Let me first start by saying that I am very disappointed in CyberLink PowerDirector 9 (PD9). This is my first experience with PowerDirector as I have used other video editing software in the past. I purchased PD9 because of the good reviews and that it was a 64-bit program and promised lightning speeds. I admit that I am a rookie at video editing and have a limited understanding of the editing process, codecs, etc. However, I have edited and produced a fair amount of video over the past few years.

I have 3 cameras that produce video. An Olympus Stylus 1030SW, a Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS3 and a Kodak PlaySport ZX3. The Panasonic and PlaySport have HD video. My computer is a Dell Studio XPS 435T/9000 with and Intel Core i7 CPU 920@2.67 GHz with 6 GB of RAM. The video card is an ATI Radeon HD 5400 with 1 GB of memory. The computer is running Microsoft Windows Home Premium(64-bit). I have PD9 version 9.0.02504 which is the latest update.

The reason I am disappointed is the poor performance of PD9 primarily with the HD MOV files produced by the PlaySport. Initialy the program would not work at all with the MOV files until I made QuickTime the default MOV player (thanks to the forum for that). The next problem was associated with producing a movie from the clips. Again, major problems until I removed the hardware decoding option (thanks again to the forum). Now I can produce a usable AVI file and AVC H.264 file. Producing an MOV file results in jerky video with NO sound. Trying to produce an MPEG-4 file locks the program.

The Kodak PlaySport has the ArcSoft MediaImpressions program included with the purchase. It does a great job of rendering MP4, MOV and AVI files out of the video clips. It even provides a fair amount of video editing. I realize this program is custom made to work with files produced by the PlaySport and does not support other file types. However, I compared the time it took to produce a short video from 5 HD MOV clips from the PlaySport. PD9 took 2 minutes and 10 seconds to produce the AVC file and 1 minute 44 seconds for the AVI file. ArcSoft took 34 seconds for AVI, 49 seconds for MOV and 47 seconds for MP4. I am wondering where are the benefits of the TrueVelocity 64?

CyberLink customer email support is a painful process with little help. It usually takes a week to respond and they only seem to respond on Mondays. I am awaiting the latest reply after sending them the requested information. The only pearls of wisdom was the statement: “PowerDirector is only an interface which can use codecs of other softwares to do editing or decode files.”

I know that there are other PlaySport users on this forum. Are you experiencing similar problems? Any suggestions would be appreciated as I am wondering why I purchased PD9.