CyberLink PowerProducer review

Digital video editing isn't just possible on a PC - it's now cheap and easy!

While professional packages let you add all manner of sophisticated transitions and effects, many people just want to see their efforts on telly - and that means burning footage onto CD or DVD discs.

PowerProducer lets people do just that. Its entirely wizard-based approach guides you from capture to disc burning in the friendliest manner possible. A particular highlight is the 'i-Help' icons that appear next to any technical words - just click on them for a brief explanation. This makes it a doddle to get your head round the various video and disc formats on offer.

PowerProducer's list of features hits the spot for home movie makers who are after an easy life. It offers comprehensive capture facilities, including the ability to convert incoming video straight to MPEG-2 format as used on DVDs. There are simple editing tools too - the effects are too basic and crude to be of any use, but the essential trim tool is in place to allow you to 'top and tail' your footage, plus tools for splitting and merging video clips. There's also a rather natty Slideshow feature, which converts a collection of digital photos into a video slideshow with musical accompaniment.

Next come the disc authoring options, which let you design chapter menus for the start of your disc. This is the weakest part of PowerProducer, as although the controls are reasonably easy to use, most of them are packed on a single screen, making them a little bewildering. The options are also slightly limited compared with those offered by rival products. There's little choice over templates, and no video backgrounds for scene selection. Scene names follow file names by default, but they usually don't fit the space provided; renaming and formatting them is unnecessarily laborious.

Finally, PowerProducer offers you the choice of creating a Video CD, Super Video CD, MiniDVD or (if you've got a DVD writer) and bona fide DVD disc, all of which may possibly play on your standalone DVD player (check your player's manual or the Web), and should be fine on any PC with a 500MHz processor or faster. One really nice touch is the option to include autorun software (essentially a non-installing version of Cyberlink's PowerDVD player), so if you post mum a disc she won't need to have video playback software installed to watch it.

Most of the time, PowerProducer is a superb piece of software. It's just a shame that menu design doesn't share the same easy wizard-based approach as the rest of the program. We're almost tempted to recommend it, but Ulead's video editing package VideoStudio 6 includes slightly better authoring tools, plus some great editing tools, for about the same price.