A while ago I tried PD 10 in my search to replace Premiere Pro. PowerDirector 10 was looking good until I tried to adjust the audio. With no easy way to determine decibel levels or easily adjust volume levels up and down with accurate consistency, I unfortunately had to go back to Premiere.

I just saw PD 11 was out, and got my hopes up that I could switch this time. It all looked promising, so I downloaded the trial. But once again it's a no-go.

1. The CTI (current time indicator) is so choppy when I play back a clip! At least on my Windows 8 PC. And that's even when there no video, just audio. It jumps like 4 frames at a time. If I'm playing back a video and trying to get a sense of video/audio timing, it's almost impossible with a jerky indicator. If I hold down , or . to go back and forth frame-by-frame, then even that is a lot smoother than simple playback. Very frustrating.

2. If I zoom in a bit on an audio clip to adjust the volume, the waveform disappears whenever I use ALT+Mousewheel to scroll left or right. Then only way I can bring the waveform back is to zoom out or actually click the left-right scrollbar at the bottom of the screen.

3. The audio adjustment seems to have improved but there still doesn't seem to be a decibel reference, so I can't relate my audio to any other professional program. How many decibels is my video below 0dB? I don't know. The default volume in PD is set at "50". Unfortunately this internal numbering means nothing to me if every other program I work with uses decibels as a reference.

4. With the default volume being "50" and I then add a single volume keyframe, it jumps to "51". I don't know why.

5. If I zoom in and click exactly on the CTI line at precisely where I want an audio volume keyframe, the keyframe almost never appears on the frame I wanted it on. It'll appear a frame or two (or even 4 frames) to the left.

6. In the Effect Room, the rotating flower preview stutters around like an old PC struggling to keep up. But I'm running an i7 with 8GB RAM and a GeForce 560GTX Ti.

This is just after 20min trying it out. I really wanted to like PowerDirector 11 as it looks like you guys have added some great features and kept things fresh - unlike Adobe's stale efforts. Oh well, fingers crossed for next time, and in the meantime I'll just have to keep searching.