Saturday, November 30, 2019

Director Suite 365 – something for everyone when editing photos or video

 If you’re after a way to splice video clips together, there are a raft of programs to do that. Same for cropping digital photos before printing – lots to pick from. But if you really enjoy spicing them up with special effects, professional transitions, and creating movies or DVD’s with them – you won’t find a more affordable option than Director Suite 365. It’s a complete editing suite for video, stills and audio.

It’s already a bargain at $129.99 per year, but you can try it for free for 30 days. After that, you can also dip your toes in the editing waters for only $29.99 per month.  Let’s say you only produce a video once a year at Christmas time, you could get the use of an entire editing suite for under $30. Then the following year you could do it again.

Special notice to my readers…

Black Friday special (thru December 1, 2019)

The annual subscription is only $89.99

(That’s a 30% savings)

However, I’m banking on the fact that after you see what can be done, you won’t want to stop, and you’ll opt for the full year’s worth of fun for $129.99.

So what do you get with the full year’s subscription?  Gobs and Gobs, or should I say Gigs and Gigabytes of special effects, transitions, templates, presets, profiles, overlays, collages, particles, scenes, titles, and so much more.  As of this writing (November 2019) there are 784,169 free items for you to choose from in the Director Zone catalog. AND, they add more each month. No extra charge – they just keep showing up.

Just for example, take a look at these motion graphic templates that come at no extra charge with Director Suite 365. To create these, you’d formerly need a program like Premiere or After Effects and the learning curve is seriously steep.  With Director Suite 365, they are simply drag and drop onto your timeline.  Then simply change the words to suit your video and viola – professional results in almost no time.

Lastly, while the price is strangely affordable, especially compared to the competition, the software is anything but low grade. It can handle just about anything you throw at it, including:

  • 1:1, 4:3 and 16:9 editing formats
  • 4K video
  • 360-degree video
  • Professional 10 bit format
  • HDR support
  • GPGPU Transcoding
  • 10-Core CPU performance boost
  • Vector shapes on video or stills
  • Shaky footage stabilization
  • Color corrections
  • Green screen
  • Nested projects as Picture-in-Picture
  • Audio scrubbing
  • Full suite of audio editing tools
  • Full suite of still image editing tools
  • Professional color correction suite

Dare we say anything else?  The value is there is you have the need.  Check out their monthly or yearly subscription models and then go forth and create awesomeness.

Doug Bardwell

Doug Bardwell

Writer & photographer – in print and online

Proud husband, father & grandfather. World traveler and tester of the gadgets we take along. Engaged volunteer with the American Red Cross, human trafficking prevention & social concerns. See more of my writing on Medium.com/@photodb.

Disclosure:  Cyberlink provided us with a subscription to Director Suite 365 so we could perform this evaluation.  Our opinions and comments, are and always have been, strictly our own.


Originally published on http://DougBardwell.com  11/29/19


Wednesday, September 18, 2019

CyberLink’s new editing tools may be just what you were waiting for

 Serious photographers, stick with me for 3 minutes as I show you the new answer to your video, photo and audio editing needs and how to save some serious money as well. This software has just been released 9-17-19.

With 25 years experience digitally editing photos and video, I can assure you these CyberLink packages are some of the best buys on the market today.

No steep learning curve

The learning curve with Cyberlink products are well below those with Photoshop or Premiere. With scores of DIY videos on-line and customer forums, the answer to your questions are just around the corner.

Prices that won’t cripple your budget

I used to pay $31/month for my Adobe Suite of products back in 2012. Now my monthly charge is up to $53. For a mere fraction of that, you can subscribe to the new Cyberlink array of products and have fresh new content to work with each month. Or,  you can pay a one time fee and have use of the products forever with no recurring charges.

PowerDirector 18 for video editing

First up is PowerDirector 18 Ultra the video editor with vector graphics, animated titles, and super quick, less than real time rendering.

Work with 1920×1080 or 4K video, or like I’m doing here, two of each at the same time.

You can even edit your clips in 360 degrees or the new 1:1 format popular with social media.

Power Director comes with tons of transitions and special effects and there are hundreds more available for free to download.  You’ll never run out of creative ways to present your footage or photos.

PhotoDirector 11 for photo editing

Next up is PhotoDirector 11 Ultra with a handy background eraser for those without a green screen studio.

Photo Director 11 now also has layered editing so you can combine backgrounds, foregrounds and graphics.

There’s a cool deblur tool that will enhance those almost in focus shots as well as AI Art Styles to replicate painted pieces. The strength of each can be varied with a slider and a special eraser can take the effect off specific areas if needed.

ColorDirector 8 for pro-level color correction and effects

While PowerDirector can handle your green screen videos, (including the use of multiple color keyers,) ColorDirector 8 can take your videos to the next level, and you can get there directly from within Power Director. 

Color Director 8 specializes in fine detail controls, frame by frame motion tracking, HDR toning, 3 way split toning, color matching, along with the popular color splash where only one color is retained, or color replacement, where you can turn red into yellow or any other color.

Audio Director for easy to use audio editing

After trying as I did to understand Adobe Audition, I could never get my noisy audio the way I wanted it to sound.  With AudioDirector, my hiss-laden audio background was cured in literally seconds. So easy to use.

Audio Director 10 completes the package with ambiosonic 360 degree audio soundtracks, AI powered wind removal, vocal contouring with pitch control, and multi-channel recording. Again, there’s a ton of tools and each is individually adjustable and savable.

I’ve been lucky enough to have a two-week preview

I’ve been using pre-release copies of all these products for the past couple weeks and I’m duly impressed. With 30-day free trials, I’d suggest you hotfoot it over to Cyberlink.com and give them a try yourself.

Come back in about a week as I hope to be testing their Director Suite 365 which is a subscription service, combining all four products, with thousands of effects, audio tracks and more. Stay tuned – I think it could be revolutionary in the field of editing software. And thanks for watching.

Comments welcome below as you try out the free 30-day trial.


Disclosure:  CyberLink provided copies of each software package to us so that we could prepare this review.  No compensation was paid or will be paid, and opinions expressed are, as always, strictly our own.



Originally published 9/17/19 on http://Dougbardwell.com

Thursday, January 10, 2019

If it’s print worthy, it’s worth printing on the Epson SureColor P400

Let’s face it, a lot of the photos we shoot will never be seen a second time.  But, when you get that perfect shot, it would be a shame to leave it just in the cloud. Printing it out and displaying it at home or the office lets everyone enjoy it. And, isn’t that why you shot it in the first place?
Epson SureColor P400 printer with fine art print
After having used the Epson SureColor P400 for a number of months, I can now unequivocally recommend it as the printer of choice for your best artistic creations.  Unusual among inkjet printers, the P400 comes with 8 colors of pigment ink for beautiful renditions of your exceptional images.  Combined with some of Epson’s specialty papers, I’ve been blown away by the quality.
eight ink cartridges
For a printer capable of printing ten-foot-long banners up to 13” wide, the printer is remarkably compact on the desktop.  It’s also so versatile with different paper paths for different paper stocks.    [Continue reading]
Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...

College Specials