Do you know we are not Cyberlink, just volunteers?
That's not to say everything is perfect, and you do have some valid points.
HP Envy Phoenix/4thGen i7-4770(4@3.4GHz~turbo>3.9)
Nvidia GTX 960(4GB)/16GB DDR3/
Canon Vixia HV30/HF-M40/HF-M41/HF-G20/Olympus E-PL5.
Tape capture using 6 VCR, TBC-1000, Elite BVP4+, Sony D8 camcorder with TBC.
https://www.facebook.com/BarryAFTT

Quote: I'm just clicking through my recently purchased (and eagerly awaited) PD 13 and I am truly disappointed. Now we have a basically black surface with a black vertical clip alignment line which is barely visible - Way to go, Cyberlink! WHO PROGRAMS SUCH CRAP?

Still no really professional looking "Breaking News" title (an absolutely basic feature in 2014 IMHO). Is there even a way to loop the small text at the bottom? it just scrolls to the right and is gone!!?

There's for example still a special "Basketball" title with two team names and a ball and basket between them. WHY?? Why no football? Why isn't it customizable? Who needs this? For all those countless basketball game home movies out there?

The DVD creator is still the same unusable mess from PD 12.

The end title scroll (also an absolutely basic feature!) STILL lags for many many seconds and even crashed the program!!! This is simply inexcusable, sorry.

Apart from some special 4K resolutions and other minor stuff: What is really the difference between PD 12 and 13? I paid 80 EURO for it and will ask for a refund. I'm going to stick to PD 12 and even PD 11, which is still the best so far, IMHO (plus "DVD Styler" freeware program for creating perfectly nice and simple menus and DVDs).


Dear Cyberlink team, if you want to keep me as a loyal customer who is with you since PD 8, please make PD 14 SUBSTANTIALLY better or you'll never see any money from me again, sorry to say that.

Your feedback comments have been forwarded to CyberLink. Thank you for posting them on the forum.
Dafydd

Not sure how not having a specific title you require is Cyberlink's fault. Ever since I have been using PD its been easy enough to customize my own titles or find one from the hundreds available in DZ.

No Football title?

Not sure if you mean American or European football but either way there are tons of them in the DZ to use.

The "Ending Credit Scrolls" work perfectly fine for me so you might want to look at your own setup for the problem.

Finally, if you can't see the difference between PD12 and PD13 you really can't be looking too hard.

HighRise - the truth is, that most of the content packs (as holiday, weddings, etc.) are utter crap. Who would use so 80ties looking amateur cartoonish looks anyway?

Also - as for modern transitions, all you imo need is clean cut, fade and maybe blur/glow, and that's it.

There are things I like about PD - particles room, effects, transitions - simply a customisable stuff. But there are things I hated - e.g. working with text is a nightmare with PD12! Well, maybe I am too much in media animation stuff, but I wonder, if anyone from Cyberlink ever heard about products like Scala designer. Gee, I can produce animations much easier even in PowerPoint.

I can understand, that Cyberlink is coming from a video side, not an animation one, but I wonder what is their Create and Play slogan all about then.

What I absolutly hate though, is that you can't influence things like slideshow - no ability to tweak the templates, set the duration time. I would really welcomed, if it would generate real timeline content, not just one content block with zero ability to further tweak it.

And as for so called motion tracking - it lives in terms of Color Director. Is there finally the ability to use ANY effect on the selection, not just color grading stuff? E.g. a blur?

I myself am planning to give PD13 a try, because there seems to be some improvement in the text/titling area, but I need to form full paragraphs, not just simple words, so I will see, if upgrading would make my life easier. Other than that, I expect my other above mentioned concerns most probably not being adressed.

I am starting to wonder, what in fact is "ground breaking" about the recent release ...

There is a new title plugin from NewBlue. although it's a dated version, it looks very interesting, I can't wait it give it a try, but it will have to wait a week or 2 until I get my installation and removals of earlier PD done correctly. Sigh. HP Envy Phoenix/4thGen i7-4770(4@3.4GHz~turbo>3.9)
Nvidia GTX 960(4GB)/16GB DDR3/
Canon Vixia HV30/HF-M40/HF-M41/HF-G20/Olympus E-PL5.
Tape capture using 6 VCR, TBC-1000, Elite BVP4+, Sony D8 camcorder with TBC.
https://www.facebook.com/BarryAFTT

Well, plug-in - how does it work? Does it open new dialog box to configure? I don't want plugins, I want native stuff to work in a better way.

E.g. even ordinary office PowerPoint let's you precisely align objects, suggest you the guide-lines and spacing, so it allows you to keep typography/metrics aligned. Working with text in PD is not optimal.

I started to create following short video advertisement in PD - gave up and did it in PowerPoint in under 10 minutes. Then I added the music in PD.

http://studio.2zone.cz/Galerie/Deti/i-TKVZz4h/A

Looking into PD character presets - there is no single preset I would ever use - ever! Italic? WTF? Two color mix and hilarious outlines? WTF? Zero examples of an up-to date simple and clean design guidelines of nowadays.

Cyberlink should really employ some designer, who is able to follow today's design standards ...

pekr,

Although I don't disagree with some of your points, I believe we have to remember CyberLink is directing their
software(s) to the consumer market mainly. For years, there have been questions and discussions on
this forum whether there could/should be a professional edition or not.
Well, it seems CyberLink does not want to go there.

Then there's the matter of learning curve(s). CL trusts their templates will make editing easy and quick,
and I suppose that is the fact.
A problem will arise when the consumer editor has worked through the templates and wants to move
further, perhaps the first step from there is trying to tweak the templates a bit.
And- actually you can some of them, if only in a "light" way.
If you have not already watched how some of the slideshow templates can be altered, go here:

http://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/30026.page#164557

and scroll trough "Slideshows".

Nina


Just something.
https://www.petitpoisvideo.com

Nina - Cyberlink is responsible for the content ppl produce. The cartoonish look of most of PiP objects as well as suggested font typefaces, looks like being stuck in 80ties and they SHOULD avoid not letting ppl to produce ugly videos.

PD Suite is capable SW for what I need - it just does not allow you to easily create in today's design standards, without the need to start over. I thought, that Director zone would provide some help here, but most of the stuff there is free and non professional (for my tastes).

So - what I would suggest to Cyberlink is to prepare Content packs, which could cost some money, but would be more profesionally designed ...

Update: Actually thinking about the topic, and working with photos - it is pretty common and even a good business, to produce custom presets packs. We buy ones for LightRoom, Photoshop, onOne Perfect Photo suite.

I've noted a number of "Senior Contributors" on the forums throughout the few years I've been here. Some have PD versions that go way, way back. Some seniors and newbies have continually posted their wish lists (for the next version) and/or bug reports on a current version. It makes for good reading and more often than not, a common voice representing many of us that don't post too often.

Which brings me to this question, especially in light of the new PD13: Who does the Beta Testing for pending PD releases?

One would think that the pre-release version(s) would be put in the hands of, oh, let me think here, Senior Contributors? After all, they have the "street creds" in actually editing with PD.

Perhaps the current Beta Testing is to determine if (simply put) the software is bug & crash proof, period -- not so much attention to the bells, whistles, and gee whiz stuff, or the functionality of it in the real world.

So, pardon me if I missed something and, in fact, some of you are actual Beta Testers. Once in awhile I see that our comments have been forwarded to CyberLink. Once in awhile I'd enjoy reading a response from CyberLink staff.

Brad53,

Oh my.......you are posting a crucial question.
As far as I know, sadly - there has been no Beta testing for #13.

Yes, one would think it a good idea to use the long time PD users (senior contributors)
and the MVP's to do the testing. It has not happened, and why - "we" don't know.
The experiences from #12 and this forum may seem like beta testing, I'm afraid.
With all the different set ups of computers, devices, clouds and what not -
to a light-tech person like me it would seem like a good - the best - idea.


Just something.
https://www.petitpoisvideo.com

Thank you all for your feedback and I have passed on the data to CyberLink.
Dafydd

Seriously, PD13 is a bit of a damp squib IMO.

There is STILL no provision in multi cam designer to put a synch marker on imported audio.

Also in Multi cam designer there is no "view entire movie" type feature as there is on the main timeline. So when you zoom in in MCD, you have to zoom back out manually.

The menu creator for the Disk creation is STILL the same piece of lame rubbish with just a few new bells and whistles.

I haven't tried the multi cam on the timeline feature yet, but according to the publicity, the clips can only be auto synched by their audio content.

I tried the "new stabiliser" feature on a 25 second clip. It warns that it is processor intensive and suggests using the "Render to preview" feature. Good luck with that! I have a 64bit system and 128Gbytes of RAM and it took 30 MINUTES to render a 25 second clip to preview!!!!! NOT good enough!

I don't know what's happening with the PD development team, but this release looks like a cosmetic upgrade and there are a lot of half-baked features in the program that have been crying out to be fixed since I started using PD with V8, like the disk menu designer. I'm seriously considering changing to anothe NLE product. Scott Hendry
www.scotthendry.com
https://www.youtube.com/user/TheCscotthendry

Quote: HighRise - the truth is, that most of the content packs (as holiday, weddings, etc.) are utter crap. Who would use so 80ties looking amateur cartoonish looks anyway?

Also - as for modern transitions, all you imo need is clean cut, fade and maybe blur/glow, and that's it.

...

What I absolutly hate though, is that you can't influence things like slideshow - no ability to tweak the templates, set the duration time. I would really welcomed, if it would generate real timeline content, not just one content block with zero ability to further tweak it.

...

I completely agree. I'm reluctant to give PD13 a try just to see if there are any improvements in rendering speed, but I haven't seen any release notes on that point.

The Title Designer and it's kludgy text editing are horrendous. I often find myself wanting to jump to a paint type program and create static text slides because PD's text editing takes so much effort for even the simplest tasks.

Thank you, so I'm not the only one. Gives me some comfort.

Dear Cyberlink team, I think you realize there are many people who really like your product because PD COULD be a great software, with a little need for improvement, and this has nothing to do IMHO with a dichotomy between "amateur" / "consumer" and "professional" users.

Who is the target group for PD? I'm sure you've heard of the (not-so) new kid in town, the "prosumer", and I very much think this is the road you have to follow. People who have (probably) a little more money for equipment and the ambition to produce good, quasi-professional looking content. THIS IS 2014, remember? Everywhere you look around, on any screen nowadays, there is content with a degree of professionalism and (at least technical) sophistication that could only have been dreamed of 20 or 30 years ago. And everybody wants to be able to produce that content!

Have you wondered how it fits together that you have all those fancy childlike and/or cheesy transitions and titles and at the same time you advertise your new product PD 13 as boasting the newest 4K resolutions and stuff? The whole advertising "style" on the Cyberlink homepage doesn't quite match the actual product.

pekr 's comments are my thoughts exactly. YOU, Cyberlink, you set the tracks and standards of what content is produced by thousands or millions of users out there. So maybe 13 is your unlucky number and 14 will be the opposite.

Have a look at "DVD Styler" for example and you will immediately see what an easy and cool DVD creating program must look like. I don't think anybody needs 10 new Christmas DVD intros every year with flying Santas etc.

And please: In the slideshow creator, it's apparently not possible in the "motion" mode (THE main mode for slideshows IMHO) to set the full picture as a standard starting rectangle frame. It is EXTREMELY tiresome that PD gives me some random start frame for every slide so I have to change EVERY SLIDE - and the worst thing is, in some cases it is NOT POSSIBLE to set the frame to full, don't ask me why, but I can't pull that rectangle over my entire 16:9 slide sometimes, there's always some part missing. Doing that with 200 or 300 slides is a true nightmare. And after it's finished, as pekr said, I CAN'T CHANGE ANYTHING anymore. So if I should decide to throw out one slide or have an accidental duplicate one I overlooked then everything is lost and I have to start over again.

As I said, PD could be so incredibly much better and it would really take not that much, IMHO. Come on, Cyberlink, you can do it! Why not look to the sides, collect the best features of all available products and combine it into PD 14?!

This thread is getting longer.

What you, pekr and Alessandro de Sica, are posting- have been posted many times before
during the past 4-5 years, but that doesn’t mean your comments are less important / valid.

From the marketing CL has chosen, it may seem the company’s intention is to target all “groups”
of editors. To do that in one package is perhaps impossible (?). In the area of multimedia software,
the competition is huge between companies. To “keep up” must be a frantic race.

A lot of non-professional editors choose to stick with an NLE for a few years to learn more
complex editing, and when the time is right and there’s money to spend- they might do an
upgrade to newer version. Also, youth today have been born into the multimedia world, learning
computing almost before learning the oral language.
These “kids” learn the more complex stuff faster than I make dinner.
They study Web-design, Animation, Photography, Video – and making music digitally
from the age of 17. By 25, they are the “kids” who produce a lot of what we see around us.

So you are right about these times we live in; all around we see
professional/semi-professional stuff displayed, and a lot of people do not want to spend the
amount of time learning complex editing- but want quick-and-easy solutions.

CyberLink has been the provider for quick and easy editing – in the segment between MovieMaker
and Apr /FC somewhere. If you visit DirectorZone, you see what hundreds of people produce with
CL’s softwares. The main thing for buyers of CL’s products must be that they (the products) function as promised
and advertised, meaning less bugs/malfunctions.

But you are right; maybe the time has come for CL to rebuild PowerDirector from a startpoint,
throwing out stuff and replace stuff. Without having the competence to estimate, my guess is
that would mean more expensive products – which would mean for the company to take risks?

To add a personal note;
PowerDirector should be a video editor, full stop.
Taking out the slideshow- and theme things would perhaps make the programming “easier”, or
at least make the editor work more smoothly in the keyframing etc.
It’s perfectly possible to build slideshows manually, or getting “help” from more
pro slideshow only programs.



Just something.
https://www.petitpoisvideo.com

Excuses don't help to build a better product, never :

I am kind of fluent in the world of digital photography. Lightroom pushed me for so long into the external plugin territory (because of its rather mediocre editing capabilities), that with each new release of onOne plugin SW, I have less and less reasons to use LR at all, especially as onOne now works also stand alone. That's just an example from the world of digital photography.

So if you want ppl to start using different tools, go ahead. I am a programmer and system architect (my main job) and I have an idea what can or can't be done by CL. But honestly, what I can see is mostly an inability to keep up with trends. Let's forget the slideshows for now - what I am mostly talking about is default content look, for e.g. font presets - if anyone is using PD's offered font presets, I am sorry for his/her customers, really. And if even PowerPoint office can make work with text much easier, something is really wrong here.

So - my personal note:

As I stated in the past, if slideshows don't get decomposition to the timeline or are not easily tweakable, I said, I will not upgrade. But - there is a chance for me - it seems that there is "some" improvement in the text area, as well as NewBlueFX plugin, so I will investigate and maybe give myself a Christmass present ... but surely without the cartoonish flying santa :

Best regards,
Petr

Just a few comments:

Beta testing seems to be dead. There may not be any outside Beta testing. Another video editing program dropped Beta testing 2 years ago. I have a friend that did Beta testing for MS for over 9 years. He is no longer on their Beta testing list.

There are several commenters abovwe that mistake this forum as a Cyberlink tech/ design source of information. That is only true if one of the moderators forwards the information to one of those Cyberlink groups.

There are a couple of commenters who say that this program is all they need but then go on to say that functionality should be added or something changed (not simple improvements). I challenge those to find another prosumer software that has more and better features. Has anyone tried using some of the Apple programs to see if they are better for what you are doing?

Sorry if I insulted anyone or stepped on some toes. I have used at least 5 other NLE program; not counting an Apple program. I stick with this one.

It is OK to make suggestions and criticize but personal attacks ( even to the design groups) should not be tolerated. People who post here rather than contact Cyberlink directly are just not motivated enough to get to the right people.

.
.
BoilerPlate: To posters who ask for help -- it is nice to thank the volunteers who try to answer your questions !
Anything I post unless stated with a reference is my personal opinion.

stevek,

As I understand it, the discussion is about the features themselves- and not
more features.

Also, I do think some people from CL pop in and read threads on the forum even if they
are not forewarded by the moderator. I do think they are interested in constructive
discussions and adequate feedback.

Just something.
https://www.petitpoisvideo.com

Stevek,

what I actually don't understand is, why ppl tend to be defensive in a way - we might know, that something is not optimal, but that's just it, and if you don't like it, go and use another SW option.

Well, I have read many reviews and gave try to some of SW options, and the reason why I ended up using PD is, that I kind of like it, and it is a good fit for the money. I don't use Mac as well as I am not going to go for more profi soft (e.g. Premiere), as I don't have money for that nor do I pirate the SW.

But - that does not mean, that CL could not eventually improve the product. Some of feature requests/wishes are here for many versions already. So why not embrace them? Or why not provide a scripting capability, so that community could tweak/automate some features, etc.? E.g. Adorage comes from the Amiga land, where each app had a scripting capability.

As for the purpose of the Forum - who said, that CL does not monitor the situation here? I am on many forums, and apart from those, which are built by the community, the one being directly linked from CL website, carrying even their domain name - I would really expect, is under the CL radar.

Well, this discussion might be endless, so time to stop for me here. The main point I tried to express was, opening up some abilities and/or providing more profesionally looking content. My suggestion was to eventually produce those as a paid content pack - I would buy such a set. DZ just does not cut it for me, quality wise.

My post is not meant being offensive, so sorry if I am pushing too hard for some ideas ...

Petr