Customer Rating: 
Summary: Amazingly powerful and easy to use video editor
Comment: Years ago, this sort of power in personal video editing would cost at least $20,000 in hardware and dedicated video editing PC cards. Amazingly, all of this computing power has increased many fold since those days, and has been brought down to only a fraction of its original cost -- PowerDirector is the result.
Pros: PD has a very well rounded suite of special effects, titling routines, automatic color balance, photo adjustments, and a series of "magic" effects that will help you to assemble a slide show, add music to your videos, correct for defects and a host of other things with just a few clicks of your mouse.
The layout for the editing screen is non-cluttered and well designed. For those who are familiar with video editing, it will only take you a day to get used to the operation of how to perform all the tasks. For those who are new to the world of video editing, it will take a little longer, but since the software is easy to learn, you'll have a minimum of problems.
Rendering of your videos for DVD, YouTube, and other devices is lightning quick, depending on the power of your PC's processor. I have an Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 running at 3.0GHz and rendering a one minute test video complete with sound track, 23 special effects, scrolling titles, and many graphic transitions took 64 seconds to render. Truly amazing. Burning a DVD is a snap as the menu system takes you through the steps quickly and efficiently. PowerDirector also provides an assortment of pre-made menus for your videos which adds a nice touch to your productions.
PowerDirector also has an extensive online community where you can get assistance, advice and free downloadable member created templates for your video productions.
Cons: The XP operating system seems to be sensitive to how healthy your PC system is or isn't when using PowerDirector. If your registry is cluttered and you don't utilize a good registry cleaner daily, Windows XP will sometimes exhibit an error message and will shut down PowerDirector. This happened to me several times. I previously set the automatic save function for auto save every 2 minutes, so I inconvenienced a bit when it crashed, but after I did a registry clean with my software, (which is readily available online at no charge), this solved the instability issues with XP and haven't seen another crash since.
This could be just a matter of what you are running on your PC while using PowerDirector also, so it's usually a good idea to just close everything in your system tray or shut down any non-essential programs that are running in the background.
Final Thoughts on Other Programs: I've tried Sony Vegas Movie Studio Platinum and found it outrageously non-intuitive to learn. For PC geeks who like this sort of over-the-top difficulty, it is a dream come true but its complex menu system and difficulty in doing practically anything brings down the value and functionality as a video editor.
Editing with Corel's Video Studio Pro X2 was very easy to use. It didn't have the wide range of flexibility as PowerDirector but is good for quicky productions. The main disaster for Corel's Video Studio is the stupendously long rendering times it needs to convert a project. A one minute video with effects will take FIVE minutes to render and preparing to burn a DVD will take 8 minutes. If you have a 20 minute video to render and convert, that means Corel Video Studio will take an astonishing 4 and a half hours to render and burn to DVD in MPEG2 quality.
For ease of use, power, and good all around video editor, PowerDirector7 Deluxe takes the winning trophy over the others. If you're not sure which one will suit you, downloadable demos are available for the products for Corel, Sony and PowerDirector for you to try out to do a comparison.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Warning about software conflicts
Comment: Having just installed the program today I was unable to get the video to preview in the large preview window on the upper right. I could only hear the audio. Sent a support question to Cyberlink and received a prompt response about how to trouble shoot the situation. Among the suggested cures was to change my resolution to 1024 x 768. I have a large monitor and that is not a good resolution for viewing. I was also supposed to uninstall over CD/DVD burning and media application softwares like Nero, EasyCD Creator, Sony Vegas Movie Studio and Direct CD etc. Two burning softwares installed on the same computer are know to cause conflict due to common files in them. Sadly, I have to return the program, because I'm not going to part with my other burning programs including Sony Vegas Movie Studio. They've all been cooperating very nicely. This program has to go back...and I'm really embarrassed because another program I bought for my new Vista machine couldn't be used with my large fonts. (The Print Shop Deluxe 23.)
Customer Rating:
Summary: Best video editing software on market
Comment: Let me say that I've used Pinnacle and Sony and Power Director 7.0 blows them both out of the water. Power director is very responsive and fast to edit changes with litle lag time. It only takes me half the time to create a movie with Power Director since the tasks are automated. The navigation is far simpler and intuitive with the chapter division and menu layout. You have unlimited access to additional transitions, backgrounds, and menu layouts (whereas the others nickel & dime you for it). My family is amazed by the videos and it's more exciting with effects and background music.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great Prdouct
Comment: Great Product & Easy to use.
Does not take a lot of time to learn, as there are several place where you can click on "Show me", that shows just how to do things with PowerDirector.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Power director
Comment: The program seems OK. I have only used is a little since installing it. I previously used Pinnacle but had problems with stability so I am trying PowerDirector. Pinnacle seems to be easier to use but it may just be because it is different.
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