Hi

What is the fps and frame size of your AVCHD clips??

Dave

Panasonic & Canon 1920x1080i50.

Regards

Overall, it seems like an okay upgrade. It downloaded and installed fine, and ran very nicely. I did a couple of quick edits, and found the reverse function was neat, but could be a little better. I did have some trouble with a "speaking" clip that ran in reverse, but did not produce any sound when running in reverse. Also, the trial does not come with a complete library of effects, PIP's and the new particle templates. I do like the dual screen feature, though.

David David Cohen
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It's been a couple of years since I posted here!

Just poking my head round the door to say that having not been hugely impressed with PowerDirector last time I tried it, this time I'm reaching for my wallet.

Chief thing is the way it handles AVCHD material as effortlessly as can be (on a Quad Core PC a couple of years old). Significantly lower CPU usage than any of the other NLE's on the PC (PE7, Studio 12.1, Nero 9, etc) and it handles 1080 and 720 footage from my recently purchased Panasonic GH1 DSLR hybrid, and my Panasonic SD5. Even picture in picture plays smoothly.

Smart rendering doesn't seem to work with stuff from the GH1 but I'm not that fussed - that used to be my No.1 requirement but in the last year I've "got real" and I'm not sure that once-holy-grail is really worth pursuing. I can't see anything amiss in PD8's AVCHD DVD renders, and they happen pretty quickly.

A couple of black marks for a couple of non-repeatable crashes (one when the system was idle and I was out of the room!) but sometimes my PC seems to need to get used to running a program before it stabilises. Or maybe I'm optimistic. But I've been trying in the last hour or so to "break it" and can't.

Nice one!

I agree with pjc - don't try (or buy) PD8 if you've got AVCHD content. It crashed on my first attempt to convert a CANON AVCHD 1920x1080 60i file of 2 minutes to something else - I tried MPEG-2 first. I then tried to convert to AVCHD at 720x480 and it managed that without a crash, but the picture quality in the output file is appaling. I know of freeware that does a better job and without crashing. So I've uninstalled PD8 and since it had insisted on uninstalling PD7, I'll just continue my life without either of them .. sorry about having wasted money on PD7 in the first place and then wasting bandwidth to download the trial in the hope of getting something out of it ...

And don't tell me it's my PC - it has at least half a dozen other programs working happily and in perfect harmony with the exact same file(s)

And don't think of asking "Technical Support" to fix it - they'll tell you to uninstall everything else and reboot in save mode before running PD8 Intel Core2Duo E8400, Nvidia 8800GTS 512MB, 4 GB RAM, Windows XP 32 Bit, Multiple HD 2TB capacity

I agree with pjc - don't try (or buy) PD8 if you've got AVCHD content.

Oh come on - you're saying "it doesn't work for me, therefore it won't work for anyone" - which is obviously nonsense.

Here it converts a timeline mix of 1080 and 720 AVCHD footage to Blu Ray MPEG2 in real time (much faster than other apps) and with first class quality - in my view it's a breakthrough in AVCHD editing and converting technology and any AVCHD user should try it to see whether it works as well for them as it does for me. If so, I'd expect them to be extremely pleased.

First impressions for me!

Pleased to see

Dual display; though not something I had ever thought of needing; now it's there great to be able to review on a larger screen (as a laptop user being able to plug a larger spare monitor in for preview is great!)

DVD menu structure - return to menu after playing title; multiple projects on one disc etc. More sophisticated disc menus

Copy & paste timeline - great timesaver!!

Extra pip & audio tracks; had started to find situations where PD7 was limited in this area

Custom slide shows; though would have been nice to see more options; great to be able to control what happens more (anyone tried the 3D show variations on PD8 - from SMWOV Extras?; or do they only work on PD7?)

Definable screen / work area - never worked in PD7!

Power tools - reverse & crop video should be great for added creativity

Sure there will be other advantages to find as work way through the program!

A few crashes so far; especially with the disc module (see separate post) but just in the process of defrag / clean etc to see if that helps

Overall; impressed and worth the up grade; will see how we go over the next few weeks!


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Quote:

I agree with pjc - don't try (or buy) PD8 if you've got AVCHD content.

Oh come on - you're saying "it doesn't work for me, therefore it won't work for anyone" - which is obviously nonsense.

This is a well documented issue, reported more than ONE YEAR ago for numerous users and never resolved by cyberlink.

PowerDirector is a wonderful program if you are NOT editing/rendering AVCHD.

HOWEVER, please don't waste your time with this program if you are working with AVCHD. This is probably the worst software to work with this kind of media.

It's a shame they never fixed AVCHD rendering/SVRT in PD7, but it's a business suicide that they didn't implement/fix it in PD8.

Nice to see that pjc is still sharing his wisdom in this forum.

ONE MORE THING!

It's a shame that a thread with VITAL information like this, is misteriously and conveniently relegated to secondary pages, even when it has the latest post in the whole forum.

there's no valid excuse for this kind of behaviour!

The Moderator should make this thread a sticky.

Thanks

HOWEVER, please don't waste your time with this program if you are working with AVCHD. This is probably the worst software to work with this kind of media.

I'd rate it as much better than Premiere Elements, Studio 12.1, Nero 9, and Magix for AVCHD work. Timeline performance is so good that there's no prerender or conversion issues and render quality is absolutely fine (I use the same files for testing all products so I'm very familiar with looking for any degradation).

My PC and AVCHD files loves it, yours doesn't - funny things, computers.


However, the odd way that topics are not listed in date-of-last-post order here is a bit irritating indeed.

And the upgrade of the Cyberlink order system to co-incide with the launch of the new version of PowerDirector seems very badly timed - I hope one day to be able to download the ordered software...

Quote: I'd rate it as much better than Premiere Elements, Studio 12.1, Nero 9, and Magix for AVCHD work. Timeline performance is so good that there's no prerender or conversion issues and render quality is absolutely fine (I use the same files for testing all products so I'm very familiar with looking for any degradation).

My PC and AVCHD files loves it, yours doesn't - funny things, computers.

I agree with you that PD has better interface than those programs, but at the same time the AVCHD render quality of any of them is far superior to PowerDirector. Everything good about PD is absolutely worthless when the final video quality is garbage. There are HUNDREDS of posts about this issue, even Cyberlink recognize it. Unfortunately they did nothing about it.

All this is unrelated to your computer/hardware configuration. It is a FACT that is a PowerDirector issue. The only funny thing is that you cannot see it.

at the same time the AVCHD render quality of any of them is far superior to PowerDirector.

In what respect? Colour, artifacts, movement, definition? What should I be looking for? I see nothing amiss.

quick question: Are JVC TOD files AVCHD?

Quote: In what respect? Colour, artifacts, movement, definition? What should I be looking for? I see nothing amiss.

Peter, please check the following thread:

http://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/5480.page

What this thread is mostly about is PD introducing blocking and compression artifact when rendering AVCHD videos

This a really good comparison posted by pjc

http://www.4shared.com/file/87734087/c4c265da/Comparison.html

I've just spent a couple of hours comparing a PD8 render to AVCHD DVD and a render of the same material using competitive product "X" - I was able to go through them on 22" monitors side by side, checking individual corresponding frames - and I could see no material difference between them. In particular I was looking at textured and patterned areas, diagonals, points of fine detail, foliage, moving water, anything likely to cause the AVCHD codecs some difficulty.

I then did the same with a shorter comparison against the original clips in the two monitors side by side. Then I compared a single frame grab from the original and the PD8 render on the same monitor, to be quite sure differences in the monitors were not covering anything up.

Now none of this would be relevant unless I stated the source and bitrate of the footage - it was from a Panasonic GH1 in both 1080 and 720 resolutions, at an average bit rate of 17.

Maybe with higher bitrate material problems arise - I don't have any to test. But with my source material, fortunately, I'd say that PD8's AVCHD rendering is first class.

I could upload the captured pair of frames if anyone is that interested.