I agree with the majority of jerrys proposition. There is however a BIG proviso (not confined to CL) - the issue that gets any consumer - pro or hobby - really, really p****d off is when the software is promoted, marketed and reviewed as A), B) or C) and it actually doesn't really work like that.

It is particularly irritating when "prosumers" are actively involved in, say beta testing, and it still takes nearly a whole development cycle to address simple and stupid issues. My particular bête noire example is the perspective scroll diagonal line, identified in beta testing but not fixed until the last (from memory) patch in PD8. In PD9, for me, it seems to be a real difficulty in relation to .mp4 production and any form of hardware acceleration - it just doesn't work. For others in may be SVRT or jerky motion paths.

I accept the speed of hardware development etc etc will make life challenging for CL, but I, along with many others, have submitted, often at the request of CL, raw video footage, complete or partial projects, screen captures, detailed and explicit examples etc etc etc and........................................................................................... yep, a blank space.

So, forgive me Product Manager (and team), but I'm a little wary of :-
"Thank you very much for contributing your suggestions on this matter, we are closely watching all suggestions and log them into our database for considerations. " (in my day job as a management consultant I would consider that statement as virtually meaningless)
or
"We hear you and thanks for the input. " (ditto)

As a long term supporter (but not a blind follower) of CL, please, please just make the software work BEFORE it is released - OR - (heretical, I know) ignore the marketeers and release a product, not at a time, but when it really matches its PR (or, putting on my day job hat, alternatively - alter its PR).

Forlornly
Adrian


Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated. (see below)
Confucius
AMD Phenom IIX6 1055T, win10, 5 internal drives, 7 usb drives, struggling power supply.

Absolutely correct Adrian and lets hope that when and if PDR10 is released for Beta testing, personal grievances are set aside and members that are asked to participate, are the most competent available for such a task.
CyberLink will want PDR10 to be the best product available in its price range and this can only be achieved if the Beta testers are listened to. We do not want a repeat of PDR9 where issues raised during Beta testing are still outstanding or have only just been addressed.

Robert Intel i7 930, 16GB ram, Radeon HD 5770 1Gb,Ver. 14.12 Win7 64 bit
Intel i7 7700 HQ, 16 GB ram Nvidia GTX 1050Ti 4GB dual drives 1 TB SSD + 1 TB HDD Win 10

PDtoots

Include the short cuts from PDspeed produced by one of the forum members here.

And stop the default playback going to clip mode, I don't know how many times I am deep into editing and just want to see how a transition or the movie is going and the playback is in clip mode and stops at the end of the clip. My youtube channel====> http://www.youtube.com/user/relate2?feature=mhsn

This is the best damn thread in all of internet-dom. I am humbled by the giant brains that spout forth such wisdom, backed up by oodles of street-cred. HP Envy Phoenix/4thGen i7-4770(4@3.4GHz~turbo>3.9)
Nvidia GTX 960(4GB)/16GB DDR3/
Canon Vixia HV30/HF-M40/HF-M41/HF-G20/Olympus E-PL5.
Tape capture using 6 VCR, TBC-1000, Elite BVP4+, Sony D8 camcorder with TBC.
https://www.facebook.com/BarryAFTT

Dear Dafydd: Thank you for confirming my status as a real Product Manager from CyberLink, not a hacker.

Dear jerrys: Thank you for your in-depth analysis on marketing a "Professional" version of PowerDirector. We agree with your analysis mostly, and your suggestion of "Plus Pack" strategy is interesting and more feasible. We will explore more in that direction.

Dear Forum members: For all of your suggestions, as we mentioned earlier that we will log all of them for future planning and will seriously consider adding them into v11 (if not enough time to be included in v10). We understand several suggestions from PDR9 beta testers were not included in final PDR9 release (due to time limitation) which made some of our beta testers unhappy. We apologize for that and we are re-designing our beta testing process to avoid similar situations. Thank you for your support and understanding and we look forward to more suggestions from you.

Just to say that;

as usual, Adrian pinpoints essentials.

Edit :

We apologize for that and we are re-designing our beta testing process to avoid similar situations.

Now that sounds promising!
Just something.
https://www.petitpoisvideo.com

The best results ever, all started with good intentions.

So , I support the suggestion above : put aside all sorrows from the past and let us all assist in making PD the best of class...

"The tool that will put a smile on your face while editing."

:

My 2 eurocents,
Hugo

Absolutely, Here, Here. I fully support the above sentiment. And here is my 2c worth.

Lets not chase away those that can help us with our various woes, but rather embrace the fact that they are interested enough to become involved in the solution.

I don't know of any complex software that has worked flawlessly from the start for all users in all environments without the need for patches, updates, etc. Look at the amount of patches Microsoft issues each day for example.

Contrast that with the likes of HP from whom I purchased an all purpose printer/scanner/fax etc which hooks up to the PC and any faxes received could be routed directly to the PC via the USB connection. When I had problems with this feature (The feature that sold me the unit.) I found that it had been an issue for years, and their web messages showed literally thousands of complaints for the same issue, but no acknowledgement to it, or any solution offered. No response to emails, nothing, nada. THAT is worth complaining about. I for one will NEVER purchase another HP product because of it. (Yet I suspect, there are thousands of loyal HP users that will shoot me down on this and cite cases of great customer service.)

So, thanks Cyberlink for your active participation. In an age of complacency and substandard products, its good to have something special that you can stand behind with pride. Dragging PowerDirector 9 along with a 32-bit Win XP PC Dual Core 2.22Ghz with 3.5 Gig Ram, NVIDIA GeForce GT430, but still Comfortable and pleased with it.

@Markal - I don't disagree with your pleasure at having CL actively participate here (and I genuinely look forward to positive results, it's something I have promoted for some time) but I venture to suggest that - irrespective of what HP, MS or others do/have done for years - CL doesn't need to follow suit, as an aspiring market leader CL must avoid being "one of the crowd" either in this or any other way.

My mild wariness/rant was not about the general patches, updates etc that are, as you point out, almost unavoidable, it was more about issues, identified and documented prior to release, but still present as the last patch is issued and the next version is imminent.

Probably because I'm approaching 60 and getting grumpy, I don't subscribe to the philosophy, intimated in your 2nd paragraph, that I should be grateful that the supplier of a product is good enough to consider fixing the problem(s) that shouldn't have been there in the first place.

However, I'm delighted that the beta testing system may be made better and that the "due to time constraints" reasons may be addressed - it will be wonderful to have a software release that :-

Says what it does, does what it says and allows us to prove it to ourselves and the world.

Hopefully
Adrian Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated. (see below)
Confucius
AMD Phenom IIX6 1055T, win10, 5 internal drives, 7 usb drives, struggling power supply.

Yes, I have to agree vn800rider. Contankerousness (is that a word?) is allowed in us older folk. It seems that it is expected from us by the youngsters. (Anyone under 40)

I regularly use it as an excuse for my lack of tolerance especially with customer support guys and telesales people

Dragging PowerDirector 9 along with a 32-bit Win XP PC Dual Core 2.22Ghz with 3.5 Gig Ram, NVIDIA GeForce GT430, but still Comfortable and pleased with it.

Quote: Absolutely correct Adrian and lets hope that when and if PDR10 is released for Beta testing ... members that are asked to participate, are the most competent available for such a task.
Robert

Buzz! Wrong.

You need some incompetent users, preferably newbies. The problem with competent users (or the developers themselves) is that they test the way things are supposed to work. You also need people who, out of ignorance or perversity, try to do things bass-akwards. That way you have a chance to get rid of a whole lot of problems.

You've probably read my rants about "unexpected behavior." I believe that if you ask a program to do something inappropriate or unexpected it should warn you or ignore you, not bite your fingers off.

One of my favorite stories about beta testing involved inviting the students of a local high school to be beta testers. They were give $5 for each bug they found. They weren't expert users, but they were creative and persistent little buggers. Jerry Schwartz

Hey Jerry,

I'm a newbie , count me in
I'm not a pervert, count me out
I want a better product , count me in
...and I LOVEEEEE to stretch applications beyond their limits... , count me in.

So..
that's 3 - 1 for counting me in

:
Hugo

3D editing option would make me buy it...

NO! NOT 3D! Don't even UTTER the dreaded 3D word. HP Envy Phoenix/4thGen i7-4770(4@3.4GHz~turbo>3.9)
Nvidia GTX 960(4GB)/16GB DDR3/
Canon Vixia HV30/HF-M40/HF-M41/HF-G20/Olympus E-PL5.
Tape capture using 6 VCR, TBC-1000, Elite BVP4+, Sony D8 camcorder with TBC.
https://www.facebook.com/BarryAFTT

The only 3D i would want would be the ability to give depth on the Z axis.

Quote: The only 3D i would want would be the ability to give depth on the Z axis.

Do you mean depth of field? That would be quite a trick with video. Jerry Schwartz

I take it then Jerry that you have never been a Beta tester for video editing software.
Whether or not you are an experienced video editor or a complete novice is totally irrelevant, but you do need to be competent in your abilities to:

* completely reinstall your OS when the beta version totally crashes your computer, this has happened to me twice, on PDR7 and PDR9 and has happened to many other beta testers, especially on PDR9.

* uninstall and reinstall the beta versions on a regular basis as new beta versions are released or they just fall over when trying to launch.

* to be able to document action by action every step taken so that other beta testers can confirm your findings.

* to be able to take screen shots and make videos of problems encountered, for uploading to CyberLink. That's the best way to show all your actions for R & D to replicate

* to devote up to 3 months of your life not being able to use a stable product, because you have already removed your previous stable version and all you are trying to do is to make the beta version fall over by testing to the extreme limits. You are wrong in your statement that we test the way things are supposed to work, we do not, the whole object to is make it fall over, find its weaknesses so that they can be reported and corrected.

So Jerry, we do not need incompetent users for Beta testing, we had enough of those on previous Beta tests where they contributed absolutely nothing. What is needed are competent users who are prepared to take their computers to the maximum limits and be prepared to purchase a new computer, or significantly upgrade their existing computer, because of the extreme resources required.
Each version of PowerDirector has required more and more resources and PDR10 will be no different.

But we just love doing it

Robert Intel i7 930, 16GB ram, Radeon HD 5770 1Gb,Ver. 14.12 Win7 64 bit
Intel i7 7700 HQ, 16 GB ram Nvidia GTX 1050Ti 4GB dual drives 1 TB SSD + 1 TB HDD Win 10

PDtoots

Quote: I take it then Jerry that you have never been a Beta tester for video editing software.

No, I've never beta tested video editing software, but I have beta tested a lot of other things. If you think a video editing application can mess up your system, try beta testing an entire operating system. And if that doesn't make your bowels run, try beta testing a disk driver.

I'm not suggesting that the beta testers should be unable to manage their own systems. That needs to be a prerequisite, of course. They also have to have a lot of editing to do, but not anything that will endanger their livelihoods. I, myself, meet the latter criterion but not the former.

I'm just warning that if your beta testers only test that the program does what it is supposed to do when you use it properly, you will miss an entire class of problems that crop up when you try to get it to do something it isn't supposed to do or don't use it properly. Jerry Schwartz

Quote: NO! NOT 3D! Don't even UTTER the dreaded 3D word.

POWER DIRECTOR 10 - What Would Make You Buy It?

In my case 3D. In your case - What is your problem...?

Inside joke, we'd like 2D to work more betterer... HP Envy Phoenix/4thGen i7-4770(4@3.4GHz~turbo>3.9)
Nvidia GTX 960(4GB)/16GB DDR3/
Canon Vixia HV30/HF-M40/HF-M41/HF-G20/Olympus E-PL5.
Tape capture using 6 VCR, TBC-1000, Elite BVP4+, Sony D8 camcorder with TBC.
https://www.facebook.com/BarryAFTT

The only thing that would make me buy it is if they refunded my money for version 9 and then guaranteed that 10 will not crash and lock up like the previous ones. This is the worst software I have ever used!

oh and tech support is useless.