Click Image for the Best Deals

Ok! I just received an email from the folks at CyberLink announcing a bunch of discounts on their products for the holidays.

I read it… read it again and then gave it one more shot. I can clearly state they are offering discounts. What I am uncertain of is exactly what they are discounting and to whom!

There seems to been a wide variation in the discount structure depending on whether you are looking for video editing software like PowerDirector 9 Ultra or maybe multimedia software like Media Suite.

Added to that is a another variation based on your location. Some deals for the U.S are different to the U.K and on and on.

I have to admit this whole marketing and sales crap really doesn’t appeal to me so I find it hard to get interested enough to decipher emails like this. I am sure there are some good deals in there somewhere… for someone… who is located somewhere!

So to make it easier for you… ok, that was a lie. To make is easier for me I found a link to Cyberlink that will just direct you to the best deals on offer for the holiday period.

Oh… forgot to mention that I like CyberLink products a lot and can recommend them without having to go shower after doing so.

Click this Link here for these once in a lifetime never to be missed deals!!!

(You can tell I have been studying my marketing stuff cos’ I used three exclamation marks… no need to say anything. I know… it’s a gift.)

Video Editing Software Company Has Major Meltdown. Listens to Users and Tries to Make Video Editing Fast.

After a few years of following the sometimes sloth-like progress of the consumer video editing software market one tends to get lulled (not lol’d) into a kind of hypnotic trance.

The steady to and fro of the various players in the game swapping back and forth between each other trading features and minor oneupmanships (OK, if that isn’t a word it now is cos’ it’s my blog and I say so!) settles into a steady, rhythmic pattern.

It’s like watching a prize fight between two octogenarians… in slow motion.

One adds Dolby then the others add Dolby, one adds transitions in the overlay tracks then the others follow and on it goes.

I have another website where I list my choices for best video editing software at the consumer level. The actual order of the list has not changed for two years now!

They all keep improving but it seems that they do it at exactly the same rate. I keep waiting for one of them to do something outrageous, something unexpected… in word something intelligent! They never do.

In the background throughout all of this operating systems have been fighting tooth and nail to get ahead, hardware has been aggressively improved and changed and video file types have been transformed completely.

So too have the expectations and needs of the consumers.

All this time the video editing software makers have just kept plodding along tweaking and polishing the same old products built on the same old architecture.

Why? Because it’s cheaper and easier to keep on flogging that same old dead horse rather than burying the poor thing and getting another horse.

The truth is that even I hadn’t noticed this happening until just the other day and what alerted me to it was discovering an upgrade to program where they actually did it.

CyberLink PowerDirector 9 Ultra is not just a bit of spit’n'polish applied to PowerDirector 8 and packaged in a new box.

It is a major rework of the software and with it they went for something that consumers have been wanting for ages… speed.

This is not a review but in the trials I ran on this software it simply smoked everything else in its category.

They have added a bunch of other stuff as well and you can click here to see the full CyberLink PowerDirector 9 Review or the link below to take the trial version for a spin around the block yourself.

CyberLink PowerDirector 9

Ok hold the bus! I am guessing here that Cyberlink have finished the 40% off deal because the banner I was using magically changed to PowerDirector 8 which at the original time I posted it didn’t exist!

So, PowerDirector is still a great piece of software but the whole discount thingy on 7 has probably gone. I’ll do a review of 8 as soon as I can get my hands on a copy.

Cyberlink have just announced another discount running for their home video editing software program Power Director 7.

You can take a look at the Power Director 7 Review here to see if you think it might be suitable for you or take a look at it for yourself at the Cyberlink site by clicking the banner below.

I just received an email from Cyberlink and they are offering Power Director 7 plus two menu template packs at 50% off the normal price which brings it in at about…ummm… around $50.00 or so.

As it is Power Director is one of my top choices for video editing software for the home user so that’s a pretty good deal.

Click the fabulous logo below to get to the right sales page otherwise you won’t get the deal.

Well it’s good news and bad news today so lets start with the good news.

DivX announced that they have finally released a version of their excellent DivX Pro encoding software for Mac users. DivX is probably one of the best compression codecs on the market today providing amazing quality from tiny file sizes.

Here’s how they have cheerfully presented it:

“Spring is here and in full swing and with it, we have launched our newest product offering, DivX 7 for Mac. With HD Playback, Gesture Controls, superior AAC, and Support for DivX video creation, DivX 7 for Mac has everything you need to create and play high quality DivX videos.”

And now news from the dark side:

Corel Announces Workforce Reductions

Corel have announced a reduction worldwide in their workforce citing the current economic downturn as the reason why.

Personally I think that’s bollocks (rubbish for those of you unfamiliar with the term bollocks!).

In their annual report to investors last year they blamed many of their products “reaching the end of their life cycle” as a cause for their financial woes. I think more to the point they have failed utterly to develop their products in response to consumer needs to keep them fresh and marketable.

Speaking of marketing… well they just don’t really.

I am sure the takeover of Intervideo last year was a move by Corel to get a hold of some fresh product via the Ulead range of video editing tools and software but then they promptly dumped Media Studio Pro and Cool 3D which were two wonderful programs.

Since then they have been picking over the carcass of Media Studio Pro and incorporating the the pieces into VideoStudio resulting in VideoStudio Pro X2 but unless they get the concept of product development through their heads they will fade from view there as well.

In its current incarnation VideoStudio Pro X2 can hold its own amongst the likes of Cyberlink Power Director, Adobe Premier Elements and Pinnacle Studio et al but this is a competitive market of the quick and the dead. Compare Corel’s sluggish motion on a number of fronts with the all out “balls to the wall” attitude of Magix at the moment.

Magix have come out with all guns blazing with a very, very good consumer level video editing suite in Magix Movie Edit Pro 15 as well as a top end “prosumer” suite called Video Pro X which is clearly aimed at the serious enthusiast.

As an example of Corel’s slow descent into unconsciousness let’s take a look at their “user to user” forums. The old Ulead forum was a hive of activity back in the day but since Corel have taken over it has become a graveyard by comparison. Over 9 months ago problems with the software the board was running on were being reported… and reported… and reported with Corel all the while sitting on their corporate hands doing nothing.

It is hard to comprehend an act of greater business stupidity than to allow one of the most powerful selling points of your premier software to sink slowly into the swamp for the sake of a server upgrade and a $100 software update! Yet that seems to be the case here.

Time will tell as to whether Corel can get their act together or whether VideoStudio goes the way of a few other good programs that fell into their clutches!