on my
Mac Pro quad core 2.93.
I am rendering 24 bit Canon avchd. I boot into bootcamp with windows 7/64 and it takes advantage of Hardware acceleration and smart rendering. The newest upgrade
of PowerDirector v2704 handles AVCHD well, especially with shadow files checked.

[Larry Horwitz]

Paul,

My experiences with Power Director 8 latest version are also excellent. They have fixed the problems which showed up in the original release with several very successful bug fixes, and the software is now a pleasure to use. I wish they would add higher bitrate 24 Mbit/sec progressive 24 frame per second capabilities for those who are using the newer camcorders, but most of the other necessary features are already well supported. Glad to hear that it works well on the Mac, and I am especially impressed that the hardware acceleration works under Bootcamp.

Larry

[Paul Rosco]

Hi Larry. After booting in Bootcamp, my Mac Pro is seen like other PC's probably because it contains many PC standard parts like the 2 Nehalem Quad-Core's and the ATI 4870 graphics. After installing Ati's Catalyst and AVIVO, acceleration just works.
Apple also includes drivers for Windows 7 so their newer Intel models are totally compatible.

I was tempted to try Powerdirector after reading your very informative posts several month back when you compared several different editors.
So thanks for that.

I have certainly paid more for the Mac but I like it for other things except video editing, which I find PowerDirector really nice.

[Larry Horwitz]

Hi Paul,

i have owned dozens of Macs since the original 1984 release, including a couple 8 core MacPros and a dual G5 Powermac. I like the Macs a lot, but AVCHD and BluRay are very poorly supported, and everything takes way too long to transcode and recompress. Final Cut became too cluttered and slow and iMovie is wonderful but weak limited especially for AVCHD and any other HD work, lacking HD disk output support.

Apple could win me back again with a dual Gulftown and smart rendering apps. Could happen. NAB is coming soon and Apple usually has a few new releases then.

Glad you like Power Director. I use it a lot.

Best,
Larry

[David Douglas]

Has anyone tried the latest build of PowerDirector, 3022? Does it work with AMD Phenom2 X3's yet without crashing? :-)

I'm having problems with Pinnacle Studio 14, it can't seem to render a video longer than 2 minutes without a render failure. Doesn't crash, just fails to render with a non-fatal error at various points which I see to be high-load segments of the video. Their best solution so far is, "Hmm, try reinstalling the software." And there's been no patch of any kind since I bought the software almost a year ago.

Maybe I need to look at PD8 again. Though I hope that PD9 and Pinnacle 15 both have better useability than their current versions. (whenever those next versions come out)