CyberLink Power Director4 - by Mark Shapiro

CyberLink’s PowerDirector4 is a complete video editing application that has some very interesting and powerful tools for creating videos, including four new automated video editing and color correction applications.

 The new PowerDirector4 for Windows XP and Windows 2000 users, is available for a list price of $89.95, and provides everything you need to capture, edit and share video productions.

 PowerDirector relies heavily on the speed of your computer’s processor to do its magic. For capturing and editing AVI files, CyberLink says you can get away with a PII running at 450 MHz. For capturing and editing MPEG1 quality (for VCDs), you’ll need at least a P3 running at 600 MHz. For MPEG2 files for DVDs, you’ll need a P4 running at 2.0 GHz. For high quality streaming video, you’ll need at least a P4 running at 2.4 GHz. Remember, these are minimums. Also, you’ll need lots of RAM. CyberLink recommends a minimum of 128 MB of RAM, but I think you’ll need at least double that, if not 500 MB plus.

Once you have your Windows computer powered up and the program installed, creating your own digital movies is relatively straightforward.

When you first start PowerDirector, it opens up on the editing timeline. You have your standard three screens. On the top left is a window that allows you to store and access your various media files including video, audio and still images, a time line that stretches along the bottom of the window, and on the top right, a player window for monitoring your work.

This set-up is similar to many other video editing programs and makes it easy to jump right in without having to spend a lot of time reading the manual.

Along the left side of the media file window is a series of icons that lets you access your raw media files, as well as your transitions, effects, titles and special video effects. You can also access the audio mixing application as well as the chapter setting application. Audio mixing enables you to easily mix and adjust the volume of three simultaneous sound tracks – the audio from your video, a music track as well as a voice over track. 

The chapter setting application is useful if you plan on outputting your final video on a DVD. You have the option of setting chapters according to the full length of their video, at the beginning of each clip, or according to a set duration. These chapters are then transferred from the Edit Mode into the Produce Mode – making your DVD authoring process one step quicker.

Above the timeline window is a series of buttons for accessing other applications like PowerDirector’s four new “Magic” modes, as well as Trim, Color and Speed.

The first step is bringing your raw multimedia files into the program. CyberLink can capture video from a variety of sources including digital video camcorders and cameras, web cams, etc. If you have a video digitizing box or card, you can capture live TV or video from your old analog camcorders. You can also import a variety of video, audio and still image formats including DV-AVI, MPEG1 and MPEG2, VOB, VRO, WMV, MOV, MOD and DivX video formats by using standard Windows techniques. You can select a bunch of files at once by using control and click on the mouse.  You can also capture non-copy protected video from DVDs and audio from CDs.

If you are capturing from a DV camcorder, you can do batch captures or use what they call “DV QuickScan” that enables you to scan an hour’s worth of digital video in under ten minutes. It quickly scans the tape and creates edit points whoever the camcorder had stopped and started. You then can pick which of these selected scenes will be captured in real time.

Editing

CyberLink PowerDirector gives you a choice of either using a storyboard format for editing or using a standard single video track timeline. The timeline enables you to assemble your chronology of shots on the top track and then add special effects, picture in picture, titles, voice tracks and music on the tracks below it. Of, if you prefer, you can use the storyboard to quickly assemble a chronology of your production.

Personally, for home and family videos, I like to use a storyboard for assembling my basic outline of the video and then using the timeline mode for trimming the individual clips, fine-tuning and adding effects.

Its in the editing mode that PowerDirector’s four new “Magic” editing tools come into play. You can use “MagicClean” to enhance the colors and brightness of your video clips, still images and graphics.  You can use its noise reduction to filter out and cleanup voice, audio and music tracks.   “MagicCut” is an automated video editing application that analyzes the dialogue and action within a specific scene and then separates the scene into a series of short clips in order to help you create videos with less wasted and boring footage.

MagicMusic uses SmartSound technology to let you create “professional” sounding soundtracks of any desired length. You can pick from a variety of genres and styles to create a unique audio soundtrack to your productions. Very cool. By the way, in the editing stage, you can slightly stretch and shorten the audio, without impacting the pitch, to match a clip’s duration.

Finally, “MagicMotion” is an intelligent automatic zoom and panning application for still images and photos. It analyzes the photo and then spotlights the subject.

For me, one of the coolest editing options is Multi Trim. It offers a simple means of manually editing a long clip by inserting multiple in and out points along a timeline. Once the points have been set, users can delete unwanted video with one click. This is great for cleaning up those long videos when you return from an outing.

You add effects by dropping them onto the effects track on the timeline. You add transitions by dropping them onto the appropriate locations between video clips on the timeline. The Picture in Picture feature is really cool and powerful. Simply drop the clip you want inserted onto the PiP track. You can relocate it anywhere over the underlying image by simply clicking on it and moving it. You can also re-size it and change the length of the picture insert. Extremely cool.

Once you are happy with your production, you then start the Produce mode that opens up a window that walks you through creating four basic types of final output. You can create a DVD or CD, create a computer video file, create a video file for Internet distribution, or play it back for recording to digital video tape.

This latest version of Cyberlink’s Power Director is very impressive – for power, for features, and especially for ease of use. For $90, this is a winner.

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