Power Director 3 review:2 stars (Athlon Unsupported?) - I'm sure all of the wonderful features of PowerDirector are extolled in other reviews, so I need not get into them. I will say this: Power Director is a powerful piece of software with many good ideas, but the level of "power" given to the home-movie "director" seems a bit of a paradox at times. Case in point: I want to zoom in on a picture for a slide show, but I can't set the zoom point-- it can only zoom to center. But hey, at least I can do PiP and move that around the screen (albeit only in preset configurations like top-left to right, etc.)
The Problem***
After spending about a month on correspondence with tech support (who are quite nice by the way), I still have the same issue: when VCDs, DVDs, and even SVCDs are created, they are created with randomly appearing screen artifacts (purple and green squares). They appear whenever there's action going on, or during a transition, or when text is (dis)appearing. HOWEVER, when I generate an AVI file, this doesn't happen! I get a crisp clean file. I'm not sure exactly why this is, but tech support is telling me to send them an image of my installation CD and a copy of my DxDiag.txt output from directX diagnostics. After all this, they still aren't aware of any problems with Athlon processors (they say) yet they can't figure out the problem.
I know that Avid FreeDV has issues with Athlon processors, which is why I can't use that product (trying to save money one way, get bitten another way). So I figured Power Director might have issues with the same. Apparently they do not. I beg to differ.
If you have an Athlon processor, beware. That's the only reason why I have to give this product 2 stars. I can't produce any media. What's the point in having video editing software if you can't distribute the final creation? Hmm....2 stars (Version 3 is a Beta version - Too Many Bugs!) - I was using ArcSoft but bought PowerDirector 3.0 based on a review and the advertising. It has some slick features (mainly effects and transitions) that I like but the program is so quirky I have yet to finish a movie with it. I make short mpegs with it and import them into my ArkSoft program to get what I want. Examples of negatives - Losses picture file names or mixes them up,losses pictures, crashes with no warning sometimes, once was unable to set the default duration time for picture display - had to set everyone manually or start all over, cannot select all pics and perform the same function on them. My advice, wait for a few versions before buying.3 stars (Not up to paar!) - I am very dissapointed in how DVD's burned using PowerDirector 3 are hard to play on other computers other than the one they were created on. Time and again the video's I have produced "crash" when played on another computer. The player bundeled with the program, ostensibly to make the videos playable on other platforms, does not do the job. I think I'd consider getting another product if my goal was to share video with family or friends! |
