Pros & Cons
-
- Speedy rendering, excellent color correction, interesting slideshow feature for still images, functional subtitle track, one-click YouTube upload.
-
- Magic Clean feature can't apply multiple correction filters on the same clip, so-so DVD templates, ineffective noise reduction and chromakey.
For the amateur videographer, impressing home-video viewers jaded by hundreds upon hundreds of hours of the best (and worst) that YouTube has to offer is becoming increasingly difficult. Your potential audience is probably growing more sophisticated and less tolerant of the same old clunky "home movies." Cuteness can make a big difference—with the right audience. If you're looking for a full-featured program to make your videos ooze cute, consider CyberLink PowerDirector 6.
I wouldn't have recommended the software at all last time I looked at it. I gave
For example, on my test project using 12 minutes of video and a 3.2-GHz HP xw4100 workstation driven by a 3.2-GHz Pentium 4 with HT Technology, production time dropped from 63(!) minutes last time to 10 minutes 35 seconds, compared with 19:49 for Adobe Premiere Elements 2.0 and 17:46 for
I'm happy that CyberLink has upgraded Magic Clean to include backlight correction and a white-balance tool (both worked well in my testing), along with brightness and contrast adjustments. Unfortunately, you can apply only one Magic Clean effect per clip, so you can't adjust the white balance, brightness, and contrast of a clip at the same time—a serious limitation. Other unresolved problems include the still so-so chromakey capabilities and ineffective audio-noise filtering.
New options for injecting cuteness abound, however. You can add cartoon-style speech balloons to videos, letting you literally put words in your subject's mouth. You can make a heart, kiss, or any other graphic or video dance across the screen using a key-frameable animated PiP (picture-in-picture) designer that has a very easy-to-use graphic interface. Five new templates let you put together unique, multipicture slideshows or give a slideshow the look of a scrapbook or collage. A new text-masking feature lets you create elegant text overlays.
CyberLink has also added significant workflow improvements, such as a feature for batch-processing multiple projects to different formats, which can be a real timesaver. The new version will interface with your YouTube account, too, giving you one-button encode and upload capabilities as well as a screen that lets you enter metadata. A new editor simplifies importing or adding subtitles to your videos. I'm also pleased with the output options, which include templates for Apple iPod and Sony PlayStation Portable devices, as well as DivX support.
Still, you're limited to four video tracks, compared with the 99
CyberLink PowerDirector 6 doesn't let users apply multiple Magic Clean effects on a clip, which, along with the lack of raw editing power, prevents the app from earning a higher score. If those complaints were addressed, this would be a much better product with much wider appeal. As it is, the app is still vastly improved, and—especially for those seeking cute effects—it's well worth the price. CyberLink has definitely made big strides with this latest version; I'm eager to see if it can continue the trend with the next.
More Video Editing reviews:
Final Thoughts
Cyberlink PowerDirector 6
This much-improved video-editing tool has a very good range of creative and workflow features. It lacks muscle, but if you want extra-cute videos, you should check it out.