Cyberlink PowerDirector 13 Ultimate

Perhaps I don't use enough of the features as its OK but not that different to previous versions.

This is a great program. I was able to build a professional-looking video for work after only a couple of hours of learning it. I've used similar programs that cost much more and this one was more powerful and faster than any of the other programs. It's good for any level of user from beginners to intermediate professionals.

Amateurish, and hard to use. Want to create a vide with 1:1 aspect ration? Sorry, you are forced to choose either 4:3 or 16:9. Want to free-form crop a video? Sorry, you forced to crop within prescribe aspect ratios. Worse, the bounding box jumps by what seems like 10 or 20 pixels. No fine-grain cropping for you. Everything is hard to use. Producing a video means constant entering of the output name; there's not even any smart naming based on the project name. No screen capture either. If you want to make cookie-cutter videos with cheesy effects this might be good, but then you can probably do the same with less expensive software. I made a big mistake with this. Next time I'll do more research to see if something named "ultimate" has important basic features.

Takes a little while to get use to but I like it (noob). I'm going to try other ones to see if I can edit faster though

I have really liked this product, it has been very easy to use and figure out on my own. I have enjoyed making videos and the editing features are awesome!!!

I may someday change my mind, but right now I am horribly frustrated with this software, and had I known how it worked (or should I say, doesn't) for editing multi-camera, I would have gone with something else. This has a horribly frustrating list of steps you have to do accomplish something as simple as having video from 2 camera angles and switching back and forth between them. I have finally done enough reading and watching tutorials that (I think) I understand, and I am now totally "how the heck does this software get high marks for intuitive usability?" Basically you have to get really good with their cut/paste feature, because while you can indeed import multiple video tracks, you can't actually switch between them as far as I can tell from my experiments (and from my reading, they say that this is basically how it works). So imagine my joy when I found that while I could: a) Import multiple video and audio tracks b) See them all laid out nicely on a timeline c) Have PowerDirectory use the audio to synchronize all the tracks perfectly I can not: d) switch between tracks. No, to make it work, I have to visualize my tracks as a stack of tracks that I am looking up at from he bottom, the highest number of which will always be the one that goes to the final output, and then cut out little chunks of each layer until I get down to the one I want, so that there are no other tracks running a the same time as the one I want to see. If you read all that and thought "what the... huh?", that's exactly what I'm thinking as I read the tutorials and forum help on the subject for editing multi-cam in PD. How in the world can it not be do-able to just switch back and forth between tracks like any other normal audio/video editor software I've ever used (and I've used more than a few)? Update: I finally figured out how to use the clunky "multi-cam designer" plugin (really, PD, you had to write a plugin to do an A/B(C/D) roll edit? That should be native functionality!), I thought I was going to get somewhere. But after getting my video clips edited up and back in the timeline, I discover that if I put a transition between any of the newly created clips, it un-sync's the video and audio. Really PD? On what planet would anyone ever want their audio and video unsync'd when they were adding transitions? And really? There is no way around this that I can find. If I could go back and give this 0 stars, I would. It was also dead on arrival for working with Windows 7 x64, and I had to download an update and patch it to make it work in the 1st place. In fairness, they did make it easy to download the patch, but come on, really? PD13 is not that ancient, how can it not work out of the box with Win 7 x64, which is getting pretty old now... After all the good press I've read about PD, I am at this point really disappointed.

After downloading the trial version, suggest you do the same, I also downloaded Sony Movie 13. As you are aware these companies have stopped including operating manuals. I remember DOS 6 as big as the bible. CyberLink I felt is superior to Sony for ease of editing. I have some Mini DV tapes that I duplicated into digital via Roxio, I didn't care to be a Hollywood producer or cinematographer just home videos that are important to just my family and I. I went ahead and edited a 45 minute DV and wanted to burn it so I could see what the end product after editing and titles would look like. The program got to 20% authorizing and just stuck there. It took 10 minutes to get to 20 and another 10 went by and didn't budge, so I tried it two more times and same results. So being something less then a rocket scientist, I figured Sony may have a lock until you purchase, I can understand that, but could not find and documentation. I sent a note to Amazon customer service, to see if they know, no response. While looking at other editing software I saw Adobe Premier Elements, so I downloaded their free trial. When editing there is a strip that runs across the entire video, so if you were to make a copy that would be on the video, like the old Copy stamps we put across the face of wedding photos when digital first came in. So I am OK with that I understand. I played with Adobe Premier Elements 13 and loved it. I have used Photoshop 7 in the past so I understand what many of the icons are for. Also I feel the desktop is superior to any I've seen. It does cost $15 more then these programs, but over a few years, what is that. I don't want to spend all my hours editing, I rather take the pictures and Videos right the first time. I guess that's because I am out of the film era where we had to take quality all the time, now digital just shoot a lot and edit on the back end, what a waste of time. Have fun on your quest, and thanks to all who put their 2 cents in, I know it helps me in making a decision.

I've been practicing with this for a week and still have only scratched the surface of what it can do. It is very capable and works well on my PC, which is only moderately powerful. My only complaint is that some of the controls aren't as intuitive as I'd like, but each day it gets easier. I shared my first vid made on it on YouTube and got lots of compliments!

Very Good

Not very intuitive. Steep learning curve.

Bought this to replace Roxio Media Creator 2012 Pro which stopped working after installing Windows 10. Power director is easy to use and so far after 3 weeks, no glitches on Window 10.

Excellent!

First product of this type I have ever used so nothing to compare it to. Works as expected. No speed issues on i7 4900 series cpu with 16gb of memory. It will need a strong processor to handle large video files in a reasonable amount of time. Selecting the output file type is a little cumbersome and somewhat of a guessing game for a newbie like myself but slowly I am figuring it out