CyberLink PowerDirector 8 Deluxe

Video Upscaling and Fixing
A host of new tools and technologies are designed to save editing time and improve your video quality. Leveraging PowerDVD's video enhancing TrueTheater technology, PowerDirector delivers HD-like results from standard definition content by upscaling video resolution, smoothing out playback in slow motion and enabling virtual surround sound.
With easy-to-use settings, PowerDirector's TrueTheater technologies fix common video shooting errors such as extreme backlighting, poor white balance, and inadequate lighting.
Pro Results
PowerDirector 8's suite of design tools—for creating titles, animated objects, and disc menus—now offers a Particle Effects Designer, letting you experiment with movie-like special effects. As with PowerDirector's other design tools, particle effects can be uploaded and shared with other users on DirectorZone, PowerDirector's community website.
Enjoy working with more editing tools such as Reverse, Crop, Speed and Rotate video tools. For precise trimming, retain frame-level control with the patented Zoom-In Cut™.
While the expanded 16-track timeline offers more creative possibilities including the ability to cut & paste sequences to other parts of your production.

Faster Performance
The first consumer video editing software to be optimized for Intel Core i7, NVIDIA CUDA, and ATI Stream technology, PowerDirector delivers up to 5X faster performance for rendering effects and transcoding videos, with vastly improved editing and previewing speeds.

Shared Creativity
Ever wonder how home movies achieve memorable effects? Now you can by viewing other users' timelines and even sharing your own on DirectorZone.com. This unique glimpse into others' creative approaches is a remarkable learning tool, offering incredible insight for your own projects.
PowerDirector's unique "open editing" experience also lets you share special effects, video editing secrets, and a chance to learn from other users. Download, upload, and share an unlimited amount of effects, DVD menus, particle effects, and PiP objects via DirectorZone.
Ways to Show & Tell
Video editing software, PowerDirector, provides direct HD video uploading to Facebook and YouTube, enabling easy sharing on today’s most popular social networks and video blogging sites.
Or enjoy your finished movie in HD at home by producing Blu-ray Discs or AVCHD discs in high-definition resolution. If it's mobility you are after, you can produce playback files for your iPhone, iPod, or PSP.

System Requirements:

Operating System:

• Microsoft Windows 7, Vista or XP (Windows XP Service Pack 2 is required for HDV capture)

Screen Resolution:

• 1024 x 768, 16-bit color or above

Microphone

• Required for recording voice-overs

Processor:

PowerDirector 8 is optimized for CPU with MMX/SSE/SSE2/3DNow! Extension/HyperThreading technology

• AVI Capture/Production: Pentium 2 450 MHz or AMD Athlon 500MHz
• VCD Quality (MPEG-1) Profiles: Pentium 3 600 MHz or AMD Athlon 700MHz
• DVD Quality (MPEG-2) profiles: Pentium 4 2.2 GHz or AMD Athlon XP 2200+
• High Quality MPEG-4 and WMV, QuickTime, RealVideo Profiles: Pentium4 2.4Ghz or AMD Athlon XP 2400+
• AVCHD and MPEG-2 HD Profiles: Pentium Core 2 Duo E6400 or Athlon 64 X2 5000+

Memory:

• 512MB required (2GB DDR2 above recommended for editing HD videos)

Hard Disk Space:

• 5GB required minimum (note: 400 MB is for Magic Music Library)
• 10GB (20 GB recommended) for DVD production
• 60GB (100 GB recommended) for Blu-ray Disc/AVCHD production

Video Capturing Device

• PCI or USB 1.0/2.0 capture device compliant with WDM standard (i.e. PC Camera and TV tuner with WDM driver)
• DV camcorder connected via OHCI-compliant IEEE1394
• DVD camcorder connected via USB 2.0
• Sony MicroMV camcorder
• JVC Everio camcorder (GZ-MC100, GZ-MC200)
• Sony HDR-FX1 (HDV)
• Sony HDR-HC1 (HDV)
• Sony HDR-HC1 (HDV)
• JVC GR-HD1U (HDV)

Supported AVCHD camcorders

• SONY HDR-SR1
• SONY HDR-UX1
• SONY HDR-CX7
• SONY HDR-SR7
• Panasonic SX5

Burning Device:

• A CD or DVD burner (CD-R/RW, DVD+R/RW or DVD-R/RW) is required to burn VCD/DVD/SVCD titles.
• A Blu-ray disc recordable drive is required to burn Blu-ray Discs.

Corel VideoStudio X2

Corel VideoStudio X2 Standard earned the “TopTenREVIEWS Silver Award” with its exceptionally clean interface, smooth playback, ease-of-use, and options tailored to both video editing beginners and experienced techies. Where other video editing products hide common functions behind menus, masked within a cluster of icons, and in less than ideal stages of the editing process, VideoStudio keeps them up front and easily accessible due its well-designed interface.
To aid first-time video editors, VideoStudio X2 launches with a splash screen where you’re given three options: the VideoStudio Editor, the Movie Wizard, and the DV-to-DVD Wizard.

The DV-to-DVD Wizard will take video directly from your DV camcorder and burn it to a DVD. It’s a simple two step process with a few editing options like scene detection and marking, and perfect when you just need to capture and produce a video quickly.

The VideoStudio Editor brings the full complement of video editing functionality to bear, including multi trimming, inserting effects, transitions, audio, and everything else VideoStudio X2 can do.

The Movie Wizard lets you capture and import video and do a few basic edits before burning it to disc. Its functionality puts it a step above the DV-to-DVD Wizard and a step below the full VideoStudio Editor. The Movie Wizard has automatic scene detection and splitting, multi trim capability, and DVD menu templates.
You can easily burn your videos to DVD and video CD with VideoStudio X2 Standard. For added flexibility, a few extra dollars will get you VideoStudio X2 Pro, where you can also burn to Blu-ray and AVC-HD discs, and you get hundreds of additional video and sound samples, extra special effects, and more.

Review of Corel Video Studio X2

Image Gallery

Click here to view (22) images in our gallery

See more...

Video Capture/Playback:  

We captured from an old JVC camcorder using an USB video transfer connector. The time required to capture our 14 minute video was exactly 14 minutes This 1:1 ratio is standard when pulling from DV tape.

Thanks to VideoStudio’s Smart Proxy technology video playback was smooth. With Smart Proxy editing, users – even on midrange PCs – can enjoy the same benefits as if they were using a high performance video editing workstation. By using lower-resolution files for editing and previewing a project, VideoStudio X2 requires fewer system resources, which results in faster, smoother playback and editing of video. This was especially helpful editing standard definition video, and we can only imagine its beneficial effects on editing HD video, which is much more resource intensive.

In VideoStudio X2, Corel also optimized its usage of dual-core and quad-core CPU systems. We noticed our dual-core system was more responsive and encoded faster than our Pentium 4 3GHz system. A great new feature found in both standard and pro versions of VideoStudio X2.

Editing Tools:  

Whether editing Grandpa’s arthroscopy or your nephew’s birthday party, you need to view your clips in a timeline or storyboard mode, add video, picture, text, audio, and music tracks, and trim/split your video into sections for better continuity, adding transitions, and enhancing with effects (Corel calls them Video Filters).

Once your video is captured, the first thing you want to do is trim and divide the video segment into clips. Trimming is marking the beginning and end of an entire clip, while multi trimming is useful to divide one segment into multiple clips. Multi trimming is extremely useful when you need to remove an inappropriate scene, or mark it for inclusion in a blooper reel. We found VideoStudio X2’s trim and multi trim tools both powerful and easy to use in that we moved frame by frame quickly. It’s important to note that VideoStudio X2 utilizes non-destructive editing, so no matter what you do to a video segment, the original is never permanently cut or overwritten.

So knowing that we couldn’t actually RUIN anything, we decided to let VideoStudio automatically detect scenes and trim accordingly. The results were impressive, as many of what we termed “non productive” segments were trimmed down to their very own scenes which we could move or delete at will. We did find that you'll have to manually add transitions yourself.

Export/Production:  

Once your edits are complete, you can save your work to a number of formats. Standard formats include FLV files for YouTube, MPEG-1 and MPEG-2, AVCHD, WMV HD, RealMedia, Windows Media, and QuickTime.

For more portability, upgrade to VideoStudio Pro X2 and convert your videos to iPod, iPod Touch, iPhone and PSP-compatible files.

Editing Effects/Transitions:  

VideoStudio X2 Standard comes with 65 Video Filters, or effects, to enhance your video, and they’re easy to apply. Just drag one over your video clip and the effect is instantly applied. Chaining effects is also possible, so if you want to use the Anti-Shake effect in combination with the Brightness & Contrast effect on a particular clip, it’s a simple matter of dragging both effects over the intended clip. Effects are customizable as well, so you can adjust brightness, contrast, and the strength of the Anti-Shake effect and compare the results.

A feature unique to VideoStudio X2 is a Rotoscoping tool that allows you to “draw” onto the video. Useful for tracing routes on a map, giving yourself a beard, or just plain scribbling, the Rotoscoping tool is fun to play with.

With 129 transitions in VideoStudio X2, it’s unlikely most home video editors would need more. Again, inserting them into the timeline is a quick drag and drop process.

VideoStudio also has 31 Title Templates for beginning or ending credits, title text and whatever snarky text you want to put over your video. All of the titles are editable, so you’re not stuck with canned text, and you can position, scale, and rotate them to your heart’s content.

Disc Creation:  

When creating a disc, you can choose whether or not to include a menu for easy navigation of chapters. VideoStudio comes with 6 menu templates, and if you don’t find any of them to your liking, you can create your own. Multi-layer menus are not supported in VideoStudio Standard, but you can add chapters at fixed intervals or VideoStudio can automatically detect scenes and make them into chapters for you.

VideoStudio Standard burns to DVD and Video CD, and if you're itching to burn to Blu-ray and AVC-HD discs, for a reasonable price you can upgrade to VideoStudio Pro X2 and burn away!