Hey Folks,

For the past few months, I have been experimenting with PowerDirector 8. Needless to say, it has been a long journey. Overall, it is a very good editing program for the amount ( less than $100 ) that is invested.

Have you guys ever seen Vegas Vacation?? Its the part where Chevy Chase was gambling and can never seem to beat the dealer. That is how I feel after my ordeal.

I would like to share with you my experience and hope some of you can learn from it.

Ok. I went to Disney with my brand new Canon HF S100. I filmed the vacation in 1920 X 1080 Full HD, 24 MBS, and 30 FPS. I'd ended up with over 4 hrs of HD footages stored in its native MTS files. These raw videos were awesome and stunning to watch in its native form.

My goal is to have the best quality video and sound and have it fully edited and onto Blu Ray.

That vacation was back in August and I am almost done here in December, I don't work. LOL

It was obvious that my laptop could not handle the editing of these heavy data files. I've also experimented with various other editing programs with no such luck. So I went out and invested in a brand new Quad Core Phenon desktop, running 32 bit Vista, 2.6 hz, LG Blu Ray burner, 1 T of harddrive, 4 gig of mem, and a 28" 1080 p monitor. I then purchase PD 8 after abandoning Corel VS.

Here are some of the key points when working on a Blu Ray project-

1- The very first step is to take your time. Be very conscience of the size of the files that you are editing, plan the length and your project very carefully.

2- If you are using Blu Ray, it is around 25 gig for the standard disc and 50 gigs for the dual layer. I would sugguest buying the " BD-RE " version so when you make a mistake, it does not hurt your wallet.

3- My goal was to put my project on two separate Blu Ray Discs @ 25 gigs each.

4- My first 2 hrs of editing consisted of various trimming, adding audio, adding PIP, adding transitions, titles, etc. Unfortunately, I would then run into VARIOUS errors when PRODUCING. It would crash and stop rendering, giving some sort of Video error message. I've looked for solutions but with no such luck. The points in where it crashes have no pattern at all. I would then go back into the timeline to where it stopped pick up the rendering. Now I am forced to make the 2 hrs in various " sessions ". It would prove later to be bad in the burning disc part.

5- You must also first create a Blu Ray folder by following the steps posted in this forum ( I don't know why Cyberlink just didn't flagged it active ).

6- So now I have various file segments in MPEG-2 BD 1920x1080 ( because I was unable to render my timeline for the entire 2 hrs without crashing ). The total of the files was 20 gigs ( 1 hr and 52 min ). I am ready to burn. I then added the files in the burning the module. I added the menu, chapters, etc. But for some reason, the menu process added an additional 4 plus gigs. So now the program won't let me burn to a disc. That is why step 5 is very important prior to starting your project. You can save it in a BDMV folder and use it later or on a third party program to burn.

7- Going back on step 6, the program will not allow me to make these files play and burn " continously ". Each segment is treated as a separate file. I hope PD will have an option for this. A workaround would be to put the produced files back ont he timeline and join them. However, from my test results, MULTIPLE RENDERING DEGRADES THE PICTURE QUALITY.

8- Why is there an option to have MPEG-2 1920X1080 BD? I believe that is misleading when your project is in Blu Ray. I then realize the standard file utilized by BR is M2TS. If you plan on burning in BR, you should pick M2TS in Producing and not MPEG-2. Otherwise, the MPEG-2 files will have to be rendered again to M2TS. Unless you truly need to keep the file created by Producing, the best method is to jump from the timline straight to create a disc.

9- When I actually started burning, I then encounter various burning errors. LOL

10- Going back on step 6, choosing MPEG-2 1920X1080 BD option will have a preset whopping 25 MBS bit rate. So by design, you will never fit two hours and menus onto a BR 25 g disc if you pick this option. You may consider a custom bit rate. If my native recording was in 24 MBS ( 18 MBS or lower in other cameras ), you should custom the bit rate to match your native bit rate.

11- SVRT- Smart Rendering.. , sure this could of help but I was rarely given the option. After reading the STRICT criteria on when this feature actually kicks in, it is impossible not to fall into the category when you are editing. I hope PD could change this.

The bottomline is that I do like PD8. I just hope they could fix some of these problems. So where I am at now ? I am almost done my second disc and ready to burn!

Good Luck !