CyberLink PowerProducer Editor's Review

Create visually stunning video projects with this easy to use Windows app.

If you have young children or grandchildren, it's likely that you're recording memories of nearly everything that they do or say with either your smartphone's video camera or a dedicated video camera. I know I am. This is one of the reasons why I really like CyberLink PowerProducer. It’s a video project manager for Windows.

CyberLink PowerProducer is a powerful, but easy-to-use video production application. The app gives you full capturing, editing, customizing and burning functions. When you're done with your editing, you can also use the app's DVD menu templates to produce your home videos on disc. Once you get a handle on the workflow, it's really very easy.

CyberLink PowerProducer's Right-to-Disc recording technology is pretty cool. It allows you to make a DVD or a Blu-ray Disc movie from your DV/HDV camcorders in real time, with minimum hard drive space requirements to the set top media of your choice. CyberLink's proprietary SVRT technology guarantees the fastest way to produce a video while maintaining the original video quality. CyberLink PowerProducer also has a number of handy disc utilities that help you with the entire movie production process.

CyberLink PowerProducer 5 now supports Blu-ray disc authoring; and for those users that only have a DVD recordable drive, CyberLink PowerProducer 5 lets you create high-definition movies in AVCHD.  You can then burn that to a DVD and enjoy those on your AVCHD compatible set top box or PlayStation 3.

App Pro’s: Right-to-Disc recording, DVD menu templates, Blu-ray disc authoring

App Con’s: Workflow takes some getting used to

Conclusion: CyberLink PowerProducer is a pretty neat application. You can use it to author SD movies, AVCHD upscaled movies or Blu-ray HD movies, all of which can be burned to their respective, compatible media. The app's workflow takes just a little bit to get used to, but once mastered, it's easy to repeat the process and pull all of your home video library together.