Because it is always easy to have complaints about software bugs and failures, or should I say development and testing failures, with this submission of positive feedback, I hope to contribute to very desirable improvements to PowerDirector 365 version 20.4 as it stands today.

I am a long-time PD user and have been working with the many versions. I got very familiar with the functional approach CL has taken towards PD with all its changes, some for the better and some that did not work out so well.
In many ways PD is clear and intuitive enough for many, to get things done without to many problems. Besides that, we see that next to what CL delivers, there are a few very good tutors who submit excellent tutorials on YouTube which certainly help many users getting the things done. We also see that many established magazines publish reviews with good to high scores for PD.
However, over the past few years, we see by extensively using the PD software, but also from what is being written in the forum, that users seem to have more and more questions about dis-functioning of the software than about how to approach specific editing work. We spot that a number of very experienced PD users, who are always active in the forum to kindly help others, also have difficulties getting past the sometimes very awkward and disturbing software failures. It also looks like CL submits new versions of the software without adequate testing, but worse is that decisions are being made on functional behavior that bring the software away from being intuitive, making it harder to get things done. I would argue that it takes far less time to more thoroughly test before submissions, than having to hasten, repair and submit patches.
We also see that every month more and more stuff is being added, bells and whistles I like to call them, that might make PowerDirector sexier to have, than they make PD better to use to get things done swiftly and without any interruptions. Don’t get me wrong: I understand how difficult it is to make subscription software attractive, and I like and sometimes use the new additions. But balance I would rather like to have an editor that always works, is reliable, is crash-free, does not hinder me doing the job by taking it’s sweat time ploughing through features, or even produces output that is bad.

What I like is:
- PD comes with a good manual and a number of languages. That is properly kept up to date and clearly displays the changes that come with new versions. Sometime a bit later than the software but nevertheless.
- There are very good tutorials (and tutors), a good website, good information available, that make it easier for new and experienced users to get things done.
- Most of the video editing functions do work properly, are easy to apply, to understand and they perform good.
- The various “rooms” make a valuable tool box that contain a plethora of good stuff This forum on course is a very good source for exchange of information.

What I suggest is:
- Please do test more thoroughly any software before it is submitted to the public. Better a late submission than a wrong submission. Don’t waste the time of your valued users.
- Do what others do: engage a selection of users to help finding errors in a beta-version (maybe this is already in place?)
- Make sure that the software works on a fair variety of hardware and at least on all platforms that comply with the minimum specifications
- When looking at the Windows version and the behavior of PD, one can immediately see, that the software does not comfortably “sits” into the Operating system. E.g. dragging to change the size of the timeline or the preview windows clearly result in a sort of rebuild of the windows, whereas with most other (complex) software that kind of dragging happens seamlessly. Is there room for improvement in the way the software or the development environment and tools have been set up. Maybe changing that will already dramatically improve the user experience.
- Define what performance means and check during testing whether there is a breach in performance introduced by the new version.
- Various rooms contain too much “features” apparently for the software to decently handle. Most of these features will not be used by serious editors anyway. Consider repealing from combining features in rooms, and make distinction between fun-stuff and essential stuff, or even better let the user make that distinction (a bit like the favorites, or like is done in the designer screens: essential and advanced?)
- I must admit that the combining of features in rooms and diminishing the number of menus gives a cleaner and less overwhelming editor desktop, but makes it harder to find and use the various options. Don’t overdo the combining and/or enable users to customize the menu ribbons?
- Consider changing the way downloadable features are presented in the room, clicking on them will immediately invoke a (sometimes unwanted) download process
- Focus on the main purpose of the video editor: always properly handle input formats as should, and deliver output flawlessly and of (very) good quality. Keep up with the (ever evolving) video formats, device- and platform technologies. Make them seamless, so that the support department does not have to suggest to not run software in parallel, use administrator mode etc.
- Make sure that the CL sales and development people (and management?) regularly read the forum entries. Maybe they already do, and I can understand why you want users to submit a formal request in case of a problem rather than hoping that CL will pickup everything that is written on the forum. But from following the forum they get a sense of what is important for the users. (and if they already do they may recognize that some of the above has been written here before by others and I😉)
Others may want to chime in.
I hope this helps a bit. I think that CL already does a good job, but it can do better. We all like PowerDirector and want to use it a bit longer…..
Kind regards
Warry

(I have submitted this story directly to customer support too.)