Power Director improvement survey is online!
 

Cyberlink is running a improvement survey on Power Director!

Power Director is a good editing package. The biggest problem of Power Director is that it does not do AVCHD smart rendering. So it takes ages to render an AVCHD project even if you did only trimming and joining clips! With AVCHD smart rendering only the necessary parts are recoded so the editing process is much faster!

In the survey you can ask for missing feature I recommend that as many of us as possible asks for AVCHD smart rendering!

Follow the link below, and fill out the survey it takes only 1 minute!

http://cyberlink.wufoo.com/forms/powerdirector-improvement-survey/

Peter,

As of version 2.2.2.7.c, AVCHD Smart Rendering SVRT has been implemented in Power Director 7 and speeds up the rendering time on my machine by roughly 9X.

The bad news is that it has a major bug which causes it to NOT smart render after the first transition or effect.

If you only place clips on the timeline and use PD7 to splice them together, the smart render will work correctly for the entire "movie".

Hopefully they will fix this bug soon!

Larry

Larry,

I downloaded the latest version of PD. Could you give me some instructions how to test smart rendering (it is not straitghtforward). I hav a Canon HF10 camcorder.

Thanks,
Peter

Peter,

I assume you now have 2.2.2.7.c.

Place multiple clips on the timeline from your camcorder.

Use the menu option VIEW--->SVRT Information to show the details of smart rendering.

Use the attached JPEG to see what your screen will show after the settings are correct.

Make sure to select the correct Production Format (MPEG4 AVC) and Format (AVCHD 1920 X 1080).

Push the button labelled Update SVRT Info.

You will see a green bar showing up above all clips which will be smart rendered. If you modified any of the clips by adding, for example, a filter or effect, the bar above it will turn to one of the three other colors shown in the Legend above -- telling you that this particular clip will NOT be smart rendered.

Hope this helps.

Larry

Also Peter, see 2nd attachment below which has both smart rendered as well as not smart rendered clips on the timeline.

Larry

Larry,

really thank you very much providing help in this matter!

I guess my problem is that the version I have doesn not allow to select under "Production format" "MPEG-4 AVC" any other resolution than "AVCHD 720x480".

I don't know if it is because I am having the trial version only or / and I do not have the exact version as you have.

I can help the trial version issue by buying the product :).

My version is 7.00.2305 which I downloaded 4 days ago I assume this is the latest. Which version number is higher what you state so in theory it should have the smart rendering functionality. If this version doesn't have the function, it is very strange. Then how to get that exact version you tested?

Thanks again and best regards,
Peter

Peter.

Smart rendering for AVCHD was added in October or November, and was released as a patch called version 2.2.2.7.c.

I cannot explain which trial or retail NTSC / PAL version features you have but suggest you contact Cyberlink and ask them before purchase.

The NTSC retail version definitely has smart rendering, but no other version, trial / PAL may offer it.

You could try appliying the patch to your version to see if it works. The patch is at:

http://www.cyberlink.com/multi/downl...s_4_en_AU.html

If this does not work, Cyberlink's user forum is another good place to inquire.

Larry

Peter, you may need to change the Aspect Ratio in the Edit menu to 16:9 in order for the 1920x1080 option to show up.

Thanks for the advise.

I have found it out eventually! And now it seems to work! Rendering time went down from 8 minutes to 58 second for a 1 minute 50 second clip which is roughly the same what I get on Corel Video Studio smart rendering.

One other thing I had to fix: I save clips from the camcorder with mpg extension so I can have proper windows thumbnails. It seems that I have to leave them as mts otherwise svrt does not work.

I will check tomorrow everything again.

Rgds,
Peter

The update patches will not work on the trial version. And if a purchased version is installed, the trial version must be uninstalled first and something like Wise Registry Cleaner run to remove "leftovers" from the trial version in the registry.

And build 2416 will be released soon.

Thanks Bruce for the news regarding another update forthcoming. I am looking forward to it, hoping they will finally fix these remaining bugs. You never know with Cyberlink though...... the prior version Power Director 6 Pro was just filled with bugs and they never really fixed it. Instead they discontinued it and brought out a new release. Sorta like Microsoft with Vista......


In any event, I am delighted that Juan Castle offered the excellent suggestion to try changing aspect ratios to 16:9, something I had not thought of. I assumed that the trial version or Pal versus NTSC was the issue.

My experience with PD7 smart render has been about the same speed up of 8 to 9X, which is very much the same extremely fast performance as Nero or Corel with AVCHD. It is now a mostly working program, and they hopefully will get the smart render and menu designer fixed once and for all.

I assume the impending new build you refer to Bruce was indicated on Cyberlink's web site? I need to check that out.

Larry

Just received my copy of Power Director, installed it and ran the patch.
Added some 1440 H264 clips from my Panny SD1. I've just checked the SVRT stuff Larry talks about above. In fact, the updated SVRT line shows that my audio is going to be rendered even though the video isn't (it's yellow) I don't understand this since the Panny outputs 5.1AC3 which should surely go straight through?
Edit: looks to me as though PD Ultra, like Pinnacle, down mixes input 5.1 from the camera files into stereo! Certainly, on the sound track on the timeline, only 2 channels are visible.

EDIT: Please see my latest post on this. I am wrong here, PD does pass 5.1 through OK, even though it doesn't show up as 5.1 on the sound track display.

Mike,

You might try the following Mike:

Go to Create Disk Preferences and set the default Dolby mode to 5.1.

Unlike my Canon HF100 and most other AVCHD camcorders, your camcorder captures 5.1 audio, and the Power Director 7 software can be configured to use it if you change the default setting.

See the attached screen shot showing the screen and check box you need to use.

Hope this helps.

Larry

Yes, this is already set on. But the clue lies in the fact that the sound track displayed directly under the clips on the time line is shown with only 2 tracks. PD7 is, like Pinnacle, at present incapable of handling the 5.1 camera output from the increasing number of cams that support it. I really miss it now after a downmix. So it's back to Sony Vegas Platinum I think, despite its lack of smart rendering. VS11 also handles 5.1 properly, though it still has its own smart render issue on AVCHD clips...
But I did submit this facility in my response to the survey.

Mike,

It does force the inevitable question:

Why provide a user selectable option to select 5.1 instead of 2.0 if the program literally ignores the choice? I want to investigate this a bit further.

Sorry it does not offer an immediate fix.

Larry

Ah Yes... That would be because I'm wrong...! Just tried this again to a .m2ts file, rather than a disk and it has retained the 5.1 track. My apologies... Maybe I clicked the 5.1 tick box later than I produced the DVD I tested...
Old age is a terrible thing you know. I'll keep PD on my list and explore it further ! Thanks for your input.

EXCELLENT NEWS Mike!

Very glad to hear that the fix was a simple matter and that 5.1 now is working.

Larry

BTW, as a retired, not very young, person, I truly understand your comment about old age.... (-:

I assume that the SVRT display says that it is not smart rendering the audio because the audio bit rate is probably not the same as PD outputs by default. I'll investigate how you change this, once I've checked what the input clips are.

Mike,

It's my impression that PD7 does not permit a change to the default 5.1 audio rate. If your SVRT theory is correct (and I imagine it is) then you may have no choice other than to allow the program to re-render the 5.1 audio from the camcorder rate to the PD7 5.1 rate.

Larry

Just playing with PD further. I note that if smart render is off, or if it is on and I include transitions, then I get some tearing on rapid horizontal movement which is not visible on the original clips. When smart render is working, with no transitions, then there is no tearing.
I agree the smart render bug is one that needs fixing!

No, it's not. I helped out by doing a couple of the tutorial's now found on the Cyberlink Channel on youtube, and apparently I'm on the list of folks someone sends out links to the impending release in advance.

I think they look for a few of us to be "guinea pigs" and see if we start screaming and hollering when we run it.

I installed it last night and finished the 2nd rough edit of a 24 minute project. So far it seems OK but I didn't try any rendering yet.

I don't use smart rendering because I render to SD DVD for distribution and then to HD WMV for personal viewing in HD on my 42" TV using the new WD TV ,media player and thumb drive. I have no need to render to AVCHD.

Very interesting Bruce, and answers my question as to why I could not find a single reference to this new build in any scouring of the Internet I did after you mentioned it.

I have had exchanges with Dafydd Brevan who administers the PD7 forum and thought of contacting him but then decided I would be better served by waiting until it was announced in some official way.

The menu designer in the current 2.2.2.7.c. build is very much in need of repair, and causes many unexpected results and wasted time. I hope they have spent some serious effort and fixed it properly.

The smart render is so close to working properly that it would be a true shame if they left it unfinished.

It's mostly a very nice program with a reasonable price tag and a generally intuitive interface, with outstanding speed and AVCHD disk quality. It gives Corel/Ulead some very serious competion, as it also does for Nero, Arcsoft, and, arguably the lower end Sony and Adobe products as well. I really hope they get it fixed right in this impending revision, not for my own sake personally since I have all of the other AVCHD NLEs to play with here, but for the sake of most first time users who want a dependable, low cost, and fast and reliable product for AVCHD.

Thanks once again for updating me, Bruce.

Larry

Hopefully it will be in this next build of PD7. I sincerely hope that Cyberlink has the good sense not to do what they did on the prior version 6 deluxe....... fix most (but not all of) the bugs and release it as a new version for $69 to registered users. If they did, I would personally boycott them henceforth...

Your best off waiting. I finished a rough "progress report" copy of a 25 min project and tried to burn a disk for the organization to review, but no luck.

So I uninstalled PD7, ran a registry cleaner, and re-installed 2227c. It burned. I'm sending the project files to Cyberlink (at their request) and they will try to work the problems out. I think that's why a few of us get advance access. It gets broke for us and we don't scream and cry "foul" and Cyberlink gets a chance to make it work right.

The menu setup for PD drives me nuts. It's not very intuitive yet if you search for Robert's explanation (if you can't find it I'll see if I can link it for you) you get an understanding that helped me immediately. All the work you do in the designer only goes into a template, then you have to edit the template in Author/Preview mode. That's where you get the menu saying what you want and working. Also, as I see it, you almost have to make "chapter" designations in edit mode for the "chapter pages" function to work. Compared to some others, PD menu application seems "different".

You're welcome. They will eventually get it right. I was stationed on Taiwan twice and have a lot of respect for the Chinese/Taiwanese work ethic. They take a lot of pride in what they do and will keep after it. Like a lot of NLE's that are never fully finished, you'll see update after update, and some of the updates will bring back an old issue that was fixed. My strategy is to stay in touch and download each new "patch", but I keep most of the older ones so I can go back to one like I just had to.

Some day they have all the bugs stomped.

For right now I'm redoing the edit on the old Texas fort project in Pinnacle Studio 12 Plus. On my slightly underspec quad core this is slow going with stuttery playback on the timeline, but renders turn out fine. I tried Vasst's AVCHD Upshift but the m2t files it makes won't work in Studio so I have to work with native 1920x1080 .mts files. That's why I keep PowerDirector on the machine. It is quite a bit less demanding of the computer.

Hope this helps you a bit, your contributions here are a GREAT help to me!

Bruce

Thanks very much Bruce, and I would like to return the compliment and thank you very much for your Power Director comments, which really clarified the update status.

The menu editing explanations I have found on their support forum along with my own experimentation led me to a working solution, but the counter-intuititve mish-mosh really leaves me very unimpressed.

In most cases, I raise this type of concern not because I personally want to make menus with this software but instead since others ask me for advice and I want to offer a fair and balanced opinion when comparing to all the other choices out there. Particularly now that Sony has finally updated DVD Architect to fully support AVCHD disk menus, I am personally using it essentially to the exclusion of all the other 6 programs out there which also do AVCHD menus for the PC. But most people buy a piece of software and then want to use it as the entire end-to-end solution, and regrettably in the AVCHD world virtually no piece of software on the market is really completely finished (IMHO).

Cyberlink gets particular notice from me becuase it is fundementally a very nice program at a relatively low cost, and does many things very well. I continue to find it outrrageous though that it gets the "Editors Choice" as best PC NLE software from PC Magazine when it can neither burn disks nor do basic menus properly, to say nothing of the render bug which causes smart render to fail........... Thankfully I was able to get Dafydd Brevan and then a software developer at Cyberlink to send me replacement .dll's which eventually fixed my burner issue, but the menu and render matters are still ugly.

Sounds like the newest update still does not fix the menu approach. I understand the workaround, but most first-time users would be extremely confused. I just hope this menu topic is not a basis for releasing Power Director 8 Ultimate........

I have bad news, Smart Video Rendering Technology (SVRT) still does NOT work properly with the latest PowerDirector patch 2429a (available for download NOW).

Juan,

Sad but true. I updated and found litte difference in any area I normally use. I see in the release info that they worked on fixing picture in picture PIP features.......... What are these people thinking....??

Larry

You may be able to blame me for that one. In addition to my finding 2416 wouldn't burn for me, I notified Dafydd that the PiP track I was using to place video scenes on as "cutaway" views without altering the main track audio resulted in overly soft images.

The main video track was crisp and sharp but the same kind of video placed on the PiP track and enlarged to fill the frame was noticeably too soft. In Studio 12 Plus when I place a video clip on the second video track it temporarily covers the video on the first track but looks just as crisp as the main track.

So from what I understand the programmers on the R&D team were feverishly trying to find and fix both problems as well as some others. I for one NEED that capability, it works so much easier than splitting the video with the audio locked so you can insert a "cutaway" on the main track.

But one of BEST features of PD7 Ultra is that it edits 1920x1080 AVCHD without the "huffing and puffing" Pinnacle Studio does.

I still like and use PD7 despite the bugs, and truly hope it gets fixed. The PIP fix was worthwhile but Cyberlink really needs to fix smart render and refine menu designer.

Larry

SVRT bug
 

I made som further tests with the latest patch (2429a). Smart rendering still works fine except that the output has some glitches. Around the edit points there are small jumps during playback. I use Dvico Tvix 4100 and Playstation 3 for playback, I have the same problem on both.

I only do trimming and joining clips straight from the camera (HF10). I tested the same clips with the same edit points in Corel Video Studio X2 and the output has no problem at all.

I use Corel Video Studio X2 (and its previous versions) since I have HD cameras. I tested couple of other editing software, as soon as there was a new version released.

My conclusion is that at the moment the only working, bug free AVCHD smart rendering capable editing software is Corel Video Studio X2. The only problem with Corel Video Studio x2 is that it is very slow to playback and edit AVCHD so I have to use the built in smart proxy which takes time to process.

Corel Video Studio X2 update
 

Inspired by this forum I checked Corel Video Studio X2 updates. I have found a patch which speeds up AVCHD playback and native editing considerably still not at the speed of Power Director but on my Core 2 Duo 2,2 GHz laptop acceptable.

Nero Vision and ArcSoft Total Media Extreme also do smart rendering properly AFAIK.

Larry

If you check the Corel User to User forums, you'll see that XS is reported as still having unfixed AVCHD smart rendering issues.

I tested Nero Vision the resulted clip was buggy even worse than Power Director and the interface is under my not too high standars not to mention that AVCHD seek is very slow.

I tested ArcSoft as well, I don't remember what was the problem. I will check again.

I am using Corel on a weekly basis, "smart rendered" about 200 movies so there is definitely no bugs which are effecting my workflow.

You are the exception that proves the rule then! We are all waiting for a fix, here's a sample of a post on the Corel forum:
Corel User to User Web Board :: View topic - Glitches when editing/outputting AVCHD

There was quite a bit of discussion of this issue in another thread on this forum between me and a couple other people, and the bottom line was that the "glitch" / "blip" issue was mostly solved with a patch released last year by Corel for VS Pro X2, but it was not entirely corrected. Those of us who use VS X2 Pro to do 30p AVCHD never see the issue whereas those using 60i usually do see it, but it is not glaring. Possibly this is the reason for some having an issue and others like myself not having an issue?

I now little about HD, editting and uploading HD video to websites. I have Power Director 7 Ultra to edit my video with, but it always has lines in the video when I watch it after uploading it to a site. I noticed you guys talking about AVCHD Smart Rendering SVRT and thought this is what I need to fix this problem. Do I need a differnt program? Or does someone have a simple fix that I might try? Thanks for any help.

Kenny,

Can you provide a web URL where a sample of this problem can be viewed?
Which AVCHD camcorder do you use?

Larry

here is the url...Table Rock 2008 on Vimeo

Any help would be much appreciated. I am pretty sure my camera is a Cannon HV20, but I need to check on that. This is the first time working with anything like this. I am not looking to get in professional quality, but I would like it to be a little clearer.

Thanks,
Kenny