Cyberlink PowerDirector Usability Testing
One of the best ways to cherish memories is by using digital preservation. We can capture important events in our lives through images and videos. But isn’t it amazing if we can maintain the emotions and feelings by turning ordinary photos and videos into stunningly beautiful HD video slideshow movies? Cyberlink PowerDirector one of the top rated video editors, provides a comprehensive and easy-to-use tools for high quality video productions.
Objective
To determine the usability issues and pain points of using Cyberlink PowerDirector in terms of creating video slideshows.
Test Tasks
1. Importing Media files such as videos, images and audio
2. Adding Image to timeline
3. Adding Video to timeline
4. Adding audio to timeline
5. Grouping images into a slideshow
6. Adding transition effects to timeline
7. Adding particle effects timeline
8. Adding title room to timeline
9. Adding subtitles
10. Editing objects in the timeline and applying video effects
11. Producing the movie
Analysis, Findings and Suggestions
Importing videos, images and audio files to project library was sweetly done. You can import media files individually, by group or by folder. PowerDirector offers support to various types of media files so conversion of file format was not needed.
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Adding images, video, and audio to time was also done without any pain. Inserting transition effects between images and videos was also perfectly done, same with adding particle effects. It is great that you can insert one particle effect on top of another particle effect, but with a maximum of three layers only. There are times when we wanted to apply multiple particle effects at the same period of time, so I guess, what I can suggest is to add more layers for particle effects.
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Another nice feature of PowerDirector is that you can group images and turn it into a slideshow inside your project timeline. It can save you a lot of time, especially if you just want to use the same transition effect between images. The thing I hate is that when you already created the slideshow then you want to edit it again to rearrange the images using the slideshow designer, you cant. What you have to do is to rearrange the images from the timeline itself. It will be a pain for the user to re-crop the images in the slideshow designer. So my suggestion is to enable user in re-arranging and re-cropping photos inside the slideshow designer.
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Adding titles to track is also great. It offers various entrance and exit effects. There are also predefined title templates with particle effects within the title itself. It’s so cool. Moreover, adding subtitle to timeline also came in handy. You may either type the subtitles manually or import a text file containing the subtitles then apply font formatting to all, or to a specific subtitle only.
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In editing the objects in the timeline, I have encountered something that is somewhat troublesome. When you delete an image a video, an audio, particle effect or other objects using the delete key, the whole timeline is affected. The remaining objects adjust to fill the gap left by the removed object. If there are subtitles, or other effects that displays upon a specific melody, the whole project is ruined even if some layers are locked. Another thing is, when you want to apply video effects, like continuous shot and slow motion, you will have to pick only one for a period of time. Overlapping of video effects is not applicable. My suggestions are, to enable deletion of objects without affecting the whole timeline to move, and to add more layers for applying video effects.
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The final test was to produce the movie slideshow. In this task, no pain was encountered using the software. It also enable producing the movie slideshow directly to your facebook or youtube account, and there are so many video output formats suitable for your type of device.
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