Specifications

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and follow the story. I found both easy to work with. In
the voice area, you can add a voice background, or over
others. For example you could add a voice narration of
video when editing. You can actually add multiple audio
tracks of music and audio into the background. The most
fun part (for me) was putting in a PiP (Picture in Picture).
The editor can just put in video from anything else in a
small window of the video. I took a video of the band and
drill team practicing for a parade. I then took the video of
the actual parade march and put that in the PiP.
The problem with many video editing software
products is that they were written by software engineers
with input from movie editors, and not much from
ordinary users. That is what happened with the editing
part, at least in my opinion. When you want to actually
edit the video, you double click the section you want to
work with, or move the slider bar to that time period or
spot. This brings up a box with the video in it. From there
you can mark it with a [ for mark in (this is where the
video will start), mark it with a ] where you want the
video to end.
That is all well and good, but what if you think (such
as I did at first) “I’m in the trim section so this is what I
want to trim out.” After all, there is a Delete button there.
I clicked on the Delete button, and the video section I
was working on was deleted from the workspace. Oops.
I’m sure people who have been doing video editing for a
while are saying “What was he thinking?” I was thinking
the Delete button is there to delete the section I don’t
want. The mark in and mark out can only be used to show
that section of the video and cannot be used more then
once per video. I figured out to split out the sections I did
not want, and get rid of them by using the Delete KEY.
I will say it was easy to edit at a precise spot, since I
could move the slider to the time, or put in the time on
the trim pull out, and then move it frame by frame to the
exact spot needed.
Okay you’ve edited the video, put in effects and titles
where you want them, now what? Well, you produce the
video. This gathers the video, photos, audio, and effects
and compiles them. They have a Production Wizard that
opens giving you the choice to:
•
Produce a Disc: produce a movie and letting you burn to
DVD, VCD, SVCD, or MiniDVD disc.
•
Create a File: produce a DV-AVI, Windows-AVI,
MPEG-1, or MPEG-2 file to watch on your computer.
•
Create a Streaming File: produce a Windows Media
Video, RealVideo, or QuickTime you can then stream
over the Internet.
•
Write Back to DV Tape: write the movie production back
to DV tape.
PowerDirector has what they call SVRT (Smart Video
Rendering Technology). It reduces the time needed for
rendering video by rendering only the portions of the
video that are edited, instead of the whole length. The
bad news for me was the SVRT box was always grayed
out for me so I could not use it. The good news was that
it was still much, much faster to render the video than my
Pinnacle Studio was. I did find out that SVRT is not
available if you have any effects in the video. Then why
do they offer it?
By the way, when you start this, a file is created
(MPEG) that, if you don’t notice on the left side of the
screen, is named default.mpg. It really should ask you
what you want to name it, but it doesn’t, which means
when you go to the next step, you could be scratching
your head trying to figure out which file you want.
When that is done, you are ready for burning the disc
(if that is your choice). To do that, they added the
PowerProducer part onto PowerDirector. It really is an
add-on, not fully integrated. The reason I say that is that
when you go into EzProducer 2, you have to choose what
file you want to work with. If truly integrated, you would
not have to—it would automatically load the file you
were already working on. Once there, you then go into
the preview mode where you can customize the menu and
divide up the video into chapters. Chapters allow for easy
navigation on a DVD, allowing the viewer to skip ahead
to other points of interest quickly.
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