Quote I sent the following to Cyberlink sales. Hopefully I'm not alone feeling this way. If so, I hope others contact Cyberlink and give them a piece of their mind.

I used to upgrade my PowerDirector almost every year. I purchased lifetime licenses for PD6, PD8, PD9, PD10, PD11, PD12, PD13, PD14, and PD16. Each upgrade used to only cost about $35 to $50 during your best sales, usually around black friday. Even though the feature improvement was relatively small, and often it was just bug fixes I needed, I thought this was fair to upgrade one application.

I didn't buy an upgrade to PD17 because you didn't offer such sales. The best upgrade price I found was closer to $90. Same thing happened with PD18. Now, with PD19, my PD16 license is no longer eligible for an upgrade. The full price for PD19 is $139. If history is any indication, you won't offer any discount on the full license again.

The result is that over the last 3 years, I spent $0 in Cyberlink software, when I could have spent $100 - $160 otherwise if you offered reasonable upgrade prices for PD lifetime license each year. Please understand that I'm not going to buy a subscription license. You need to bring back discounts on lifetime licenses if you ever want to have me as a customer again.

Julien

Most companies are going to subscription models. That's unfortunately where we are right now. Think about all the Adobe users and how ticked they are...

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Most companies are going to subscription models. That's unfortunately where we are right now. Think about all the Adobe users and how ticked they are...

I'm using PD since version 14, upgraded only twice to version 16 and 18. Yesterday I took the subscription model PD365 with all the extras for a reduced price. Buying a lifetime licence (almost) every year is more expensive than paying the subscription model. I think this subscription model isn't that bad. Recware: DJI Osmo Pocket, GoproHero7Black, PanasonicFZ300/HCX909, Sony PXW-X160.
Software: Vegaspro365+Vegasaur/PowerDirector365
Hardware: i910900k,32GB,GTX2080s, 1920x1200 display
Playware: Samsung Qled QE65Q6FN, Philips 55PFL7108

I think there's a valid point here. I understand Cyberlink pushing the subscription model, but there are so many casual video editors out there like me who are only interested in purchasing the stand-alone product. I've found that the trick with Cyberlink is to always wait for the first patch before purchasing the new version of the software. I did that with PD18, and once I was happy that it was a stable program that did what I needed it to do, I then uninstalled PD17.

PD19 is different though. If you edit HD rather than 4K, it's really not worth spending $139 on. It basically tidies up the track assignments, which I can do myself in PD18 by adding additional video/audio tracks to slide the dedicated title and V/O tracks out of the field of view. It offers additional functionality with masks that I never use, and it offers the ability to change the colors of the different elements of the motion graphics, which there's a workaround for in PD18. And I'm not going to spend $80 by upgrading, because I don't think that's ever a smart thing to do.

If, after the initial sale period has passed, Cyberlink offered the above functionality as a $30 upgrade patch for PD18 users, I'd purchase it, but other than that, I'll wait for PD20 and assess what that offers.

Quote I think there's a valid point here. I understand Cyberlink pushing the subscription model, but there are so many casual video editors out there like me who are only interested in purchasing the stand-alone product. I've found that the trick with Cyberlink is to always wait for the first patch before purchasing the new version of the software. I did that with PD18, and once I was happy that it was a stable program that did what I needed it to do, I then uninstalled PD17.

PD19 is different though. If you edit HD rather than 4K, it's really not worth spending $139 on. It basically tidies up the track assignments, which I can do myself in PD18 by adding additional video/audio tracks to slide the dedicated title and V/O tracks out of the field of view. It offers additional functionality with masks that I never use, and it offers the ability to change the colors of the different elements of the motion graphics, which there's a workaround for in PD18. And I'm not going to spend $80 by upgrading, because I don't think that's ever a smart thing to do.

If, after the initial sale period has passed, Cyberlink offered the above functionality as a $30 upgrade patch for PD18 users, I'd purchase it, but other than that, I'll wait for PD20 and assess what that offers.

I'm a 3 year subscriptor to 365.
A shame to pay more to continue the sub than be a new customer. Thanks CB to reward your customer

I'm with you! I subscribe to Adobe Photoshop/Lightroom/Bridge for the cost of a cup of coffee per week and get free updates for life. If priced right, subsciptions are the best way to go for sure and I'm sure this is what PD are trying to make us do by pricing updates ridiculously high. Trouble is, for those of us who may only use PD infrequently, the subscription model is not really suitable. I guess we aren't their target market but as you say, they lose money ultimately because in the wash up we don't buy anything at all.

After buying PowerDirector18 the first project I worked on was a breeze but since then I have had so much trouble with glitches that it has become almost unusable. Hours of work undone constantly. I suspect that most of the issues are due to me not doing things properly but who wants to spend hours and hours trying to absorb a 400-odd page user manual after buying a new toy? Now when I open up PD to work on a project, it takes about 5 minutes to load up (and I'm only working with photos - not videos) and always hits a brick wall at 80% loaded. I have a good computer with 32Gb of RAM, top of the range video card, lots of drive space etc but still PD can't seem to cope.

When I produce an MP4 video, edits I have made to files don't appear on the produced DVD. I have never known such creative frustration before. I am tempted to uninstall the program and reinstall it (I bought a hard copy backup at the time) but because I have moved files and copied files here there and everywhere in an attempt to fix my problems, I am worried that all my work will be undone because I no longer know which copies of which files PD is using in my projects. Even packing my projects has no benefit.

Definitely won't be updating or subscribing at least until I can iron out the headaches I currently suffer through - and that will be a very long way away I think.

I've found the stand-alone Cyberlink products, PD17 and PD18, to be very good once they're patched. I've been using PD18 Ultimate for over a year with no issues. The subscribtion model for PD 18 seems to have been a fiasco when it was rolled out, and the rollout for PD19 seems to also have some major issues. If I was a heavy user of video editing software, the Power Director subscription offering would not be my choice.

Thanks for your feedback, appreciate it.

"Once they're patched" - not sure what this means?

Quote "Once they're patched" - not sure what this means?

In the DxDiag.txt that you posted on another thread, someone updated your PD18 with the latest update patch 2725 on your pc already. This means that it is already patched.

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In the DxDiag.txt that you posted on another thread, someone updated your PD18 with the latest update patch 2725 on your pc already. This means that it is already patched.

Hmmm, that someone must have been my computer which is set to automatically install updates I think. All good and thanks.

It could be worse.

If you buy a lifetime license and lose the install file, you lose the license & have to buy a new one. They sent me some lies about "purchasing an extended download". I don't see it. I had to open yet another ticket.

Don't buy the lifetime licenses. Buy the subscription & save yourself the headache.

Quote It could be worse.

If you buy a lifetime license and lose the install file, you lose the license & have to buy a new one. They sent me some lies about "purchasing an extended download". I don't see it. I had to open yet another ticket.

Don't buy the lifetime licenses. Buy the subscription & save yourself the headache.

Speaking just for myself, I backup all my data and programs in multiple places. I still have every installer file and key going back to PowerDirector 6 . But my most recent key is for PowerDirector 16. I have been backing up data for 34 years going back to my first PC with a 20MB hard drive and a stack a 360KB floppies. I still have all that data, and much more of course.

Anyway, I am currently facing a nasty bug in PD16 where Dual Preview has stopped working. PD crashes instantly when importing a video. The PC is unchanged for the last 6 years. Same CPU, motherboard and GPU. I can only guess with PD stopped working. Probably something in the various Windows 10 upgraddes or nVidia drivers caused PD to break. I don't know which. But even 10 year old videos are crashing it. The point is, with the lifetime license, I now have a case open with Cyberlink about this. Their engineers have to spend time supporting PD16, looking at all my crash logs. I don't know if the bug would also happen with more recent versions of PD. But certainly, if they offered reasonable upgrade terms for lifetime licenses, I would have upgraded my PD16 at least once, and probably twice. Instead, they ask for full price, so they have zero revenue to cover their sustaining expense on this 4 year-old version. That's just not very smart. Being a software engineer myself, I know companies would rather not spend money supporting old versions. I suppose the subscription model is a way for them to avoid having supporting old versions, but that only works if people buy into it. My need for PowerDirector is too occasional for me to justify the subscription. I would have had to spend $500 on lifetime licenses to upgrade each year all the way to PD20. Or about $250 for a PD365 subscription. Under the old model, I would have paid about $160 for 4 upgrades. Instead, I stuck with the old version, paid $0, and now Cyberlink is stuck with the support cost. Just silliness.