I'm a total newbie with PowerDirector and to video editing in general. I started off with Corel's VisualStudio Ultimate X7 and just returned it for a refund (less than 30 days) because it didn't really have any features for multi-camera editing. The only thing I had been impressed with about the Corel product was their user-to-user forum, which I found very helpful. I'm hoping this one will be at least as good and with any luck, even more so.

Anyway, my first questions are about organization of projects and components. I see that PD uses Import, Export and AutoSave directories. I don't want anything saved on my drive C: but prefer to have things on D:. And I really would like to keep everything about one project together in one place. I thought that by making a directory for a particular project, putting my raw video files there and creating a project and saving it there would be all I need, but apparently not. Even though my project file and videos were in one directory, I found that in the Export directory PD created .MPG clips (my original videos were .MP3's), plus subdirectories for Preview Cache Files and ShadowEditFiles.

Is there anything I can change to have everything related to a project just in one place?

Also, when I start a new project, there are already some files in the media list which have nothing to do with my project. They're probably just demo/sample files that were included. How come when I start a new project I don't have a "clean slate"?

Thanks very much for any help...