CyberLink Releases Director Suite 2, Includes Tons of New Features

You may be familiar with CyberLink, a software company probably most well-known for a product called PowerDVD, which comes pre-installed on many Windows computers.  CyberLink’s PowerDVD has continued to gain popularity over the years due to its vast codec support and ability to play pretty much any video file.  But today isn’t about PowerDVD, it’s about a new suite of products being introduced by CyberLink.

The company is introducing Director Suite 2 which includes PowerDirector 12, ColorDirector 2, PhotoDirector 5, and AudioDirector 4.  The software suite retails for $299 (you can also purchase each software individually for cheaper if you’re not interested in every product), which is pretty fairly priced and is targeted towards consumers and prosumers.  When I was sat down with the CyberLink team they demoed PowerDirector, ColorDirector, and PhotoDirector for me and I have to say I was impressed.

It’s not often you can say video and photo editing software has been simplified to the point that it’s easy to use, while still having a great deal of “power” in the app.  But that’s what CyberLink has done.  Each app has a ton of features and functionality so I’m just going to highlight a few that stood out to me.  Plus, I hope to have a more in-depth review of each app published in the future (meaning once I get a chance to play with each app for a longer period of time).

PowerDirector 12 Highlights

MultiCam Editing: PowerDirector 12 makes it super easy to have multiple camera views in your video.  It’s literally as easy as switching between each camera while editing.  The feature supports up to four camera angles.  In addition to making it easy to have multiple camera angles, PowerDirector 12 also will also allow you to sync multiple tracks by audio tracks, time code, or if you want you can even sync them manually.

End-to-end 4K: As 4K continues to get more popular, PowerDirector is right there.  The software supports importing, editing, and exporting of videos and photo slideshows in 4K resolution.

Content-Aware Editing: This feature is cool — it analyzes your all of your footage and identifies major scenes such as those with faces, motion, zoom, speech, etc.  It can also improve poor lighting and shaky video.

Mobile Video Editing: The CyberLink team realizes that we are moving towards a mobile world and that sometimes we want to start a project on-the-go and then bring it back to the desktop.  Now you can with PowerDirector Mobile.  PowerDirector Mobile can be used on Windows 8 tablets and will sync-up with your desktop version of PowerDirector.

PhotoDirector 5 Highlights

Content-aware Removal: Some content-aware removal tools don’t work very well, that isn’t the case with PhotoDirector 5.  The content-aware removal tool in PhotoDirector is pretty advanced and does an overall good job.  That’s not to say you won’t have to do some additional editing on really busy photos, but it won’t be nearly as much.

Combine Images to Create an HDR Shot: You can combine up to 5 images of the same thing and PhotoDirector will analyze them all and create a stunning HDR image.  The feature will even remove people and other artifacts in the photos if they aren’t in every single shot.

ColorDirector 2 Highlights

Create HDR Video: This is cool.  You are probably familiar with HDR photos, but now you can use ColorDirector to create an HDR video.

Track Moving Objects: This particular feature blew my mind when I saw it in action. With this feature ColorDirector can make the sky look bluer, change the color of someone’s shirt, and more.  Plus, it’s so simple to use, just outline the object and ColorDirector will track it and apply the changes to all the frames.

AudioDirector 4 Highlights

Surround Sound Panner: This feature makes it super easy to control speaker output or add 5.1/7.1 channel surround sound effects to any audio file.  I know that may sound like a bunch of hocus-pocus but it actually works and it’s very cool.

Overall, CyberLink’s latest version of Director Suite turns a great suite of applications into an even better one and it’s one we definitely recommend checking out.