When I install it I drop a clip in the timeline. I went to produce and make disk and click on the different one's and was never ask to activate. Intel i7 5960X overclock to 4 Ghz 16 GB of ram.
GoPro 4
Canon VIXIA HF G10
Canon EOS Rebel T3
Canon EOS 70D
My Vimeo Channel http://vimeo.com/user3339631/videos

I also checked the produce of various formats that used to need activation.

None needed activation.
I do have other Powerdirector's installed, if that makes any difference.
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.

Same here, no activation request. HP Envy Phoenix/4thGen i7-4770(4@3.4GHz~turbo>3.9)
Nvidia GTX 960(4GB)/16GB DDR3/
Canon Vixia HV30/HF-M40/HF-M41/HF-G20/Olympus E-PL5.
Tape capture using 6 VCR, TBC-1000, Elite BVP4+, Sony D8 camcorder with TBC.
https://www.facebook.com/BarryAFTT

sounds good so far...now I wonder about SLI mode... Intel Core i7 3770K 3.6 Ghz,
GTX 680, 2 X Benq23 3D monitors,
6G DDR3, Win 7 64, Win 10 (Insider) 64
PCIE SSD, Intel Sata SSD 2 500 Gbyte Seagate,
Minoru 3D WebCam, NVIDIA 3D Vision-Ready

Quote: sounds good so far...now I wonder about SLI mode...

Well I can now tell you that SLI makes no difference, as it was in 11. Intel Core i7 3770K 3.6 Ghz,
GTX 680, 2 X Benq23 3D monitors,
6G DDR3, Win 7 64, Win 10 (Insider) 64
PCIE SSD, Intel Sata SSD 2 500 Gbyte Seagate,
Minoru 3D WebCam, NVIDIA 3D Vision-Ready

Well myself I don't use hardware in the produce. I let the cpu do all the work. It's nice to have it in review when editing. Intel i7 5960X overclock to 4 Ghz 16 GB of ram.
GoPro 4
Canon VIXIA HF G10
Canon EOS Rebel T3
Canon EOS 70D
My Vimeo Channel http://vimeo.com/user3339631/videos

Quote: Well myself I don't use hardware in the produce. I let the cpu do all the work. It's nice to have it in review when editing.

I had an ongoing discussion with another member sometime ago about whether to render with hardware, and I don't believe we ever came to any conclusions. The theory was that hardware rendering could reduce the quality of the video. I have done a few tests but only for speed and then viewed the results and they looked ok. But it wasn't done scientifically. I wonder if anyone has. First thing would be an ideal test clip. It was suggested that it should have lots of patterns in it.

I would be prepared to do some if anyone could suggest a clip to use. Intel Core i7 3770K 3.6 Ghz,
GTX 680, 2 X Benq23 3D monitors,
6G DDR3, Win 7 64, Win 10 (Insider) 64
PCIE SSD, Intel Sata SSD 2 500 Gbyte Seagate,
Minoru 3D WebCam, NVIDIA 3D Vision-Ready

The question of using or not using Hardware Acceleration has come up at every release of Powerdirector.

If you read what Cyberlink says about their test platform, you get a good idea of the condition they tested.
http://www.cyberlink.com/products/powerdirector-ultra/features_en_US.html

Testing case
Source clip: 4x4 TV wall /1min Full HD AVCHD (29.97FPS)
Output: AVC 1920x1080p (18M)
*CyberLink PowerDirector 12, vendor S, vendor M, vendor C with hardware encode.
*Vendor A does not support hardware encode, tested with software encode

Testing platform
CPU: Intel® Core™ i5-4430 3.00GHz
Memory: 8GB
VGA: Intel® HD Graphics 4600 (driver version 9.18.10.3165)
OS: Windows 7 64-bit with SP1

There are an unlimited variation in computer configuration. Each one provides a different experience.

On my computer, Powerdirector 9, PD 11 and PD 12 all perform as expected. That is My computer. Other people have different computer setups.

Everybody's experience varies.
In this forum are some long time users and posters that will tell you they do not experience the problems posted in the forum.

That is why we are answering the posts. We know what works, and in some cases the cause of why it does not work.

Hardware Acceleration (HA) is the video card, in that computer and the Video Driver installed on that platform.
On some systems HA works well, on some systems it does not.

It does work on my current setup. I still don't use it much. I do not like having to render a project twice.
It is once if HA works, Twice, second time no HA if it does not.
So I usually don't use HA, the amount of time to render is not that much greater.

The exception to that rule is SVRT, if SVRT is active, I do use it.
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.

With the release of PD11 they also posted some release data, and as it turned out, my system was almost identical to their setup. I did various tests, mainly considering speed and I could beat their figures by a mile !

The tests I have done thus far with PD12, indicate that it is faster than PD11, but not by a mile, by a few percentage points, none the less it is faster, which is what I want. Intel Core i7 3770K 3.6 Ghz,
GTX 680, 2 X Benq23 3D monitors,
6G DDR3, Win 7 64, Win 10 (Insider) 64
PCIE SSD, Intel Sata SSD 2 500 Gbyte Seagate,
Minoru 3D WebCam, NVIDIA 3D Vision-Ready