Hello Fred,
It's probably unanimous that most of us have done the cursing at our machines, lol. I'd like to say I'm a new PD8 user myself and happy to be aboard, so please don't mistake my post as a hostile or snide attack against this program specifically. I am though indeed an advocate for the consumer first and foremost, as they are generally easy prey when it comes to marketing and promising a sanctuary of solutions when courting new customers.
Last year I was on a mission to find an editing program in the garden of eden of video apps in the $100 arena. After careful investigation I settled on Adobe Premiere Elements 4. It was well within the ability of my computer's specs and I only required SD video, so no unusually high resources were required I couldn't supply. I relied on reviews and only headed to their forum after my commitment. Without belaboring its' issues and shortcomings, I was not impressed with its' speed when initializing or loading video files. It was long in rendering and didn't recognize several important VST plug-ins for audio that I had specifically intended to use it for. The stabalizer function was a joke as well. These were important issues for me and the forum was full of complaints from many users who were far more adept than me and had been using previous versions. Within 3 weeks they introduced PE7 with no upgrade break for those like myself that only recently purchased it (I didn't get my $20 rebate either and to this day have never been explained why). Many users were upset because they introduced a new version without resolving PE4's well-known and acknowledged problems. A trip to the forum will show that now there's PE8 and another batch of disolutioned PE7 users with the same gripes for that release. It's notorious that companies move to the next release and abandon whatever precedes it. There should be a law that companies cannot release a major revision until the current one's
acknowledged bug list is resloved. You can see the pattern by looking at other competitor's who launch a new version of their software and it's about keeping up appearances and adding new features that will inevitably work poorly to maintain a market position while consumers take the hit. Oddly, these frustrated customers must feel powerless because they do the upgrade only to find a marginal improvement over what they had. I went to Magix Movie Edit 15 Plus, and I must say it is truly comprehensive, but very busy and hardly streamlined. That's not a fault, just a matter of taste. My goal is to get in and get out. Life is short and there's alot to do rather than fuss around to make videos. I'm generally pleased with it but I believe PD8 is better suited for me. I've worked in the timeline and have put together some mock videos and it appears to be intuitive and user-friendly. I've yet to explore all capabilities or take a video to completion. I was somewhat disappointed that a build of 2013 was released but only briefly mentioned and not up for all users to update to (EDIT: see Daffyd's response below...thank you for that!)
As far as the reviews, they're hardly objective or tell you how well the product does what it says on the tin. They're feature reviews for the most part. Trials are good in concept, and the best way to go if you have time to investigate all the facets before the clock runs out. As you can see, I'm somewhat a defensive consumer and though I'm not adversarial by nature, I've become a product of exactly what I've been referring to, as many of us have been. Here's a link to a review that shares some of my sentiments (and they like PowerDirector)
http://changelog.complete.org/archives/901-review-video-editing-software
All I'm saying is shop smart and be true to yourself. That's what
they're doing
This message was edited 11 times. Last update was at Sep 30. 2009 15:50
![[Post New]](/forum/templates/default/images/doc.gif)
Sep 10, 2009 19:11
![[Avatar]](/forum/templates/default/images/avatar.jpg){kind=avatar}
Senior Contributor
Joined: Aug 26, 2006 08:20
Messages: 11973
Offline
