Yikes David...

Who peed on your corn flakes this morning.

For 1 all VES has glitches... and 2..... this is my way of life to feed my family like generations before me did.

PD8 is a great sofware with the proper tools and knowhow of video editing it does what a consumer needs to produce a video to show familty and friends.

I would imagine that this software is running on millions of computers around the world. The percentage of people using the software that are having problems seems very small to me. Add to that, the fact that most of the problems are solved very quickly here on this forum (a users forum at that). Very few threads go more than one page.

As I said in an earlier post, I have been using the software for more than 5 years. There are probably many others here that have used it far longer. I have had one problem that required me to start a thread. Updating with a patch corrected my issue.

This is not to say that there are not some issues with the program, we just have to accept that all computer software has issues, problems, and limitations. I have yet to see or use a piece of software that did not have some sort of bug. As an example (nothing to do with PD), my Windows Media Player will not play mpg2 files. They will start, the video will run for about 20 seconds then freeze. The audio continues as normal. I have yet to figure this one out. I have tried older and newer versions of WMP to no avail. If MS had a forum like this I might be able to correct the problem.

As a person with previous programing experience (pre-windows), I have a working knowledge of what software developers go through when writing and testing new code. I have also gone through the BETA testing of a couple of the recent MS operating systems.

Know your machine, know your software.
Hal
OS - Win11 Pro, Alienware R13, CPU - Intel Core I7-12700KF 12 CPUs), 16g DDR5 4400 RAM, Video - Geeforce RTX 3080ti 12g, PD11 & PD365
My YouTube

Like Hal stated.

I see most problems due to under machined.

I went above the minimum requirments to properly run PD8 and have very little trouble. Keeping your computer clean and up to date helps. But like any consumer VES trying to run long projects with fades, trans, Etc. it will hang now and then. My longest project to date was just about 40min and had no problems.

From my experience, some software just seems to work better on some machines. I can't speak specifically to the different video editing programs, but I once had a computer that would not play well with Norton Anti Virus, but worked perfectly with McCaffee. When I upgraded computers, the new computer wouldn't play nicely with McCaffee, but worked perfectly with Norton. I didn't have the time (or desire) to figure out why that was, so I just acceted it as one of those odd things.........

If you read the extensive reviews of ALL the vide editing software, it is clear that every package has some people that have good experiences and some people that have bad experiences, based on their own personal situation with their own personal machines. If you were frightened by bad reviews, or bad experiences, you wouldn't ever buy any software!!!

With all due respect (and I am not being flippant or dismissive), if you just can't get PD8 to work for you, then try something else. You might find a program that just happens to run better on your machine.

Here's my honest overview of PD8.

First I bought a $2k computer just so I can edit and burn BD disks and play the latest and greatest games. I consider my system to be Mid-high end.

Prior to PD8, I was mostly a Roxio Easier Creator user because it was in fact 'Easier'. I also tried Pinnacle but always ended up erasing it. Well upon receiving my new rig, I loaded up Roxio Creator Pro 2010, which I bought online. Let me tell you about how bad a POS this software was. It froze on me right away. I mean, as soon as I selected a project, it froze (not responding). I downloaded the latest drivers. I checked for patches. I did everything. When I Googled this problem online, I found there was hundreds of others that had the same problem. How is it possible that these developers have jobs? How can you release a software that so many bugs that it locks up so much? Have they ever heard of testing? I had to return the software and luckily got a refund.

Well I bought PD8 based on reviews online. So far it has been a learning experience, especially with the help of some of the people in here (the Capt, James, Jay, Hal, and others). I've managed to create 2-3 projects so far. I still haven't burned a BD because I just found out my LG BD burner is defective (getting it replaced soon by the manufacturer). I did manage to burn two projects on a DL DVD and it turned out great.

My only beef is that it did crash a few times. But I do what others have said and save often (which you should do anyway when you're dealing with lengthy projects).

I now know first hand what I've been told for years. Video editing, especially HD video editing, taxes your system more so than playing the latest games (Crysis, BF, COD, etc.). You will need a powerful rig to do it. There's nothing more irritating than producing/rendering a project over night and wake up to find it crashing or the BSOD appearing.

I've seen posts on here of people with laptops that are 5 years old and have 64mb graphics card. I don't know a lot but I do know that ain't going to do the trick. You can't draw CAD on a Pentium II and you can't certainly do video editing with a 64mg card.

So PD8 is not perfect. But for what I paid for it, I would still give it 4 out of 5 stars. Intel i930 (4x 2.80ghz), 12 gb Corsair Dominator DDR3 ram, 1.5gb Nvidia GTX480, Asus P6t mb, 850w XFX PSu, Windows 7 HP

Hi Tuan,

Your comments were awesome.....and brimming with actual experience with other software which is invaluable as a comparison. I totally agree with what you said.

Especially:

I now know first hand what I've been told for years. Video editing, especially HD video editing, taxes your system more so than playing the latest games (Crysis, BF, COD, etc.). You will need a powerful rig to do it.

I have read forum posts from other people stating that their system can play Games at the highest resolution settings with no problem. "Why do they have so many problems trying to edit HD footage with Power Director?"

I would like to ask them this question....Is their PC capable of playing multiple games at the same time in FULL resolution? This is what is basically happening when you are trying to edit multiple video tracks of HD video. I have posted some examples showing my CPU usage at 100% when playing back 8 tracks of HD video on 8 separate tracks and demonstrate just how taxing it is even on a relatively powerful system like mine utilizing multiple graphic cards.

But bottom line, in my opinion, Power Director is a great value! It has some issues, but for the most part you can produce really nice videos for other people to watch and enjoy.

Nice comments Tuan!
Regards,

KEvin
Check out PDtoots. PowerDirector Tutorials and more! Over 5,000 Subscribers.

Even after uninstalls and installs and some teck help at Cyberlink PD8 will still not start up. I still get the same message that the program stopped working and windows will try to find a solution. I have Vista Home Premium, HP, Pentium(R) Dual Core E5200 2.5GHz, 5GB ram, 64 bit oper system.

Do you think this is enough of a system or could this cause the problem. I have done most of what the Cyberlink tecks have told me to do.

Thanks

Aaron,

Your problem does not sound hardware related. My three year old 2GHz laptop can run PD8 just fine just not 24 Mb/s HD. Your problem sounds like a software installation issue or there is a software conflict between PD and something else on your PC.

I use a program called CCleaner to manage my registry. Its a free download. Q9300 2.5 GHz
4 GB Ram
Nvidia 9800 GT

I downloaded CCcleaner but have not used it yet. Do you lett CCcleaner delete everything it selects? Do you think that will help?

Aaron:

You can set CCleaner up to clean/delete what you want. I set it for deleteing all I can to clean my system. I also do a full C:drive defrag at least 3 times a week as well as running CCleaner often. I also do a "temp" file delete and a few other clean up tricks I learned from YouTube.

Keep you system clean and external drive photos your no longer useing/need on you C:drive.

I been running PD8 darn near problem free for about 8 months now.

I would like to here some inside words on PD9 that should be revealed soon

CCCleaner didn't do it. It still won't start. The odd thing is the trial version worked for a little while and then started doing this.