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I'm running Power Director on a Windows 7 32 bit system. I loaded this week's update (v.9.0.0.2930) and I'm disappointed with the results.
The problems I'm having are:
Opening an existing edit I find that chromakey settings are lost and need to be reset.
Some shots are now out of lip sync.
Frame accurate editing is no longer frame accurate. Each time I run the timeline in the editor I get the cuts at slightly different points. The result is that word-accurate editing is no longer accurate and I get bits of the previous or next word. If cutting material which already has cuts in it, I get flash-frames as the edit is not where it should be.
Hardware acceleration not handled properly. If I turn hardware acceleration on, when I run the timeline, I just get a green-screen on some clips when there should be video. Turn H.A. off, and all is fine again. It's not obvious why it occurs on some clips and not others, even when they are clips from the same video.
This all worked correctly on the previous version.
I've attached a screen dump and a short video clip. The screen dump shows the green-screen problem. The video clip shows the sync problem and the variable cut points. The video should have ended with the graphic but there are a few frames of the next shot.
To see what it should look like go to noisemaker.ltd.uk
I've also attached a current DxDiag.txt file.
Gary.
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Even something like a case for the CD would have been nice, not just the CD loose in the envelope!
It's the same logic as in PC world. Buy something in a pretty box and it costs twice as much as in the 'brown box' section.
Gary.
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In that case it's interesting that Adobe allow you to use their expensive software on up to two machines on the basic licence provided that you are not using both at once. Consequently they allow both machines to register the program but not a third, and if you try and register a third you have to de-register one of the other copies.
Does PD9 try and access the internet on every start-up? I wouldn't notice if it did on my desktop as it is permanently connected.
Gary.
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The crux of the problem is in order for video to be edited, it must first be deinterlaced.
Sorry I don't see the logic of that. Interlaced video is edited all the time professionally, with no need to de-interlace first unless you are going to do something that corrupts the interlace, such as running it in slow motion.
Normally the only limitiation is that the field sequence must run continuously across the edit. This is far easier now with digital video than it used to be with analogue NTSC or PAL.
I do however like the idea of uprating 1080i25 to 1080p50 (or 60 if you are in the NTSC region) before editing. Do you know of any software which will do that?
Gary.
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Just one small point. When I downloaded PD9, I was offered multiple downloads or a back-up CD. I went for the CD, but I was a little disappointed to find that it was literally just a CD, not the full boxed copy.
Gary.
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I downloaded it from the website, but I requested the back-up CD rather than paying for additional downloads. The copy on my desktop was from the download, whereas the copy on my laptop came from the supplied CD. Interestingly, the version on the CD already had the latest update - 2504 iirc.
Gary.
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Having now purchased the full version of PD9, do you know if I can use it on a second computer, namely my laptop, or will I have to buy a second copy?
I have installed it on my laptop, but I'm currently running it in trial mode. It keeps asking to connect to the internet, but I haven't yet risked it yet in case it disables the copy on my desktop.
Incidentally, I've discovered that, much to my surprise, my laptop supports CUDA processing. HD rendering taking only one and a half times real time - amazing!.
Gary.
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Nice video, what was the music? I would have liked to have heard more of the sea effects though.
Re watching HD movies on Youtube, I always stop the video and let it download to halfway before running it. That normally solves the problem of the download speed.
Gary.
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I don't know if this helps but when I was investigating my own AVCHD problems I found somewhere a note that you should not try to trim AVCHD clips but only ever use the split function.
Unfortunately, despite searching I can no longer find the reference.
Gary.
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Just more rain here I'm afraid 
Do you know I cant really see much difference between youtube and facebook vids, which is quite reassuring. I dont really want to have to have a youtube and facebook account.
If you watch the very start of the video, the fade up at the beginning is far smoother on Facebook than it is on Youtube. Youtube's compression seems to fade up the video in patches. Apart from that, as you say, there's not a lot of difference.
How do you recognise there is an interlace problem ?
Basically, because I was trying to hold the camera still in a high wind, there's a lot of camera shake.
In converting from interlace to progressive for online use, PD9 has mis-aligned the upper and lower fields so the you get a double image in a frame. This is partly due to the camera shake, partly due to the fast shutter speed on the camera, and partly because PD9 combines two interlaced fields to generate a single progressive frame. But in places I'm sure that the misalignment is greater than would be produced by the camera shake alone.
Robert, I tend to agree with you about interlace, but I still think that a 50Hz (or 60Hz) flicker rate is needed if the video is to look like video rather than pseudo-film. That leaves 720p50 as an option rather than 1080p25. Unfortunately my camera does not support 720p50 or 1080p50, so 1080i50 is my only option. 1080p50 of course would require double the bandwidth.
Gary.
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Having just purchased the full version of PD9, I was wondering about replacing my graphics card so that I can use the CUDA functions to get hardware coding and decoding.
I've looked at the Nvidia site but it really only talks about game playing, so it's difficult to work out which would be best for editing.
Which cards do people have and would recommend?
I should mention that I am running Win 7 and I use a 'silent' computer so I would prefer not to have a card with a noisy fan.
Gary.
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For reference I have just done a test of uploading the the same video directly from PD9 to both Facebook and Youtube.
The URLs are:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=bHQqv1OYeH4
http://www.facebook.com/#!/video/video.php?v=189424707740522&comments
Make up your mind, but I personally think the Facebook copy has the edge provided you select HD rather than normal.
Unfortunately there is a problem with interlace to progressive conversion on both, which suggests that the problem is with PD9. Also the Youtube upload took a LOT longer than the one to Facebook.
Gary.
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Stunning videos, I wish I had something that good to upload!
However I can see some of the characteristic artifacts of Flash Video on that, as I can on the few videos that I've uploaded to Youtube. The one video that I uploaded to Facebook looks pretty clean, but as it was only taken with an iPhone it's not that good in the first place. Neither look to me to be as good as the original.
I may upload another to both just for comparison.
Gary.
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I suspect that one of those two browsers is not set up as the default browser for your computer. Try going to Control Panel, select 'Programs', then 'Set your Default Programs'. Select a browser (preferably Mozilla) then click 'Set this program as default'.
The above assumes Windows 7, but it will be similar for other versions of Windows.
Gary.
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I take your point Trevor, but both Facebook and Youtube are going to recompress the file to Flash for their own purposes, which seems to lose a lot of quality, so I'm not sure how important the upload format is. If I'm uploading something for my Facebook friends I think it's better to do so directly as a lot of people won't bother to follow the link.
My other objection to Youtube is that they have rejected two of my videos for supposedly containing copyright material, with no right of appeal.
Gary.
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In my tests of the program, I have created one short video for Facebook. This was done directly in PD9 which automatically logged into Facebook and uploaded the file. I have no idea what the format was of the uploaded file but the final result was a streaming flash video on Facebook.
Have you tried rendering for Facebook directly?
Gary.
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Well my experimenting showed that PD9 does indeed accept LPCM interlaced 5.1 files as surround. That opens the possibility of doing any sound post-production in an external program. It would be nice though if PD9 could export an LPCM 5.1 file. At present the only way for me to get surround sound out of it is to import the Dolby encoded video file into another program to extract the audio.
Gary.
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Having asked a similar question a couple of weeks ago, I found that the sticking point was the menu.
A disc without a menu worked fine.
I was advised then to update the firmware in my Samsung player, and that seems to have solved the problem.
I found that despite instructions to the contrary, the only way I was able to upgrade the firmware was to connect the player to my network via a (long) network cable. The CD rom method did not work.
I hope that might help.
Gary.
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Very nice, particularly the XBox Kinetic sequence. Not sure about the transitions though.
What was the camera?
Gary.
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I've today noticed another problem with PD9.
I created my edit and produced it to a AVCHD disc. After sorting out the other problems that was fine, but I today tried to make an SD version of the edit.
After producing the edit to an .mpg file, I found that there were no longer any captions. I thought that they were perhaps just placed outside the frame, but further experimentation has shown that the position of the caption makes no difference.
This is still the test version of PD9, and the recent update appears not to work on the demo version.
Gary.
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