Quote I just upgraded from a previous version of PowerDirector. In that earlier version (13), there were more options for audio output settings and output file types (MOV, for example).

In this version, the best video output file types (e.g. H264 and H265) offer a best-scenario audio setting of 384 bit rate AAC compression. That is POOR audio quality! There is no longer any option for uncompressed WAV audio, or even for a better compression setting.

It seems PD15 uses cheap codecs that yield poor results with audio. The soundtrack for this video I am working on includes a flute solo. This always distorts after the video is rendered. It is not distorted in the original soundtrack.

Will you upgrade PowerDirector15 for better audio? If not, I want my money back.

In this era of video and audio advancements, it is foolish not to allow high quality audio. You don't even meet YouTube's recommendation for audio. Very disappointed.

We are not Cyberlink, we are users like you. This is a user forum. CL does provide a 30-day no questions asked refund policy. You need to contact them (to complain or for refund) through customer support on their website. Regards,
Dan
Power Director 21-Ultimate
v 21.0.3111.0
XPS-8940, Win-10 64-bit,
Intel Core i9-10900 processor
(10 core, 20M Cache),
32GB DDR4 RAM, 2TB M.2 PCIe NVME SSD, 2TB 7200 RPM SATA HDD,
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER 8GB GDDR6

Quote I just upgraded from a previous version of PowerDirector. In that earlier version (13), there were more options for audio output settings and output file types (MOV, for example).

In this version, the best video output file types (e.g. H264 and H265) offer a best-scenario audio setting of 384 bit rate AAC compression. That is POOR audio quality! There is no longer any option for uncompressed WAV audio, or even for a better compression setting.

It seems PD15 uses cheap codecs that yield poor results with audio. The soundtrack for this video I am working on includes a flute solo. This always distorts after the video is rendered. It is not distorted in the original soundtrack.

Will you upgrade PowerDirector15 for better audio? If not, I want my money back.

In this era of video and audio advancements, it is foolish not to allow high quality audio. You don't even meet YouTube's recommendation for audio. Very disappointed.

Sadly, I have the EXACT same issue and it has been a problem since PD14. If you search the forums, you will see this pointed out multiple times. What I have been doing - and this is a pain because, like you, I paid for the upgrades and I would expect them to be, well, upgrades ...

1. Edit/produce the video in PD15.

2. Produce just an audio track. The audio produce does give more options. Better yet, it is not scratchy and distorted.

3. Run PD13.

4. Import video from step 1, audio from step two.

5. Mute audio track from step 1 video.

6. Produce using SVRT. Sound is perfect.

The whole process adds about 5 minutes which is five minutes more than it should. However, I have invested mucho bucks in video production using PD over the past four years so it's worth it. But I don't like it.

Good luck

Quote
2. Produce just an audio track. The audio produce does give more options. Better yet, it is not scratchy and distorted.

That's a little strange. I'd assume you are using WAV at 1536 Kbps for your audio produce? If you use H.264 and set audio to LPCM 1536Kbps during produce of video in step 1 that should be nearly identical audio stream. Both audio streams are PCM, same bit depth, sample rate, bitrate for the audio, I'm a little surprised they sound different. Or are you impling AAC audio at 384Kbps sounds different, which of course it would.

Jeff

Quote

Quote
2. Produce just an audio track. The audio produce does give more options. Better yet, it is not scratchy and distorted.

That's a little strange. I'd assume you are using WAV at 1536 Kbps for your audio produce? If you use H.264 and set audio to LPCM 1536Kbps during produce of video in step 1 that should be nearly identical audio stream. Both audio streams are PCM, same bit depth, sample rate, bitrate for the audio, I'm a little surprised they sound different. Or are you impling AAC audio at 384Kbps sounds different, which of course it would.

Jeff

I think you are correct as long as you want to produce MKV or M2TS. But if you want MP4 there is no LPCM option and sound is poor. Been that way for the past two versions. I produce using AAC (only option available) at 192. Something has to have changed in PD14 and been carried forward in PD15.

If you have any other thoughts, I would love to hear them.

Rick

Quote Something has to have changed in PD14 and been carried forward in PD15.

I agree, to me it looks like the veered away from some form of bitrate control which I believed they must of used and was the discussion here: http://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/15/39468.page#post_box_203924 to a constant bitrate at PD14 and PD15. That's most likely the source of your issue and why you need to revert back to PD13 for your MP4 container audio. Should it be that way, no I wouldn't think so. If things are proper I'd think PD14 and PD15 should be the same/better quality, at the expense of larger audio files because of what appears to now be constant bitrate.

Comparing MediaInfo audio specs of the MP4 encode it does appear different. For PD13 you see the nominal bitrate of 384kb/s but the stream appears to only be 231kb/s. Also note the significantly smaller audio stream size, 368KB vs 610KB. That ratio of bitrate 384/231=1.66 agrees with the file size ratio 610/368=1.66 so I'm fairly certain this change was some form of bitrate control to constant which is the crux behind your quality observations.

Another item for CL to improve, absolutly no reason one should have to go through the process you do just to get good audio.

Jeff

Jeff -

You & I were doing similar things at a similar time on opposite sides of the Pacific. I'm not sure I understand the results. but I'll post them just the same.

Earlier, I was going to chime in & say: "But the H.264 MP4 audio options are the same in every version", but thought I'd test the actual output.

First a slideshow was built in PDR12 & audio added (forgot I was testing & got carried away with image motion). That was produced to AVC H.264 MPEG-4 1920x1080 30fps @ 20Mbps. The same project was then produced in PDR13, 14 & 15 to the same specs.

For sure, PDR14 & 15 are doing something different with the audio (& that's the bit I don't understand) than PDR13 & 12.

Cheers - Tony
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Jeff and Tony,

Thank you both for verifying what I have been hearing for the past two versions. Before I chose to upgrade to PD15, I spent hours looking at other programs and always kept coming back to PD even though this part is a pain. For my purposes, PD is almost perfect in comparison to the others. Almost.

What must be done to push this issue up the food chain with Cyberlink?

Thanks again,

Rick

This is a great forum.

Thanks to you all for confirming this issue. I was last at version 13, and expected a nice healthy leap to better quality and UI with 15. It's a shame that audio took a step backwards in 14 and 15.

I produce videos which demonstrate binaural sound, and so to have audio take a hit like this is a serious problem.

I could indeed use 13 for final rendering, especially since I do a final audio post in Nuendo. But my version 13 seems to have been uninstalled when 15 installed, and I am not sure where to get that original 13 install file from.

But ya know what's equally as saddening, is that Customer Service never replied to my message about this. I am feeling compelled to request a refund and head to Edius.

Thanks again to you all. You would be one BIG reason to stay on board.

Quote
But ya know what's equally as saddening, is that Customer Service never replied to my message about this. I am feeling compelled to request a refund and head to Edius.

Just curious ... have you tested Edius? It took a look at their website and it seems pretty pricey in comparison. Plus, PD has some other nice tools to go along with it.

That said, I have also noticed that PD15 isn't nearly as willing to use SVRT on my productions (of which basic content and structure have not changed) as PD14/13 were. I purchased a GTX1060 to bump up rendering speed and it has helped somewhat but it seems like Cyberlink is more focused on new features (360 video) than speed and issues like audio quality.

That's a shame because when I got into this several years ago, I chose PD for two reasons: speed and robustness of features in a simple interface. Last fall, I spent a lot of time testing a host of other NLE programs (except for Edius) and came to the same conclusion. It still has (to me) the most natural user interface which is why I am making the concessions I am.

But I could be swayed ...

Hello mlien,

CyberLink is now aware of your issue and have requested a sample of your video for testing, via the customer support system. Please help to provide if you can.

Cheers

PowerDirector Modeator

For customer support related issues, please contact:
- Customer service: https://membership.cyberlink.com/support/customer-services.do
- Technical support: https://membership.cyberlink.com/support/service/technical-support.do

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Quote
Just curious ... have you tested Edius? It took a look at their website and
it seems pretty pricey in comparison. Plus, PD has some other nice tools to go
along with it.

But I could be swayed ...

Edius is available as a free download, with a 30 day trial. I've heard it
runs well even on slower notebooks. I'll be testing that out.

As for the cost comparison, since I work with an instructional institute,
the educational download for Edius Pro is very reasonably priced. But I feel the
list price is reasonable if it works as advertised.

The video department of the agency I work with in Taipei, which is also the
largest marketing firm in Taiwan, uses Edius exclusively. They do very pro work
on that. I used Premiere Pro often in the past, and while it outputs great, I am
not a fan of Adobe's clinical, unfriendly interface. Edius seems much more
friendly (maybe along the lines of PD).

Besides the poor audio output in PD, there are many other things that
irritate me:
- It runs very slow on my i7 notebook
- The audio often does not synch with the video when editing (extremely
frustrating, since version 13 no change)
- A constant nag when opening the program about recovering a past
project
- The creation of custom output profiles (even though no changes were made)
after inspecting output settings, simply because I pressed "OK" instead of
"cancel" (I now have 8 custom profiles with nothing customized at all)
- The nag about merging media every time I open a new project...

But the deal breaker is the poor audio output which has worsened in version
15 (compared to 13), and also the audio synch problems when editing. Customer
Support has just replied, saying audio has actually improved since version 13. I
can't understand how they can say that. But I'll send them a packed project and
see what comes of that.

Quote Hello mlien,

CyberLink is now aware of your issue and have requested a sample of your video for testing, via the customer support system. Please help to provide if you can.

Cheers

PowerDirector Modeator

Thanks for the response. I'll be uploading soon. HOpe it's helpful.

Quote Hello mlien,

CyberLink is now aware of your issue and have requested a sample of your video for testing, via the customer support system. Please help to provide if you can.

Cheers

PowerDirector Modeator

If possible, I would like to send video samples, too. How do you do that?

Rick

Hi Rick,

Contact technical support using this link:

https://membership.cyberlink.com/support/service/technical-support.do

Once submitted, respond with the ticket number you get. We will pass it on to customer support so they respond with an FTP link where you can upload.

Cheers

PowerDirector Moderator

For customer support related issues, please contact:
- Customer service: https://membership.cyberlink.com/support/customer-services.do
- Technical support: https://membership.cyberlink.com/support/service/technical-support.do

Quote Hi Rick,

Contact technical support using this link:

https://membership.cyberlink.com/support/service/technical-support.do

Once submitted, respond with the ticket number you get. We will pass it on to customer support so they respond with an FTP link where you can upload.

Cheers

PowerDirector Moderator

Thanks, I submitted my problem with a Google Drive link to all the sample files plus a complete description of how I created everything. My Question ID is CS001690250.

Quote Hi Rick,

Contact technical support using this link:

https://membership.cyberlink.com/support/service/technical-support.do

Once submitted, respond with the ticket number you get. We will pass it on to customer support so they respond with an FTP link where you can upload.

Cheers

PowerDirector Moderator

I have not heard anything back from submitting everything to support. Can you please verify that they got my information?

Thanks

Hello,

Yes they did and I was told they responded back to you on the 14th, but you never replied. They need more than just the outputted video, i.e. the source video and audio, to assess the problem.

Please check your support ticket and respond.

Cheers

PowerDirector Moderator

For customer support related issues, please contact:
- Customer service: https://membership.cyberlink.com/support/customer-services.do
- Technical support: https://membership.cyberlink.com/support/service/technical-support.do

I am thankful to have run across this thread. I recorded a simple carol and was disappointed by the degradation of the audio in the produced video.

To be fair, my own audio is not pristine. But the problems get exaggerated in the final output and I didn't know where to turn.

I'll follow this to see if the issue gets addressed. Sure hope so! It's kind of a deal breaker for me.

The video is here. If you just listen to the last few seconds, you'll here what sounds like clipping/distortion. This is not in the source wav.

https://www.facebook.com/robert.killen/videos/10202614399517264/

<video controls="controls" width="300" height="150">
<source src="https://www.facebook.com/robert.killen/videos/10202614399517264/" />
</video>

The problem has been addressed. They are aware that audio is degraded in this version of PowerDirector, and the problem has been sent up the chain for attention. If and when it is resolved remains in question. Meanwhile, I finished the editing in PowerDirector, but the used the 30-day trial version of Edius to marry the video and audio together in an mp4 file. I just uploaded that to YouTube.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=onuVjhZ_MWs&feature=youtu.be