Winner of PC Magazine’s “Editors’ Choice” award in June 2008, CyberLink PowerDirector 7 is a comprehensive, semi-professional video editing software, featuring end-to-end support for high definition video, from importing to editing and output, and includes advanced authoring features for Blu-ray Discs and DVDs. With HD camcorder prices continuing to drop, creating high-definition video content is now more affordable then ever. Amateur directors and home video enthusiasts are looking for a way to edit videos quickly and easily, while preserving their high-definition quality: PowerDirector 7 does just that, with powerful tools that deliver pro-like results. To enhance users’ creativity even more, PowerDirector provides direct access to countless resources on DirectorZone, CyberLink’s online community dedicated to video editors. DirectorZone is both a creative platform and library; it is a place for users to share effects they have customized themselves using PowerDirector’s built-in design tools, and lets them contribute to a growing catalog of effects that other PowerDirector users can download for their projects.
User Ratings and Reviews
4 Stars Easy to use, intuitive and broad video format coverage
I got familiar with this product since version 5 when it was bundled in a pack with a camcorder that I bought. I was pretty satisfied on the easiness of using the product - few clicks and you have your movie processed. The reason I upgraded to PowerDirector 7 Ultra was that I bought a camera (Lumix TZ-7) that shoots AVCHD format and the included video editing software with the camera is not as powerful as PowerDirector.
What I like.
This software is very easy to use, intuitive, has many powerful features that enable you to produce an impressive (not professional) videos easily just for few clicks and burn on DVDs or Blue-Ray. This software supports if not all alsmost all video recording formats. What I want from a video editing software is to spend as little time as possible editing my videos and get good video clip at the end. PowerDirector 7 Ultra has Magic tools that automaticaly does this for you 
What I would liked to be improved.
Sometimes this software crashes.
People complain about the customer support. I cannot say anything about that because I never needed them.
1 Star Ultra disappointment
I purchased this product based on so called experts ratings. After three months, I have not been able to burn a quality Blu Ray disk. I’ve been in contact with software support and have tried everything they suggested. After wasting five 25G disks, the product still continually shuts down (sometimes during burning process). When I was able to burn a Blu Ray disk, the quality was very poor. The Blu ray disk had radom pixels throught the video.
1 Star Beware for AVCHD 4.1 camera users
This product was highly reviewed for video editing. In fact, on many sites, this product was ranked higher than Sony Vegas, Adobe Elements, and a multitude of others.
Being cautious, I downloaded the evaluation version (free from Cyberlink’s website). This free evaluation does not allow for HD content burning, but was enough to play with the look and feel of the product. It seemed like a reasonable product, so I bought a copy from Amazon.
This product was advertised as supporting AVCHD. Buyer beware that there are different versions of AVCHD.
Very Basic Summary:
AVCHD 4.0 = up to 17 Mbit/s transport stream.
AVCHD 4.1 = up to 24 Mbit/s transport stream.
Now I have a Cannon Vixia HF S10. This supports 24 Mbit/s video output/quality, and basically conforms to the AVCHD 4.1 specification. My hope was to buy PowerDirector 7 Ultra and use it’s advertised AVCHD and BD (blue ray disk) burning support to create HD home movies for the family.
After playing with the product for a couple of days, it became very obvious that the product did not support AVCHD 4.1. Again this was not documented anywhere (online, in the user manual, etc.). So what does this mean? All video captured with my camera is down sampled to 17 Mbit/s. This wouldn’t be so bad, if the stream was a steady 17; however, the codec PowerDirector uses does not work this way. My 22-24 Mbit/s source video (which looks great by the way), is down sampled to 12-14 Mbit/s. This results in very grainy and choppy looking video.
This in itself would have put the product at 2-3 stars. I’m giving Cyberlink’s PowerDirector 7 Ultra a one star, because of the following.
Before writing off the product as unusable, I contacted their customer support about the issue. Their turn around on posted issues is ~1 week. My first post was just a general question about how to preserve my video quality, and described the drop in quality from the 24Mbit/s source. The response I got was a canned answer to try a very basic burn. Being patient, I tried this and provided feedback that this didn’t work. Realizing the quality of tech support at this point, I changed my tactic to ask directly if the tool supported AVCHD 4.1. It took three exchanges (so three more weeks go by), before they answered my direct question, and stated the following:
“In regards to your concern related with the droping of video quality we would like to inform that PowerDirector doesn’t support H264 Main-Profile, Level 4.1 = 24Mbps max.”
Now that I have confirmation from them that this product does not support my needs, I start the process of requesting a return and refund of the product. I then get sent between Digital River, and Cyberlink customer support three times, each stating that the other group is responsible for the refund and return of the product.
I’ll be contacting Amazon shortly, and see what they might be able to do for me, but my hopes are not that high.
Conclusion:
If you have a camcorder which does not support AVCHD 4.1, and you do not mind dealing with tech support for multiple weeks for simple direct questions (or don’t need tech support at all), then this product is probably great. Otherwise, I would suggest looking elsewhere.
1 Star worst softare purchase ever
I bought this software .Its the first time I have ever experianced this ghastly service.The program constantly crashes and is slower than any program I’ve ever owned.The after tech service is non existant. The just shuffle you around and never solve anything.I can’t tell you what to buy but stay away from this or any of thier software.Be afraid be very afraid!
1 Star Worthless program with Bad Support
I purchased this program and it only worked sometimes. It crashed continually. The support is worthless.
Don’t purchase the program! You are better off using the free Microsoft Windows Movie Maker. If you want to purchase something try Corel Videostudio, a much better program.
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