Questions occasionally come up in the forums about processing high resolution panoramic images in PowerDirector. These threads are scattered between the PD8, 9, 10 & 11 forums, so I thought I'd post a new topic to try to draw some of that together.

Can panoramic images be processed in PD? Absolutely... but processing any high resolution image into video format is a compromise. The higher the resolution, the greater the compromise. So - the best thing to do is try to minimise the inevitable quality loss.

Other software, like WPanorama, can be used for pre-production. In recent testing I've focused on using PD only.

Testing
I did some side by side comparisons using both Magic Motion & PiP Motion in PD8, PD9, PD10 & PD11. The videos are posted on YouTube in 1080p. These test videos use the same two images & were produced to the same format & profile each time.

Image 1 - 3989x1000 (Portland, Oregon) Image 2 - 22320x3386 (Port Charcot, Antarctica)
Each video produced to AVC H.264 1920x1080 @ 16MBps

Magic Motion Comparison - http://youtu.be/z7VXgA9txKc

PiP Motion Comparison & Side-by-side Magic Motion & PiP Motion - http://youtu.be/JMAt_cEz0rc

I haven't drawn any shattering conclusions from that testing, except that PD11 manages to process the images better than PD9 & 10 - can't quantify that - just how it looks. PD11's more flexible workspace makes the task much easier too! I do know I'd only use PD9 for this task under sufferance!

Previous Panorama Test Videos (some using WPanorama):
http://youtu.be/d6yQz-ktzRY
http://youtu.be/Bw86BR0lKRs
http://youtu.be/eJCBWgkBrPg

Some previous Panorama Discussions:
PD11
- http://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/25394.page
PD10
- http://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/15/24604.page#133725 (quote from CyberLink)
- http://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/24604.page
- http://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/22276.page
PD9 (& earlier)
- http://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/18042.page
- http://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/25307.page
- http://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/15025.page
- http://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/15614.page
- http://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/15041.page

Cheers - Tony
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