Hi Alex,

Sounds like you have a TV format problem with your clips. Generally, there are two big TV signal standards in the world...NTSC and PAL. NTSC TV signal formats are used in the U.S. and Japan while most of the rest of the world uses PAL.

To change the default setting for the clip you are using, hit the director chair icon located in the upper left hand corner. Select preferences, and then hit the general tab. You'll see two settings, one for NTSC and one for PAL.

Change this setting to match your TV format. If you are in a European country, most likely this will be PAL. If you are in the US or Japan, you'll be using NTSC.

When converting PAL to NTSC, the signal will always be of less quality as the PAL system offers more resolution then NTSC.

Whatever clips you are using, whether they be PAL or NTSC, the format selection in PD7 must match your clip formats.

Hope this helps.

Hi Alex,

Just click OK, an AVI file could be in many different formats and all PowerDirector is doing is converting your video to your prefered format (PAL/NTSC).

The video quality once placed in the timeline and viewed in the preview screen does degrade, you can change the preview quality by clicking on the third button from the right under the preview screen and selecting high, normal or low.

Media viewer will show you the correct quality of your clip

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

Frank beat me to it 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

Thank you so much! I was so worried I wasn't going to be able to use it.

Quote: Frank beat me to it

Sorry mate. At least we both had the same answer.

Hi, new to program and have same error message as above. Live in europe so camcorder set to record PAL. drag clips onto timeline and get error. if click OK and then play clip in timeline even though preview selected as best quality clip still worse than original. Selected clip in timeline and played in media viewer and again clip quality less as the program had done what it warns - ie quality will be degraded. have set camcorder to ntsc, imported file and dragged to timeline no problem even when in prefs still had pal! Have tried camcorder in both pal and ntsc and program in both pal and ntsc and always get error on pal file from camcorder in program set on pal when dragging to timeline. Am using win 7, have final version on order for next week, and files open fine in win 7 live movie maker.

Any ideas guys? as director seems a fun program compared to win which i have used til now. Happy to supply any more info to beat this problem which seems to app+ear quite a lot in the forums..

Pete