Reviewed by Jaye Vullo

Today’s new high-def camcorders, such as our new AVCHD camcorder, make it possible for almost anyone to shoot really professional looking footage.  The problem for most of consumers is that they don’t take the very best of the content and convert it into an interesting movie people want to sit down and view. 

For our family we wanted software that would give the technical experts in the family (our son, daughter) a comprehensive end-to-end editing solution and still lets the more video-challenged member of the family (ourselves) produce something people would sit down and view.

Since we have been using and enjoying the features of CyberLink’s PowerDVD player on our computers for years, the company’s new PowerDirector 7 Ultra seemed to be a solution that would meet the whole family’s creative needs. 

End-to-End, Top-to-Bottom
The software is a complete end-to-end production solution for high definition and widescreen (16:9) videos.  Supporting all of today’s high def formats including AVCHD, Blu-Ray Discs (BDAV, BDMV) and HDV; the software provides all the tools you need to quickly and easily import, edit, produce and author/output Hollywood-quality movies. 

Since everyone in the family has a different approach to video production, the CyberLink software lets you resize the workspace so that each user can do his/her timeline, preview, library and drag-and-drop features so they are comfortable for each of us. 

Using PowerDirector 7’s automated editing and video enhancement tools we were able to produce our first HD on a standard DVD disc very quickly following the software installation.

The user interface is surprisingly fast and launches the software’s editing and authoring capabilities very quickly.

For people like us who are more interested in seeing/hearing viewers’ reaction rather than the post production process, the one-click magic tools are the capabilities they’ll use most frequently.

It’s All About Magic

With a single click you can fix most common video problems such as motion jitters, lighting balance, editing, soundtrack matching and more.

The Magic Tools include:

Magic Fix to quickly stabilize shaky videos

• Magic Clean for doing a one-pass auto-lighting, white-balance and color adjustment or work with each feature individually
  
  
• Magic Motion offers a complete family of predefined motion paths as well as easily customizable key frame settings for complete pan/zoom control
  
  
• Magic Cut which automatically edits the complete video to keep the best scenes
  
  
• Magic Music enables you to painlessly add a complete soundtrack by taking your audio track and making it begin and end very professionally
  
  
  1. Magic Style allows you to choose from popular event themes such as wedding, birthday, holiday and then add the appropriate opening, special effects and music to complement the video
     
     
  2. Magic Movie Wizard literally walks you through the complete movie-making process with just a few clicks.  You can choose and add the style you like, music and transitions and even mix still photos into the video so that in no time you have a fully edited movie that looks like you had slaved over it for weeks 
As we said there are a lot of tools to keep novices like ourselves happy and busy for days.

Like most people, we have a huge library of still photos we’ve taken in the last couple of years – holidays, vacations, kids’ sporting events, family reunions, etc.  They’ve seldom been viewed and very few have been printed.  They just sit in folders on the hard drive.

After reading the documentation on PowerDirector 7’s customized animated slideshow capability it dawned on us that the photos were interesting but the normal presentation – one slide after another – was boring.




Bring Still Photos to Life

The software has seven slick slideshow styles that include a very interesting 3D style as well as a unique beat-detection engine that will automatically sync the photo play with the rhythm of the music soundtrack.

The company has implemented a special cell style that lets you fully customize the slideshow including the order of the pictures, portions of the picture you can zoom in and out on as well as highlight and feature specific photo slides. 

With the photos moving back/forth, in/out, rotating, zooming to the flow of the soundtrack you almost forget they are only still photos.  The animated slideshow is as exciting and interesting as your best personal/family movie.



Outside the Box

While our son enjoys being able to drill down into PowerDirector 7 and taking advantage of all of the advanced features/capabilities, he likes the fact that you can acquire resources online and have a special site where he can go to share styles, templates and production ideas with other users.

The new CyberLink software makes it easy to browse and download thousands of photos from sites such as Flickr.  To obtain audio tracks, he visits artistserver.com as well as Freesound.Org  These resources are possible because of the Creative Commons licensing agreement that ensures you can download and use the content without fear of DRM (digital rights management) legal issues. 

With the introduction of the new PowerDirector 7, Cyberlink unveiled their own dedicated website that helps software users share information, ideas and creative solutions.  In addition, our son and the other PowerDirector creators around the globe are continuously developing, uploading and sharing new templates, effects and styles. 

It is quickly becoming the location where the software users “hang out” when they aren’t working on new creative projects.




PowerDirector 7 handles today’s popular 16:9 and 4:3 aspect ratio projects but you will have to set the desired ratio before starting to work.  The timeline control lets you see what is going on when video doesn’t conform to the aspect ratio you’ve selected so the video can be stretched or cropped as needed.  This is important when you’re mixing video format types. 

CyberLink has done a lot of work on the software’s editor's effects. You can easily perform color correction, white balancing and lighting adjustments. 

PowerDirector 7 Ultra includes some very interesting artistic effects including versatile PiP designer to resize, reposition and add borders to picture-in-picture clips.  The software offers a number of different masks for PiP effects, including the ability to animate the PiP during playback.  

The effects capabilities also allows you to precisely control key frames and allows you to add some very professional looking results by using the new freeze frame feature.  This lets you capture individual video snapshots and add them to the movie’s timeline. 

For what we’ll call casual users, it is pretty hard to beat PowerDirector 7’s new magic editing tools that simply take all of the work out of producing videos people will sit down and view.  The animated slideshow feature lets you finally do something exciting with the volume of stills you have shot and stored. 

The company has spent a lot of attention on providing serious videographers with a very flexible video editing environment.   They have designed in some very advanced professional effects tools and added new authoring capabilities that make it surprising easy to produce Hollywood-quality personal and family movies.




To find out more about CyberLink’s PowerDirector 7 visit www.cyberlink.com

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CyberLink PowerDirector 7 Ultra- PC Magazine 4.5-star rating & editor's choice