I experimented with the shadow file on and off, it really didn't make any difference.

After I rebooted and edited the video I uploaded to youtube in post above, it worked better than in screen cap vid, but it was still painfully slow and hung up as a default "thing".

That's just what this program seems to do, stop responding, and cache your control inputs so it might be selecting who knows what in the background if you click on something. There seems to be some fundamental problems that no video codec will fix.


Also there are other serious control issues.

It doesn't let you use your arrow keys to fine tune adjustments such as when trying to adjust color saturation or hue or things like that. It forces you to use mouse cursor and does not respond to arrow keys like any program worth it's salt should do.

There are other examples of very poor user interface that would take me a long time to report and get specific about, but it is obvious that not much thought was given or not much work has been done in the user interface department. It is very clunky and inefficient and imprecise and non-adjustable.

Why can't I make fonts bigger? Everything is so tiny and hard to read if not close to monitor.

Why can't I put preview screen on the left? Why are things so "stuck" in place?

I am using a 1080p 52" TV with wireless k/b and mouse on this particular PC. Why is everything so tiny? I can't adjust anything it seems and it does not care what I set my screen text dpi too, it just does it's own thing. So from 5 feet away from a 1080p screen, some fonts are about impossible to read, and I have laser vision correction with 20/15 eyesight. The fonts are just tiny sometimes.

If a program is that rigid and doesn't allow any user adjustment as to how it is controlled, that is a problem. Not everyone is sitting with their nose 5 inches away from the monitor all the time. And not allowing fine tuning the adjustments with arrow keys is just inexcusable.

So it's not "just" the terrible editing performance, but that is the biggest problem.

Yeah, the nastyware is an issue when trying to get a clean copy of MediaInfo. I donated a few dollars to them and got a clean link. You can also follow the steps in this *link* to both add lots of codecs AND get a clean copy of MediaInfo. You're not running Win10 so you can skip the part at the end where you need to select the LAV splitter.

I don't see any red flags in your DxDiag results and again, I can assure you that most people using PD never see the kinds of issues you've been dealing with. Look at any of these *tutorials* and you'll see what most users see when working with PD.

I see that you've uploaded the media details. There's also a "Save to text" output which is a lot easier to read

Anyway, they each seem reasonable and I don't see anything really odd jumping out at me other than the fact that the Mobius one is over 4GB. Did you have shadow files turned on? If so, can you confirm that the tags were all green?

How about the uninstall/reinstall of PD and QT? Another idea is to upload the smaller Canon clip to a cloud folder on DropBox or OneDrive and post the link. That way I (and any other interested forum members) can download the clip and test it on my/our end. I can even make a quick video to show what the editing looks like.

It's after midnight here so I probably won't be posting anything more for a while. That will give you plenty of time to upload a sample clip, though!

YouTube/optodata

DS365 | Win11 Pro | Ryzen 9 3950X | RTX 4070 Ti | 32GB RAM | 10TB SSDs | 5K+4K HDR monitors

Canon Vixia GX10 (4K 60p) | HF G30 (HD 60p) | Yi Action+ 4K | 360Fly 4K 360°

Ok now you're veering off into Windows scaling issues among other things. Some of the issues are specific to PD and many have workarounds, but some of the "stuckness" issues are part of the package.

My goal is to get you to a place where the system is running like it's supposed to, then you'd be free to look at the whole picture and decide if PD is a good fit or not.

YouTube/optodata

DS365 | Win11 Pro | Ryzen 9 3950X | RTX 4070 Ti | 32GB RAM | 10TB SSDs | 5K+4K HDR monitors

Canon Vixia GX10 (4K 60p) | HF G30 (HD 60p) | Yi Action+ 4K | 360Fly 4K 360°

I notice all the tutorials I have seen are done with tiny clips and simple edits and also the way the tutorial vids are edited seems to hide what happens after they click anything.
Very "slick" and probbaly edited on some other editor than PD.

Youtube commenters comment of freezing, bugs, and laggy performance I am noticing more and more. Oh well.

I'd like to see a camera pointed at the screen recording a vid of editor being use with a large HD file (maybe two 4GB 1080p vids) with several splits with transitions on every split and some other fx thrown in with a known PC configuration in real time and see what happens.

I think I know what would happen.. Lots and lots of hanging and stuttering and waiting for the program to re-encode the clip for every single change you make.

It seems like a fundamental problem in this program, how it handles the editing process seems to be slow and inefficient and CPU/ GPU intensive all at the same time.

BTW 4GB HD vids are the norm, that shouldn't slow the program down at all if it worked right. It doesn't slow down editing in the free WMM editor.

I am appreciating what WMM does more and more, I will say that. It has problems too mostly because of how simple it is, but at least it is fast, and free to boot..



edit-

Mediainfo only allowed eport via .xml files unless I copy/ pated and made my own txt file.



I dind't want to download the latest update through thte program because the last "latest" version I saw was infected. Using currect version from SourceForge. Now I do not trust the program and will not let it download anything.



There's nothing wrong with my videos anyways.

BWX,

I think many of the criticisms about slow editing performance in PD are valid.

The UI in PD compared to other products is sluggish, in a way that competing products like Sony Movie Platinum or Vegas, are not.

For example, there are no good excuses for almost every single dialog/window being modal in PD, as they are. The PD UI does not make good use of threading - it often does processing while doing UI repaint, which clearly doesn't belong, and should be done in the background .

Unfortunately, the UI has gotten more and more sluggish over time, as Cyberlink has added features.

On the other hand, my experience is that the rendering time in PowerDirector in most cases is much faster than anything the competition provides, often by factors of 3-5x. I periodically download trial versions of the competing programs and I'm always surprised how bad their rendering speed is.

If you are more concerned about the time it takes to edit than render, perhaps the competing products are a better option. Personally, I find there are some features in PowerDirector that the consumer versions of competing products have yet to catch up to, for instance, the ability to automatically synchronize multiple clips by audio analysis - either from multiple cameras, or separately recorded audio file.

I would love to have a product with the simplicity of use of Powerdirector, useful feature set in PD, editing speed of Sony Movie Platinum / Vegas, and rendering speed of PowerDirector. The editing speed is the weak part in PD, but is tolerable IMO if you are only doing occasional editing, and are not a professional. But of course, that's for every individual to judge on their own.

I have edited for years on hardware similar to yours. I think an SSD is likely to help a little bit with the editing speed, vs using an HDD. MSI X99A Raider
Intel i7-5820k @ 4.4 GHz
32GB DDR4 RAM
Gigabyte nVidia GTX 960 4GB
480 GB Patriot Ignite SSD (boot)
2 x 480 GB Sandisk Ultra II SSD (striped)
6 x 1 TB Samsung 860 SSD (striped)

2 x LG 32UD59-B 32" 4K
Asus PB238 23" HD (portrait)

Quote: I notice all the tutorials I have seen are done with tiny clips and simple edits and also the way the tutorial vids are edited seems to hide what happens after they click anything.
Very "slick" and probbaly edited on some other editor than PD.

I understand why you would say that, but I know the people who've made the "official" tutorial videos and every single one was made using PD.

Yes, some parts are skipped over to focus on the main feature being introduced, but there's no way any of those videos could be made if PD behaved anywhere near as poorly as the trial version is doing on your system. Again, whatever is going on is specific to your setup and I'm trying to help you get everything running smoothly.

I'd like to see a camera pointed at the screen recording a vid of editor being use with a large HD file (maybe two 4GB 1080p vids) with several splits with transitions on every split and some other fx thrown in with a known PC configuration in real time and see what happens.

I'm not sure why you think an external camera would be more accurate or verifiable than a screen recording. Each can be edited to hide things if the person making the video wanted to. A better test would be for you to log in remotely to my desktop and operate the editor from your end. PM me if you'd like to try that.

I've also attached a screen capture of 2 clips, a 4k and HD and I split the 4k files and put in a bunch of transitions. That's lots more work than with an HD file, but you won't see any skips or hangs. If you save the mouse click file in the same folder as the MP4 and open the MP4 in PD, it should show you the mouse clicks at the top of the timeline.

I think I know what would happen.. Lots and lots of hanging and stuttering and waiting for the program to re-encode the clip for every single change you make.

Well, that assumption is 100% wrong. Again, if PD worked on everyone's system like it does on yours, nobody would buy it or use it. I know you understand that because you haven't given up!

It seems like a fundamental problem in this program, how it handles the editing process seems to be slow and inefficient and CPU/ GPU intensive all at the same time.

There are some situations where PD will struggle to preview certain clips or certain types of edits in real-time - for example working with 4k clips or doing a lot of speed changes even on HD clips are a challenge for most hardware - but that's not what's happening with you. You're doing some simple editing on HD clips and your system should be able to handle that easily.

BTW 4GB HD vids are the norm, that shouldn't slow the program down at all if it worked right. It doesn't slow down editing in the free WMM editor.

I didn't mean to imply that there was something abnormal about that size. My older Canons were limited to 2GB but my newer one is 4GB. There's nothing about the file sizes that present any difficulty for PD. I've worked with clips that were over 40GB each and PD handles them cleanly.

I dind't want to download the latest update through thte program because the last "latest" version I saw was infected. Using currect version from SourceForge. Now I do not trust the program and will not let it download anything.

I completely understand.

You havent said anything about uninstalling PD or QT, or about downloading/installing the K-LITE codec pack that I suggested. Please let me know if there's anything you'd like me to help with and I'll do my best!

YouTube/optodata

DS365 | Win11 Pro | Ryzen 9 3950X | RTX 4070 Ti | 32GB RAM | 10TB SSDs | 5K+4K HDR monitors

Canon Vixia GX10 (4K 60p) | HF G30 (HD 60p) | Yi Action+ 4K | 360Fly 4K 360°

If you install a K-lite CODEC pack, you get a bonus, MediaInfo is included. K-lite CODEC pack will put MediaInfo in the right click menu of Windows Explorer.

There not any malware in the K-lite codec pack. Carl312: Windows 10 64-bit 8 GB RAM,AMD Phenom II X4 965 3.4 GHz,ATI Radeon HD 5770 1GB,240GB SSD,two 1TB HDs.

ynotfish just posted a screen capture *video* to help a member with the Motion Tracker tool. He made it in about 5 minutes and you won't see any of the terrible editing issues like you've been dealing with.

This is what working with PD typically looks like.

YouTube/optodata

DS365 | Win11 Pro | Ryzen 9 3950X | RTX 4070 Ti | 32GB RAM | 10TB SSDs | 5K+4K HDR monitors

Canon Vixia GX10 (4K 60p) | HF G30 (HD 60p) | Yi Action+ 4K | 360Fly 4K 360°

Just to be clear I didn't have the same problems as I did in my first video where it was really, really, really bad after I rebooted and edited the shorter vid.

I never did a screen cap of the second vid I edited while editing- I just uploaded the final product though.

I got PD to work better than the screen cap vid where it was very bad, but even when it was working better, it was inexcusably slow and sluggish and everything seemed to be working as intended.

Nope I did not completely uninstall and reinstall QT, I have the latest version, I installed latest vers. after I installed PD 14..

I have been using K-lite for I guess.. a decade or more? Ever since I first started messing around with PCs. Can't remember the first one I ever used, but it was maybe 10 years ago or more.

I quit installing those massive codec packs on my machines. I don't like how they tend to "run wild" and take over all the media files and associations and they always tend to lead to issues, so I just quit doing it. My machines run better now since I stopped doing that, and seem to have less playback bugs and problems. I playback vids using Media player classic and have done that for years and years.

I don't think I'll be installing a massive codec pack again any time soon. If there i sa specific codec or set or codecs I need for a specific problem or compatibility issue, I will install it on it;s own. It is just something I have learned over the years- decades.

Quote: ynotfish just posted a screen capture *video* to help a member with the Motion Tracker tool. He made it in about 5 minutes and you won't see any of the terrible editing issues like you've been dealing with.

This is what working with PD typically looks like.

I saw about 4 seconds of actually working in the main screen @ 5:00 to 5:05 and in that time saw the cursor skip and an unexplained "pause" that looked like he was waiting to regain control.



Basically, I think the program is just very flawed whne it comes to the actual editing part, and I haven't seen anything that would lead me to believe otherwise.



The rendering speed after final edit is done might be better than most, but who cares if you get and ulcer and are driven to drink and health goes south because of high blood pressure while tearing hair out because of how poor the editing performance is.



I go back to WMM, that has no problem editing quickly. It obviously handles the editing process in a completey different way, as do other programs that don't skip and hang and stutter after every editing comman as if they are rendering in real time which they shouldn't be doing. It is just inefficient and slow no matter what computer you are using.



So I guess I could reinstall QT and PD, but these issues seem fundamental to how this program is designed and written. I got it working better, again, than in first vid I posted of really terrible performance.



Performance is still unacceptable to me though, and it sounds as if buying full version won't fix it. I'm not willing to take that chance and spend $100 of something I will never use.. I like the overal capability of the program, or else I wouldnt waste my time trying to get it to work, but I think CyberLink have failed to make editing performance and user interface a top priority, and that is more important to me that rendering time which was not any better than WMM in the video I rendered, it actually seemd slower, but I did not time it.



Hey, just my observations after using the very bad trial version. And it is very bad.



BTW I am sick and tired of this damned forum software and really never want to use it again. I cannot spell check, I cannot copy/ paste, and it is ridiculous. It is probably the worst on the internet I have ever seen. Just another example of poor user interface priority from Cyberlynk that I have experienced.



I think they need to work on a lot before they get my money anyways.

I think I'll just uninstall it and get my blood pressure back down.



Thanks for any and all help.

BWX,

If you are judging Powerdirector Retail by the Trial version, you are not giving Powerdirector a fair trial.

The Trial is very limited in its capability. You can see that on Cyberlink's list is limitions. http://www.cyberlink.com/downloads/trials/powerdirector-ultra/download_en_US.html

Cyberlink offers a 30 day refund on the Retal version.
http://www.cyberlink.com/support/purchase-faq-content.do?id=16356

You would get a true test of Powerdirector on your computer.

I tried the Trial Version of Powerdirector 14, It is very limited compared to the Retail or Live version. Carl312: Windows 10 64-bit 8 GB RAM,AMD Phenom II X4 965 3.4 GHz,ATI Radeon HD 5770 1GB,240GB SSD,two 1TB HDs.

Spell checker - install a addon to your browser, works for me.
Copy and Paste or Cut and Paste. I like many others use one's keyboard.
Ctrl+C = Copy
Ctrl+V = Paste
Ctrl+X = Cut

You appear not to be very confident when using the trial version of PowerDirector and seem quick to retreat to a lessor program WMM, a free program. Do what you're happy with. We're not here to sell you PDR14 and if you're unhappy it wont make your editing experience great. Please be aware that the Trial is one option and gives you 30 days to play with it. Then there is the 30 days to get a refund if you buy the full version. The trial is only a 32bit cut down prog. The 64bit full software is better option in my opinion. I've never used the trial and cant advise you much on it.

Dafydd

Quote: Spell checker - install a addon to your browser, works for me.
Copy and Paste or Cut and Paste. I like many others use one's keyboard.
Ctrl+C = Copy
Ctrl+V = Paste
Ctrl+X = Cut

You appear not to be very confident when using the trial version of PowerDirector and seem quick to retreat to a lessor program WMM, a free program. Do what you're happy with. We're not here to sell you PDR14 and if you're unhappy it wont make your editing experience great. Please be aware that the Trial is one option and gives you 30 days to play with it. Then there is the 30 days to get a refund if you buy the full version. The trial is only a 32bit cut down prog. The 64bit full software is better option in my opinion. I've never used the trial and cant advise you much on it.

Dafydd

First of all this forum software is the worst I have ever seen. Don't make excuses for it. It's terrible, and you know it. I am on FF and it will not allow Ctrl V. I tried it on Chrome and same deal. The regular right click menu is blocked, and spell checker that is broken is the one in FF. Give me a break.



BTW I am not, nor have I ever said I was going to stick with WMM, I was giving an example of an editing process that actually works in way that PD does not.

Yeah, it's my "confidence" that is the problem.. Seriously?



Does this forum have a "block user" function, because I could use it about now.

Quote: BWX,

If you are judging Powerdirector Retail by the Trial version, you are not giving Powerdirector a fair trial.

The Trial is very limited in its capability. You can see that on Cyberlink's list is limitions. http://www.cyberlink.com/downloads/trials/powerdirector-ultra/download_en_US.html

Cyberlink offers a 30 day refund on the Retal version.
http://www.cyberlink.com/support/purchase-faq-content.do?id=16356

You would get a true test of Powerdirector on your computer.

I tried the Trial Version of Powerdirector 14, It is very limited compared to the Retail or Live version.

Cyberlink are the ones not giving ME a fair trial version. It's not me that isn't giving PD a fair trial. I'm not sure I would ever see my $90 (or whatever) again either, and I don't want to invest a large amount of time reading fine print.



They shouldn't give people cut-rate non-functional versions for a "trial version" if they expect people to shell out big money to them for their software. I can only imagine the reason why they don't is for some ridculous anti-piracy shceme that is a losing battle anyways.



It seems people have crashing and lag and several problems on the full retail version as well.. and after editing one more video on PD, the lack of performace and crashing and lag while editing isn't even the biggest problem. The biggest problem is the interface.

The amount of times that I wanted (NEEDED) to just use the arrow keys to adjust something that was highlighted but only could use the mouse for is astounding.

Adjusting db with the mouse on the tiny little tracks that has a precision level of 0.3db, -.4.4db, or -15db, or -22db, or - infinity db is ridiculous. Why doesn't the program just allow use of the arrow keys when something that is highlighted needs to be moved around or finely tuned? Why force me to use a mouse? (I have a nice laser mouse, but it still doesn't matter). Why on earth I cannot use the arrow keys there and hundreds of other places, I have no idea.

It is the same problem all throughout the entire program. Seems every time I want to adjust something with the arrow keys, either the highlighted thing doesn't move, or something else moves that I don't want to move. PiP menu is a prime example, I want to adjust highlighted setting with arrow keys, and then the entire PiP frame moves around? Huh? Why not just switch focus to what I just highlighted? The same exact problem is seen throughout the program. It's another hair-tearing-out problem that makes me wonder if the people who designed and programmed this software actually have to ever use it. Also when I hold something down, I expect it to repeat. Like when adjusting the legth of a transition. I can actually use the arrow keys there, but when I hold the key down, I get one click. I want the numbers to ramp up slowly, thne I'll let off when I get near the nember I want, you know, like a COMPUTER works? Nope, not with PD. With PD you have to click the arrow key 20 times if you want to go 20 steps. Sheesh.. Stuff like that is inexcusable.

I'll have arthritis and carpal tunnel if I had to edit like this for long, seriously.. I'm not joking or kidding. Needing to constantly move the mouse 0.005mm to make an adjustment gets old real fast, and is a terrible interface.

So yeah it is tempting to just buy the program.. and hope for the best. Kind of like passing a law before reading it. Hey, might get lucky. After I turned off all hardware acceleration I got it to the point that I could at least edit a video, but the more complex the edit got, the slower and buggier PD became.

I wanted to do a few PiP edits in a video.. and I already have this trial version installed, so I edited one more vid in PD yesterday. It was an SD vid from an FPV DVR and clips of a 720p vid from a cell phone. PD actually froze and crashed a few times when I had several different video streams and audio streams all being edited at once. It actually started freezing a lot when adjusting the volume on the audio tracks at the end of the editing process, especially after I added some transitions. I was using two audio tracks, both split from their respective video files. Not sure if that has anything to do with it or not, but PD does not seem very stable.

Other things I noticed that I could not fix were single frames of video popping in after a transition was supposed to cover it. Think of a fade, where at the end, a single frame pops up and flashes and ruins the effect. I thought it was just happening in the editor and that after rendering it would do the transition correctly, but that was not the case, it was still there in the final video. That kind of thing is also enexcusable, and it wasn't user error. The transition was placed correctly.



So yeah again I am tempted to buy this program because of it's capabilities, but it's interface is really very poor. I doubt the "real" version allows use of the arrow keys where the trial version does not, and I don't expect them to fix fundamental things like that in a "version 14" of anything.



Although it took several hours to edit a 5 min video, it did come out how I wanted it to, especially for the first time ever doing PiP.. but the process involved in editing it was slow and painful, literally and figuratively.



Oh yeah, I cannot even paste a link into the damned text box.. I forgot :-/

Guess I will have to make another "quick post" to post the vid link, where pasting is "allowed". :-/ Grrrr.....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGP4MffvVDA

"shattered glass" transition at 00:45, but one frame popped up and ruined effect.

I could not fix that. It happened no matter what transition I used at the end of that vid track. It was a track I split and deleted the part that came after that. Then started vid back up at a later point in original vid.

That is a bug.





-edit- can't post another link in this post, LOL. So have to make another "quick post" to paste a link.

direct link to right before the transition that is broken.
https://youtu.be/UGP4MffvVDA?t=41s

Seriously BWX you need to check your statements.
I'm on Firefox and I have Ctrl+V as do the rest of us. This is CyberLink's forum and the way it is set up is for them to decide. The forum is the script in use here and is intertwined with the rest of CyberLink's set up, it is the one we live with.

Moaning about a trial's functions is ok by me but video editing software trials are going to be limited from whatever software you try. You note I mentioned the 30 day money back CyberLink offer as well.

I did a search recently of "free" trial software and one that was supposed to give near full use ended up as a piece of junk that wouldn't work for me. It happens.

Best of luck with what you decide.

Dafydd

Quote: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGP4MffvVDA

"shattered glass" transition at 00:45, but one frame popped up and ruined effect.

I could not fix that. It happened no matter what transition I used at the end of that vid track. It was a track I split and deleted the part that came after that. Then started vid back up at a later point in original vid.

That is a bug.

-edit- can't post another link in this post, LOL. So have to make another "quick post" to paste a link.

You have 2 back-to-back transitions rather than a single one across the two clips. Here's a *video* showing what that should look like, along with a couple other ideas for how to use those same transitions.

As I mentioned in my earlier posts, your computer seems to be having several problems that are making your life more difficult. I'm sorry for that and everybody who's responded to your posts has been trying to help.

Unfortunately, you seem to think that your experience is universal, so if you have a problem with the forum or with PD then everybody else must be having the same problems.

If you don't know how to do something in PD, it's a bug. If people show you that they can accomplish things you're not able to, we're either somehow faking it or using a different video editor. In other words, we're all lying to you.

Now for some reason you can't post more than one link in a post. Nobody else has that problem, and yet somehow it's the forum's fault. I posted one link above and here are 3 more: your first video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGP4MffvVDA, your second link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGP4MffvVDA?t=41s, and my video https://youtu.be/OoXcd9STqto

Will you accept that it's even possible that something is wrong on your end, or am I somehow faking this? Can you see that running some quick diagnostics on your end might uncover some issues that would solve many of these problems? I'm 100% certain it would, but apparently it's a lot easier to complain about the forum or PD than to actually do anything to resolve the issues.

Use WMM, buy another program, fix your computer, don't fix your computer, whatever. We're here if you want to solve the issues you're facing, but nobody is interested in volunteering their time just to be trolled.

YouTube/optodata

DS365 | Win11 Pro | Ryzen 9 3950X | RTX 4070 Ti | 32GB RAM | 10TB SSDs | 5K+4K HDR monitors

Canon Vixia GX10 (4K 60p) | HF G30 (HD 60p) | Yi Action+ 4K | 360Fly 4K 360°