Hi,
I've got a lot of reservations about PowerDirector's inability to retain the quality of the original source clips. I'm editing my old DV footage, and to put PD to the test I captured one small clip from my DV camera. Playing back the AVI, and doing nothing else you can see that the wrong field is being displayed first, upper instead of lower. It can't be changed in PD9. Then if you place this clip in the timeline, with no effects or anything else applied, and export to AVI again, all in the same format precisely, a second degredation occurs. You'd kind of expect that the field reversal would be counteracted when reversed a second time, but this is not the case.

My clip was of a train travelling at slow speed past the camera UK PAL 25fps DV 16:9 Anamorphic. After the first capture stage the carriage windows judder as they pass by quite a noticeable amount. After the second pass through PD's codec (simulating output to AVI or DV cam following edit,) the result is totally unacceptable. I had been trialling PD before I bought it with movie with relatively little motion in it so I didn't notice. Now feeling rather cheated, because I can't use this software, which is a shame because I really like the features of PD. SVRT makes no difference. Something's still being switched/broken. WMP, Quicktime, and VLC media players all suffer in some way or another on playback. Either terrible pic, stalling or freezing if shuttling, on all three of my computers (PC not at fault here).

So I've tried out two other products, MAGIX Movie Edit Pro and Sony Vagas Movie Studio, neither of which exhibit any loss at all. Despite my fond memories of PD, I think I shall be seeking a refund. Can't see updates being rolled out very frequently in the support section. Before you ask, I have the latest update. The ouput from these all play out in the mainstream players.

I've seen a number of picture quality postings in this forum, where I think that the advice given has been a little US centric, and it seems to me that PD does not handle the subtle country specific differences in their respective formats properly. Very short sighted not to sense or allow the user to change the field priority for instance.

I mean this with my very best respect for all you experienced editors, when replying to a member with a problem, may I remind you to consider that the problem could be regional in nature. Not directly aimed at anyone specifically, but just an observation in the forum.

I have attached below a sample output. To see the effect properly you need to watch the movie through a DV cam connected to a monitor or large TV capable of PAL-I 25fps interlaced anamorphic 16:9.
WMP deinterlaces the image and so a difference is hard to detect. VLC media player clearly shows the offset fields, and any scrubbing through the movie results in freezing or crashing. Note the pixellation in the trees and the clarity of the fella taking a photograph. The movie was exported with SVRT, and no pre-render took place so it SHOULD be as I first captured and produced it. (I've had to shorten it you see to get it past my ISP). For those that don't have a UK TV set, or a means of export to a DV device, I have also attached a recording of the effect by videoing the TV set output with my camcorder. This really shows the problem.

The original clip displays none of these problems despite being re-edited twice through Vegas.

Regards,
James.