Al,

You might want to contact Cyberlink at their support web site and get the newer version 2013. It may help but really not sure.

Larry

PowerDirector Saves The Day...
 

New camera, Canon 7D.

Pinnacle Studio 12.1 Does NOT support the 1920x1080 MOV format. PD 7 Ultra and 8 Ultra both will import and take it on the timeline but it will NOT play smooth on the timeline. Fortunately PD will render it out to HD WMV and that looks OK.

So I tried AVC (H.264) and selected 1920x1080, rendered it out in PD8, then imported it into Studio 12. If there is any loss of PQ, I can't see it.

I don't guess we'll see an upgrade of 12 to accommodate new emerging camera formats and I'm not much inclined to go with 14 now that they have really removed SmartSound support.

Congrats on the 7D Bruce ! Just about the time I am considering pulling the plug on PD8 it surprises me and does something really very useful which other NLEs can't handle. I too found it very nice at handling .mov files.

Did you keep the T1i or trade up?

Larry

Kept it...
 

I kept the T1i. At first I offered it for sale for $50 less than B&H would be selling it when the 7D would finally get here. I publish our photo club newsletter and added that offer in it. But the more I thought on it the more it looked smarter to keep it, gives me a lesser expensive camera to "have with me", lighter weight than the 7D, I have 4 batteries for it, and not having to sell it with the "kit" lens gives me some more lens option.

I had ordered a 24mm F2.8 EF to use much like we used to use the "shifty fifty" back before zooms got so popular (yes, I'm dating myself), I had the 50mm F1.8 EF (older metal barrel type) lens on hand so that gave me 2 sharp primes. The T1i "bag" had the 17-55mm "kit" lens and the 55-250mm EF-S so it kind of made sense to keep it.

I haven't had a chance to do much more than see if the 7D works (it does) and partially familiarize myself with it. WOW!

Manual control in video is super simple. "Dial" up M on top, pick shutter, aperture, and ISO, then use the video switch and you have it. Course, you have to kind of know what settings are needed for exposure to set it correctly and it's a good idea to keep the shutter at reasonable settings to avoid some degree of "strobing".

A more convenient way is to select AUTO for ISO setting, then shutter and aperture desired (all while in M for manual exposure still mode). Switch to video and press shutter button partway to see what ISO has been selected by the camera and judge on the LCD if this is the exposure you want. Then set that ISO manually and your exposure is "locked".

Should you be in any other mode besides M (Av, Tv, P, CA, or green box "idjit" mode) when you use the video switch, you have full auto video exposure just like the original firmware in the 5D MkII provided.

This camera is great, puts the photographer fully in charge.

Hi Al, read this thread about i7 problems. Sounds like the developers are working on it, but in the meantime you can disable some cores and get it working...
Not enough system memory question....

-Dave

Bruce,

The 7D sounds like a wonderful upgrade for the video photographer. I can fully understand why you would keep both bodies. The T1i is not capable of doing the video nearly as well, and the still camera features of the 7D also add a to what the T1i can do.

Dave,

Good suggestion which hopefully may allow Al to get PD8 working.

Larry

PD8 and Titles
 

This thread seams to be idle. There are a lot of PD8 (not happy) users out there. Anyone with more problems ?

I have one and it relates to using titles and rendering to AVCHD - PD8 often hangs on this. Anyone else having similar issues ?

Gave up on PD8
 

Hi Al, I had such problems with PD8 (and such lack of customer support) that I could bring myself to buy it, despite its fast rendering speed. One possible reason for hang on render is if you have >2 cores enabled on a 3+ core system. "Solution" is to tell Windows boot manager to use only 2 cores when you startup (!?).

In the end I bought Windows 7 and am doing a trial of Pinnacle Studio 14, which is now available (it wouldn't run on XP 64-bit because that OS is old/unsupported, but should work on XP 32-bit, or anything newer).

Studio 14 has great customer support; every time I've wanted to talk to someone (about the Trial no less) I go to the online support center and am talking with a rep in five minutes.

The new version has better AVCHD support. It shows me which parts are rendering preview in background. The motion titler is great. I haven't tried the sound features since I have my own music. It does get slow to render if a lot of f/x are enabled, but I can deal with that because it doesn't crash on render like PD8 always does. And I don't have to turn off one of my three cores. It crashes occasionally in editing, but it's stuff I can avoid, like: don't hit "undo" too many times in quick succession; don't try to do too many manipulations while it's rendering preview; save often (though its auto-save/recover is pretty good).

Some testing videos are posted on my blog (YouTube clips w/ HD links as well):
Dave's Photo & Travelblogue Climbing Zugspitze: Germany’s highest mountain (Part 1)
Dave's Photo & Travelblogue Climbing Zugspitze: Germany?s highest mountain (Part 2)

-Dave

Sorry to hear that PD8 continues to be an unusable program for you Dave. I assume that you have installed the latest PD8 release build 2220 posted about two weeks ago?

It is available at:

PowerDirector 7 ? Video Editing Software

I've not experienced the rendering problem you mention in any recent version of PD8, but I have had hangs / crashes during burning up until this 6220 new release. It is clear that Cyberlink is trying to get this product fixed, and yet they may still have unresolved issues.

Hope you find Pinnacle to be "the right" solution for your needs.

Larry

Hi Larry,

Haven't tried the latest build yet, actually. I decided to just buy one or the other software, and since PD8 not only crashed a lot but also has MISERABLE customer service, I'm going to buy Pinnacle 14. Based on the nice quality of videos I was able to get in a short time, Pinnacle should do for my purposes. If I need heavy effects like stabilize+lighting, I'll pre-render the sequences that need it. :-)

But if I run into more problems in the future, could be I'll give PD another chance someday...

Dave

I completely understand, Dave, and there is nothing more aggravating than trying to get a project done and getting a lot of work "finished" and then having the program crash. Lots of people have run into this with PD8, as well as many of the other NLE programs including some heavy hitters like Sony Vegas. There is a good reason why I personally started this thread and called PD8 a "train wreck"........!!

Ironically, I had to ultimately remove Pinnacle 12 Ultimate from my system since it caused me tons of problems, but not until I installed the update. The original version was very stable, but I seldom used it since it re-rendered everything, and created inferior output compared to the original camera video. I never did buy the latest V14 upgrade since they still do not offer smart rendering.

Maybe one of these days somebody will come out with a really good, fast, NLE program which handles AVCHD natively and handles it well. I am downloading and trying the very recent (late October) release of Edius Neo 2 with AVCHD Booster currently. At $229 it could be a nice solution.

Larry

Pd8
 

Unfortunately the current release 2220 has more bugs, but this time less obvious, and detectable only when actually views the AVCHD (OR Blu-ray!) results ! Frustration is high, production is low. They are on the verge of loosing a lot of die hard users because their claim of running i7 processors - they cannot. And dropping to 2 cores is not a solid solution. Poor code integrity and code house keeping - the software appears to run ahead of itself and looses total control. The data streams seem to go everywhere.

Al,

What bugs are you seeing in the AVCHD / BluRay output disks?

Thanks,
Larry

Larry,

The list is getting too long. And if I add the list from other users that I keep in touch with it gets worse. Essentially rendering is relatively trouble free if one keeps the effects to a minimum. Once they are added in the variability of the problems are diverse and often changing from one rendering to another WITHOUT one making any changes in the project. One needs patience to use this package. I also use Corel's VideoStudio 12 which is considerably more stable. BUT, it's editing features are not as good (especially on video) and it does NOT utilize all the cores of an i7 PC. I frequently use both to complete a project.

Argh. While Studio 14 works quite well with relatively few crashes, the stabilizer is not good enough for the snowboarding footage from my self-made helmet cam.

Optical stabilization sucks when you have a high-vibration or high-G environment. I'll have to try out PD8 again, even if just to prepare my clips for import into Studio 14. That is, IF the PD8 stabilizer plugin does a good enough job...

Any tips for a better stabilizer plugin (or external software) that I could use with Studio 14?

Larry,
Slightly OT from this thread, but in the past you said that Corel VS Pro X2 did a reasonably good job with AVCHD. Do you still think so? Looking at their forums, it appears that they still have issues with glitches appearing at transitions. Also, the recently released "SP2" update appears to do nothing more than provide Win 7 compatibility, so it appears that no other fixes or improvements were made in the year that elapsed between SP1 and SP2. Disappointing.

PD8 still has issues as discussed in this thread. Still no smart rendering in Pinnacle 14. Sigh. I guess we're still waiting for a good consumer-level editor which provides smart rendering?

Something that would be really handy in this forum is a sticky post that summarizes some of the benefits and known issues of the various AVCHD editing programs. I have really appreciated the info and experiences that you have shared. Thanks!

Bob,
I am in a bit of a hurry so my apologies for being brief. (My normal posts are way too verbose anyway...)

I have used most of the AVCHD programs on the market, and would recommend Power Director 8 as the best of the bunch. It still has issues, but the newest release from late 2009 is really stable, works well, and seems to do all I ask of it.

Corel has dropped the ball with VideoStudio Pro X2 as far as I can tell. The transition of ownership from Ulead to Corel has taken their two AVCHD programs (VS Pro X2 and Movie Factory) and slowed the update and improvement cycle down to a dead stop. They were never too great when Ulead owned them but they seem much worse now. The glitch at transitions is still an issue for some, but it is visible or invisible based on whether you are using 60p or 30i content, and only shows under some conditions. I can think of no good reason to prefer using it to PD8.

I have also been using Vegas 9 with some success, although it is also filled with problems. Much to Sony's credit, they have released several updates since it was released in September, and have fixed many bugs without introducing too many new ones...... You could also take a look at Edius Neo 2 with AVCHD Booster, a really nice editor with a pretty lame authoring capability. Still a good value in my opinion, and worth downloading the trial version before you buy anything.

Please let us know your experiences here as this is an ever-changing situation. In the last 6 months AVCHD has been coming on really strong, with many new still digital cameras now using AVCHD-Lite as their encoding format for video.

Maybe it is now finally time for SOMEBODY to get this AVCHD thing right. It's been over 2 years that I have been struggling with a lot of total crap software offered by companies that pride themselves on selling the software and then disappearing when it comes to make it work correctly. Hopefully there will be some major improvements now that the AVCHD format is clearly dominant in not only small pocket point and shoot digital cameras but also on the DSLR end of the market as well.

Larry

Thanks Larry! Excellent info as usual, and it is greatly appreciated. No need for a more lengthy reply.

PD8 is improving and needs more improving.
 

I've been advised by the Cybertechs (as I like to call them) that a new release of PD8 is about to occur. Whether it addresses the various crashes of PD8 only time will tell. However, the good news is that via an ex-PD8 user and now a Sony Vegas user an interesting fix to a good deal of the rendering problems associated with i7 processors, larger system memories and 64 bit Win7 has cropped up. By using a script editor one can turn ON the ability of PD8 (and any other 32 bit application such as Vegas running on a Win7 64 bit system) to utilize more than the 2 MB allowed for a 32 bit application. In my case PD8 crashes which were related to the handling of very high def images (>7 MB per image) have been totally eliminated. In addition, the processor utilization of i7 has gone from 45-50% to 75-90% with total memory usage easily exceeding 4.0 MB when previously (in crash mode) it rarely reached 2.5 MB. I'm a happy camper with PD8 as is, even if their upcoming fixes don't do anything for me.

Hi Al, what is the process for this script editor turning on the >2GB limit for an application? Do you have a link where you found that? Maybe I'll give PD8 another try if I can use my 3-core system without constant crashes.

For those with very shaky video, as mine was (helmet mounted, optical-stabilized camera), I found a pro-grade (but free) solution. AviSynth=>Virtualdub=>Deshaker plugin=>XviD=>(normal editing program). It was tricky and required a lot of playing around with settings, file formats, etc (Virtualdub really only supports .avi). But the result is almost steadycam-like output from what was at first unwatchable. Neither Pinnacle 14 nor PD8 could improve the shaky footage at all. See result (final edit in Pinnacle 14):

YouTube - Testing the Helmetcam: Hintertux, Austria

PD8 release 2508
 

This new release now incorporates the >2gb switch and is more stable as a result.

Hi David,
Excellet work using stabilization. I have been fiddling with your workflow for a while with skiing videos but can't get it to work well. Did you use something other than the default settings mentioned in the Deshaker guide? Also, what shutter speed did you use? I have been using 1/1000 with my HF100.

I have been doing HF100 AVCHD 30p to NeoScene AVI to Deshaker to Sony Movie Studio with bluray output.

By the way, I have found that the best way to film skiiers is to hold the camcorder with both hands while skiing behind the subject, while skiing using the dorky "snow plow" technique (I just hang my ski poles on my left hand and let them drag behind). I will post my results with this technique on vimeo if anyone is interested.

Hi Peter,
Thanks... well, I did a lot of optimization of the deshaker settings, actually. Check out these pages for tutorials how to fine-tune it:
http://www.guthspot.se/video/deshaker.htm
Deshake, Rattle, and Roll! Make your shaky video look much better.

Since mine is helmet mounted and yours is handheld, you'll probably need some different settings than I do. But a few tips:

>Use the rolling shutter mentioned from the HV20 in one of the pages
>Use "Adaptive+Fixed only" as this gives no black borders, and also has the least amount of annoying zooming in & out while still stabilizing quite well
>Adjust the ignore pixels settings a bit based on moving background / etc as discussed in one of the pages ("Camera is Moving" heading)
>Up the zoom smoothness
>I didn't use previous/future frames fill-in at all

As for the shutter speed, on the latest one (see here, Dave's Photo & Travelblogue Snowboard Carving – Feb Craziness! ) I used 1/500. I might try 1/1000 next time, but it's got to be really sunny for that I guess. 1/250 was also not bad, probably because I have a Kenko 0.5 wide lens, but if you get any slower you'll notice blur.

Cheers,
Dave

I'm having great luck with the stability and quality of PowerDirector on my
Mac Pro quad core 2.93.
I am rendering 24 bit Canon avchd. I boot into bootcamp with windows 7/64 and it takes advantage of Hardware acceleration and smart rendering. The newest upgrade
of PowerDirector v2704 handles AVCHD well, especially with shadow files checked.

Paul,

My experiences with Power Director 8 latest version are also excellent. They have fixed the problems which showed up in the original release with several very successful bug fixes, and the software is now a pleasure to use. I wish they would add higher bitrate 24 Mbit/sec progressive 24 frame per second capabilities for those who are using the newer camcorders, but most of the other necessary features are already well supported. Glad to hear that it works well on the Mac, and I am especially impressed that the hardware acceleration works under Bootcamp.

Larry

Hi Larry. After booting in Bootcamp, my Mac Pro is seen like other PC's probably because it contains many PC standard parts like the 2 Nehalem Quad-Core's and the ATI 4870 graphics. After installing Ati's Catalyst and AVIVO, acceleration just works.
Apple also includes drivers for Windows 7 so their newer Intel models are totally compatible.

I was tempted to try Powerdirector after reading your very informative posts several month back when you compared several different editors.
So thanks for that.

I have certainly paid more for the Mac but I like it for other things except video editing, which I find PowerDirector really nice.

Hi Paul,

i have owned dozens of Macs since the original 1984 release, including a couple 8 core MacPros and a dual G5 Powermac. I like the Macs a lot, but AVCHD and BluRay are very poorly supported, and everything takes way too long to transcode and recompress. Final Cut became too cluttered and slow and iMovie is wonderful but weak limited especially for AVCHD and any other HD work, lacking HD disk output support.

Apple could win me back again with a dual Gulftown and smart rendering apps. Could happen. NAB is coming soon and Apple usually has a few new releases then.

Glad you like Power Director. I use it a lot.

Best,
Larry

Build 3022?
 

Has anyone tried the latest build of PowerDirector, 3022? Does it work with AMD Phenom2 X3's yet without crashing? :-)

I'm having problems with Pinnacle Studio 14, it can't seem to render a video longer than 2 minutes without a render failure. Doesn't crash, just fails to render with a non-fatal error at various points which I see to be high-load segments of the video. Their best solution so far is, "Hmm, try reinstalling the software." And there's been no patch of any kind since I bought the software almost a year ago.

Maybe I need to look at PD8 again. Though I hope that PD9 and Pinnacle 15 both have better useability than their current versions. (whenever those next versions come out)