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Like a lot of other packages doing simple things is easy, doing more complex things will require practice to achieve. If however you are willing to learn Cyberlink users online are often willing to share their hints and tips.

As with other recent items the install needs to take place from the Desktop and not the glossy home screen that so far I can find no real use for. However that may change if and when one of the many touch unit’s lands on my desk.

Once installed you get a screen offering three choices Full Featured Editor, Easy Editor or Slide Show Creator. Unless you know better start with the Easy Editor, however before you start choose 16:9 or 4:3 for your creation.

See also: Video editing software

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The bar at the top has five steps Source, Style, Adjustment, Preview and Production. So the first action is import your videos and photos. This can be done by moving to the folder they are in on by drag and drop into the interface.

Once you have your epics then press ‘next’ from the bottom of the window and you end up at the Style screen some of which are 3D but of course to use these in that mode you need a system that can display in 3D.

Now the real work starts in the Adjustment screen the first choice is music. This of course will need to fit the length of the video there is a complete Audio adjustment package within the program once you get beyond the basics. If your video already has audio then you will probably need to mix between the two and this is done by a more music – more video section. The final option on this screen is to specify the duration. You already have the bare video duration; you can set the output duration and even have the ability to fit the video to the music.

Pressing next takes you to preview and here the length of time you wait will depend on several things such as the power of your PC, the amount of memory and perhaps most important the length of the video and its output differential. I gave it 18 minutes of video and asked a very difficult question to cut this down to two minutes. This of course means that the computer makes all the decisions and it will probably slice all your good bits out. Once you move to the full feature editor then all these choices are yours and the content will decide the length and not the other way round. On a reasonably fast PC with 4GB RAM the process took close to 15 minutes. Pressing next takes to the production screen that has three choices Produce Video, Create Disc and Advanced Editing.

Perhaps it strongest feature is the ability to link bits together with transitions that are very professional looking.

There are in fact four versions so check the second link to see which one ticks all the boxes you’re your use they are, Deluxe, Ultra, Ultimate and Ultimate Suite. The required specifications seem very low to me stated at Windows XP or later, 512MB of RAM (although 32bit is recommended at 3GB and 64bit is 6GB with 3D use). A 1024x768 display. Here is the one biggie 6.5GB or hard disc space, 10GB when creating DVD’s 60GB for Blu-ray production; both these last figures are minimum.

A few facts to temp you to finish with, it’s the first consumer video editing package to support end to end 4K video. It is 38% faster than version 10 editing video. It supports multi-GPGPU if you have more than one graphics card. The unique content aware editing checks the entire video and identifies major scenes and perhaps the biggest single item of all it can remove or greatly reduce the camera shake where people would normally become sick trying to follow the shaky images.

PowerDirector 11 is available from the link below for £47.99 to £174.99 dependant on the version.

http://www.cyberlink.com/products/powerdirector/introduction_en_GB.html