Review: Cyberlink Powerdirector 6 video-editing software

Capture and edit digital video, upload to video-sharing websites and create DVDs

Cyberlink Powerdirector 6 is a video editing and production suite aimed at the home video market. It’s very easy to use and supports capture, editing and export of high-definition video formats.

All home video editing programs follow the convention of dividing the whole process into chronologically ordered tasks and providing the necessary tools for each - Powerdirector is no exception.

Four buttons ranged across the top of the screen provide everything you need to capture and edit video footage, produce video files for distribution and create video DVDs.

Most of the action occurs in the edit module, which, like every other aspect of the Powerdirector workspace, is well-designed, allowing you to easily find your way around without needing to refer to the Help option.

There’s a choice of storyboard or timeline layout, the latter providing a master video track, effects track, picture-in-picture overlay track, a titling track and voiceover and music audio tracks.

If the effort of arranging clips and applying transitions is all too much, Powerdirector’s Magic Movie Wizard will do it all for you, but don’t expect miracles. We were a little disappointed with the pedestrian array of templates on offer and the wizard’s inability to cut clips to the beat of the music backing produced stilted, disjointed results.

In addition to new effects, transitions and titles, the PiP (Picture in Picture) Object Room provides a library of overlay graphics including frames and clipart. These can be animated using keyframed motion paths so you can, for example, have suitcase and travel ticket graphics wend their way erratically across the screen, most likely overlaying footage of you waiting for your luggage to appear on the carousel at Ibiza airport, long after everyone else has left for their hotel.

Voiceover recording exemplifies the program’s straightforward approach. All you need to do is position the play head in the timeline where you want to begin your voiceover and press the record button, say your piece, then press stop. You can elect to set a time limit and add fade-in and fade-out, but that’s as complicated as it gets.

The Produce button opens a production wizard which provides file output options including write bask to DV or HDV tape and upload to Youtube and Mediamax sharing websites. Windows Media Video, Realvideo and Quicktime streaming formats are also supported.

Before pressing the Create Disc button you need to do some preparation, not only editing your footage, but adding chapter markers that are subsequently used to create the DVD menu structure. Once again, this is made easy in the Chapter Room, where you can have chapters created automatically at the start of each clip, or add them yourself manually. You can now also name chapters.

Powerdirector’s DVD authoring takes footage from the storyboard or timeline, automatically creating a chapter-based menu system. We’ve criticized previous versions of the program for lacking menu customization and Cyberlink has addressed this by introducing a Menu Designer which allows you, among other things, to change the background image, re-arrange the layout, add buttons and change their appearance.

The supplied style templates are a bit cheesy, but there’s a good range and each offers several layout options, so you can organise movies with lots of chapters onto menu pages with multiple buttons. You can’t redirect menu buttons, for example to go to sub menus, or to return to the top menu after playing a scene, so this isn’t the application to use for kiosk-style DVD presentations.

This version of Powerdirector is a significant improvement on version 5. While it lacks some of the advanced features of competitors like Adobe Premiere Elements, Ulead Video Studio and Pinnacle Studio, for home users who just want to make a movie and upload it to Youtube, or create a holiday DVD its budget price and supreme ease of use make it well worth considering.

Also consider:
Adobe Premiere Elements
An impressive upgrade to this popular video editor – if you can get it to run 

Pinnacle Studio Plus 10
A new engine and extra features help produce quality video projects on a budget

Ulead Video Studio 10 Plus
A good home video-editing suite for under £60

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