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No it does work - user created folders work too. It's just that if PD8 crashes before you exit, that organizational (sp?) work will not be saved. Changes to "favorites" (etc) from any room are only saving on exit.
Someone at Cyberlink needs to take a look at PD8's "on exit" events and see what could be pointed to by the project "save" function. Obviously it's not smart to assume you will be able to save certain things at a proper program termination. It's been years since I used anything that crashes a fraction of the number of times as PowerDirector. It's just kind of silly to write the program with the assumption that it will never crash.
Just close and re-open PD8 after you mess with favorites in any room.
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That's not a Cyberlink website (?) and it refers to PD7?
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I'm going to change everthing I said.
TRANSITION ROOM
-----------------------
If you make any changes to your favorites or any custom folders, "save" will not save those changes. PD8 only saves those changes on exit. So, if PD8 crashes, you loose any changes you made.
I think in a patch, whatever function is used to save Transition organization should be applied when the save button is clicked. That should be a single "call" line added to the save button function part of the program. PD8 does crash a bunch.
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"overlap" explains things. Good word to explain it.
That still doesn't change the amount of time I would loose when making tight trims. Everyone at some point edits family video. That's one example of where a trim can need to be tight to within a half a second. You know like someone finishes a sentence at the film stops a quarter of a second before the next sceen shows up. Or someone starts talking right after something you're tring to isolate. Trimming can be a major time investment in some projects.
Here's an idea: Have a little highlight "bar" at the end of a media file on the timeline show that indicates how much time should be "used up" (eaten) by a transition.
If a little indicator bar did show up on the media in the timeline, it would save me the time of scrubbing through the timeline and checking all the transition points after transitions are applied.
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I noticed this because of a picture slide show but it does the same thing with video. So, don't get confused and think I'm just talking about images and not video as well. 
For the DVD I'm working on, I had a 10 minute slideshow section. I'm making that in it's own project where I'm going to produce and then add it to the main project. These pictures I had set between 5 and 20 seconds in length.
I picked about 32 Transitions that I wanted and them applied them. The project length went from 10 minutes and 3 seconds down to 8 minutes and 4 seconds. I actually lost 20% of the "video". I always noticed it before on video but I thought the little bit of missing time (like a spoken word or two that will vanish) was just getting gobbled up by the frames used in the transition.
Why are the pictures/videos shrinking with an applied transition and is there a way to stop that from happening? I never thought much about it but what it really means is when you have tight trims on video you have to add a little extra length to compensate for the transitions trimming a couple of sections off the video.
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It looks like really ~71 minutes of DVD-HQ will fit on single layer. If smart-fix really decreases the bit rate "smartley" that should mean there's some threshold where the difference would not be noticable.
Like for a standard definition project ona 50" LCD. If your project was 82 minutes would a human actually be able to see the difference in a 71 minute DVD-HQ?
I'll have to make myself experiment when I get more of the trimming done.
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The short answer would be if PD7 got a "5 out of 10" star rating for crashes, PD8 would probably get a "7.5 out of 10" rating. Sometimes it feels like a totally different program, but other times it feels like it crashes just as bad as PD7.
I'm on my third job with PD8 right now. Over the last couple of days on the current job, it's only crashed one time on me ("PowerDirector has stopped working"). But, I have not yet used a transition. I have added multiple Power Tool and Enhance options though. It seems like when you add transitions is when you start really having problems. I'm in a habit now of waiting until the last possible moment to add those.
Also, PD8 seems to get in "moods" where you can scrub the timeline or jump to a clip and it will just stall out for long periods of time for no reason. Sometimes these "stutters" only last a couple of seconds, but at worst they can go up to two minutes. The odd part is that most of the time I won't see any hard drive activity, or the process monitor won't show any real CPU usage. I installed PD8 on my wifes computer a month ago and I do see the same problems. So, it seems like it's not just something happening on my specific system.
From PD7, I'm use to hitting the save button constantly. So, I'll close and restart PD8 a lot. I mean the first time I see one of those "stalls", I'll just go ahead and close and reopen it.
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Yeah the problem is dual layer disks are priced so high. I'm also using an injecet printer with a CD/DVD tray for a nice top. Inkjet DVD's actually do look photo quality. It's very nice for family projects.
$38.99 for a 20 stack of daul layer Injet Printable
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817130997
$17.99 for a 50 stack of single layer injet Printable
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817130991
Normal blanks are really just as different. You can get more than 100 single layer blanks for the price of 20 dual layer blanks. It's crazy.
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If I understand it right, the quality of a DVD (DVD-HQ) starts to drop as you go over the 1 hour mark (on a single layer DVD).
I'm working on a project right now in the 90 minute range and I'm wondering if I should shorten it down to 60 minutes, or if the quality of a 90 minute DVD on a 4.7GB disk wouldn't look that much different?
Has anyone every compared something like this? And, I'm talking about what it would look like on a larger (32" and up) LCD.
Thanks!
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