I am very new to all this and so perhaps someone can also explain something else to me. I have been doing some reading on the forum and have viewed most of the instructional videos. My second question has to do with "rendering". I haven't really used anything in the "Produce" menu. Is that something I should be doing if I'm working with HD video? And what does this do?

Hi Melody,
I use MP4 clips from my Sanyo, usually at 720p, I've just tried speeding them up and have no preview problems. Can you give more details as to your file types and when exactly you have problems? Please also install the latest patch in case thats the problem :-
http://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/4395.page

The 'produce' menu system allows you to render your video to a file format of your choice (from the formats available). You can choose to 'produce' your video in a format to suit differing purposes and in differing qualities say for streaming on websites, for portable formats like ipod and PSP. It produces a file that you can use in differing ways rather than just producing a DVD.

Cheers
Adrian

Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated. (see below)
Confucius
AMD Phenom IIX6 1055T, win10, 5 internal drives, 7 usb drives, struggling power supply.

Hi Melody,
As per Adrian, but also can you specify camera model and also computer processor specs?

My clips are MPEG-4 AVC. My new camera is a Cannon Vixia HF 11.
My computer has the new Quad Processor, 8gb ram, using Vista 64bit.
I just downloaded and installed the new patch and my system says that it's now updated to the new 2227c.

I just tried again using a single clip and the patch seems to have eliminated the problem, at least with a single clip. I will now have to see how it performs with more going on (effects, PIP, music) and see if it still flows smoothly.

Thanks!

Nice specs Just a work of caution when rendering the AVCHD files. Go into File(director's chair)>view>SVRT and change the configuration to match your files (AVCHD 1920). If the project has to be completely rendered then you may be disappointed with the result. I have found the AVC rendering engine in PowerDirector to be substandard introducing a lot of blocking and loss of perceived definition. I am not alone in this complaint. As a work around, I render to BluRay format (Mpeg2).

Thanks very much for the tip. Is this a step you would take BEFORE you being to edit? Or after you edit when you aready to produce?