1. I don't think this is possible. The preview was probably not meant to be an exact replica of the finished product, just a good representation of how the sequence of events will play.

2. I would say the graphics card, but a good CPU can handle MPEG 2 with no trouble. You may be able to create a custom MPEG 2 profile with a higher bitrate and improve quality a little. I had to create one using a constant bitrate for my own use and it did help. __________________________________
CORNBLOSSOM

Thanks for the reply Jamie...

1. I don't understand WHY the Preview Clarity of the clips residing on the
editing board can't match the Preview Clarity of clips while they're in the
Library View, before adding them to the editing board. I mean, by what
technical reason must they be of reduced quality? Since the editing board
is where you make subtle adjustments to clip lighting, sharpness, etc.., logic
would indicate that the clips should be a crisp and sharp as possible so that
these subtle edits can be seen easily. Imagine if on your television, you
had to switch the picture into low-quality mode before you could adjust
the color, sharpness, contrast, lighting, etc... That TV's manufacturer would
go out of business very fast. Do the other popular video editing/producing
programs present a lower quality preview window for editing? If there is one
that doesn't please, someone let me know. Even though I'm finally getting
used to using PowerDirector, I'd be willing to shell out another $100+ dollars
to get a program with less features, but a high quality editing window.

2. My CPU runs at 45% to 55% when producing a .mt2s (AVCHD) video
in MPEG-2 format, if I haven't made any edits to the clips. So it does
appear that the CPU is adequate, as you stated. If it turns out that all
the video production programs use a lower quality window for editing,
then I'll stick with PowerDirector and learn how to do what you have
done to increase your bitrate. Thanks again for the feedback and the
bitrate tip, Jaime! :

-Allen

The quality of your mpeg2 video depends a lot on the the ecoding method used. Just because PD can produce a DVD does not mean that its MPEG2 encoder is the best. Other software companies my use a better or worse encoder than what Cyberlink uses in PD. Hollywood with its vast resources likely uses a better encoder which gives higher quality video at a lower or similar bitrate than PD. Q9300 2.5 GHz
4 GB Ram
Nvidia 9800 GT

Hi Allen,

Whilst I have no insight into how PD is structured, I think the functioning of the timeline preview is also dependent on the "capability" of the system graphics. Certainly my high quality is better with this 1Gb Radeon 4650 card than with the older 512Mb Radeon. With a 720p clip in the timeline, the difference appears to be slight, but it is still there.

I suspect the logic is the opposite of your reasoning - because PD tries to show all the effects, enhancements etc as they are applied in real time, so to speak, the demands of 'on the fly' processing - depending on source quality etc etc - would only be met by top end systems. Processing 1080 video is a hugely hungry task and even good top end current systems struggle in preview. Therefore there may be, or may have been??, a logic in reducing the preview quality so as to allow the preview to play reasonably smoothly and implement the effects.

As to a registry hack the basic preview quality is set by a registry entry with the values of 0, 1, 2 (high, medium and low) a value of 3 seems to turn off the preview. I have not found any other entry that covers screen resolution.

As regards to the DVD/Mpeg2 encoding I agree with James - comparing apples and oranges really. Commercial DVD encoding software is way better than consumer encoders. Others here know far more than I do about DVD production so I won't comment further.

Cheers
Adrian

Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated. (see below)
Confucius
AMD Phenom IIX6 1055T, win10, 5 internal drives, 7 usb drives, struggling power supply.

James and Andrian,

Thanks for the information about encoding and your thoughts on the
PD8 Preview Window. Since starting this thread a couple days ago,
I've been testing a couple of other editing programs to see if their
video preview window is of better quality.

Both of them have much better quality previews, but the reason is because
the user can choose an Ultra High Quality setting, if desired. I'm hopeful
that the next release (or patch) for PD8 will allow users to choose a true
high quality mode. It's really nice seeing the effects of very minor tint
or contrast editing.

But alas, these other two programs render 30% and 35% slower than
Power Director. They have ultra clear previews, but no acceleration
technology for ATI video cards. Now I understand why Power Director 8
was deemed the best, well-rounded video editing software at this
consumer website: http://video-editing-software-review.toptenreviews.com/

Think I'll send a suggestion to Cyberlink support to add a choice for
a higher resolution preview in the next update. My computer isn't the
most powerful, but it's had no problem performing editing with the test
programs these past few days.

All the best,

-Allen