Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)I have edited a lot of photos, but had not tried to edit/burn videos before. I spent the last several days learning to do so, and, of the 4 programs I have tried, this is by far the best in my opinion. I have been converting from VHS to DVD, Hi8 to DVD, and Hi8 Digital to DVD, and now HD Mini-disc (the technology has changed at least 4 times in the last 20yrs. Hopefully DVD is around awhile, but if not, at least the quality does not degrade over time like tapes do).
I downloaded free trials for 4 programs. The cheaper "beginner" ones I won't even comment on. They were terrible. Then I tried Corel Video Studio X2 Pro. It worked but was very slow to compute, move screen to screen, and burn the disk. Burning to DVD took almost twice as long as the Powerdirector 8 Deluxe. But the worst part was it was not intuitive at all. You had what seemed to be two separate modules: The Wizards, and the Hard-Core Editing module. Heaven help you if you had to switch from one to the other. Totally confusing and non-intuitive. For instance, if you accidently added music by not UN-checking a box, and you saved your project, you couldn't go back. I'm sure there is a way to do it in the hard-core editing part, but I couldn't figure it out. The user guide was also pretty worthless.
Power Director 8, on the other hand, was very intuitive (at least as intuitive as video editing gets; there is still a steep learning curve for the first video or two). The manual was excellent, but I didn't even need to refer to it much. The program steps you from capture to burning the disk one step at a time, and you can skip around all you like without losing your work (unlike ny experience with Corel). It has some very nice templates for menus that are almost automatic, and make the finished product look great. The program is a great mix of "beginner" features, and professional editing capability. I was so impressed by it in comparison to other programs that I tried (I only tried 4), that I felt I should review it on here.
The best thing to do is to download these program's free trial and try them yourself. They are full-featured, and last for 30 days. Corel and Cyberlink both have this available. Then buy the one you like.
ALSO, make sure you have at LEAST 3GB of RAM, and a 100MB of hard drive, and 2GHz Dual Core CPU. That's what I had on my laptop, and it was marginal. I was running XP also. This program is Vista or Windows 7 compatible as well.
Click Here to see more reviews about: PowerDirector 8 Deluxe
Click here for more information about PowerDirector 8 Deluxe
No comments:
Post a Comment