CyberLink Unveils Video Editing Software for Windows 8 PCs & Tablets

CyberLink this week unveiled three new touch apps for forthcoming Windows 8 tablets, along with its first software for Apple Macs and a big update to its PC-based multimedia content creation suite incorporating new offerings called AudioDirector and ColorDirector.

Compatible with PCs running Windows OS from XP through Windows 8, CyberLink's new Director Suite 11 is aimed at both serious hobbyists and professionals, said Richard Carriere, VP for global marketing, in an interview with NotebookReview.com at Pepcom's Digital Experience show in New York City.

"If consumers are going to invest $500 in a camcorder or DSLR camera, they want to be able to do a lot with what they produce," Carrier said.

"But high-end video editing software from companies like Avid is so difficult to use that you practically need to go to school to learn it."

CyberLink's three new touch apps for Microsoft Windows 8 tablets, on the other hand, will be available as separate offerings, outside of Director Suite. The trio includes the PowerDirector Touch App, for editing video on tablets; the PowerDVD Touch App, for hardware-accelerated playback of MPEG-2 video; and the YouCam Touch App, for capturing and touching up videos and photos from a tablet's camera.

For its part, the PC-based Director Suite includes the new AudioDirector, for sound design, and ColorDirector, for color enhancements, along with new editions of CyberLink's PowerDirector video editing software and PhotoDirector photo editing application. Alternatively, each product in the suite can be purchased separately. PhotoDirector 4 is also available in a version supporting Apple's Mac OS X 10.8.

For faster production and clearer videos, PowerDirector 11 provides new support for multi-GPGPU acceleration and 4K Ultra HD resolution.

Content-Aware Editing

In a demo at an earlier CyberLink press event in Manhattan, CyberLink's Adam Cosco showed off new features added since PowerDirector 10 which include content-aware editing, ripple editing, and a revamped Design Studio, for example.

The new Design Studio brings four new tools -- Title Designer, Menu Designer, Partical Designer, and PiP Designer -- for designing titles and menus and adding effects and motion from directly within a timeline.

With ripple editing, you can quickly insert video clips on the timeline, or remove them, without disturbing the alignment of other items on the timeline, said Cosco, who has a background as a professional filmmaker.

The new content-aware editing feature is meant to analyze major scenes in a video to correct imperfections like shakiness or poor lighting.

"You can also get rid of the boring parts," Cosco noted. The software analyzes "major scenes" such as those containing motion, faces, zoom or pan.

The new AudioDirector and ColorDirector applications are targeted at more advanced users, according to Carriere. With AudioDirector, you can directly edit audio track embedded in the video. You can also use a video-referenced editing tool to synchronize voiceover or apply audio effects to specific video frames, for instance. Support is provided for up to 7.1 multichannel sound.

ColorDirector is meant to help make corrections to hue, saturation, lightness and white balance in a video. Cosco also demonstrated how you can use mask and motion tracking features to make changes to only selected parts of a video.

For example, if you change the color of a child's ball to neon yellow, you can make the toy appear in neon yellow throughout the film.

A Body Shaper

In another demo, Volker Maxisch, senior product manager, showed new features in PhotoDirector 4 such as face recognition, content-aware removal, and body shaper.

With content-aware removal, the software will "intelligently" fill in the background when you remove a person or some other object from a photo, he said. To illustrate, he eliminated his own image from a picture.

The body shaper tool can be very useful to those who are posting their pictures to Facebook or somewhere else on the Web, he quipped. It comes with mesh tools and a distortion toolset with a protective brush for reshaping only certain portions of a body.

The body shaper is part of a "People Beautifier Toolset" which also includes previously introduced tools such as a skin smoother, toothbrush, and eye blinger.

Priced at $299.95, Director Suite is available immediately in CyberLink's online store, with availability through retail channels slated for October.