Menu Creation:  

With PowerProducer you can create a menu based DVD, photo slideshow or a combination of both. With a slideshow you can insert some minor effects like photo transitions. We found inserting music into a slideshow or DVD menu to be one of the easiest we’ve experienced.

One of the best menu features associated with PowerProducer is the online Member’s Zone that allows members access to hundreds of free downloadable templates created by users. However, the other side of this coin is PowerProducer only comes prepackaged with two menu templates. All other templates you have to download from the internet.

We have mixed feelings about our downloaded templates. We found that once you implemented a template into your DVD there is very little modification you can do. You can’t add text or change images. We also didn’t like that you also had to download additional page layouts.

Some menu creation features we would like to see PowerProducer include in the future are motion menus, modifying downloaded templates and more pre-installed templates.

Features:  

Some additional PowerProducer features we really like are the direct to disc video capture option and the included disc utilities. With PowerProducer you can easily capture your home videos from your DV camcorder or minidisc to a blank DVD and skip the authoring process entirely. You can also transfer files from a TV tuner and VCR tapes to DVD. The utilities feature can copy discs, erase discs, export DVD files to your hard drive and read or write a disc image.

However, some of PowerProducers other features didn’t work very well. The playback on the built-in DVD player used for testing the construction of your menu is extremely choppy and the “advanced editing” button requires you have PowerDirector installed on your computer.

Ease of Use:  

Cyberlink’s PowerProducer uses a “next step” model to guide you through the authoring process. When the software launches you chose what you would like to do, create a DVD, edit a DVD, use a disc utility and more. All navigation is located on the left side of the screen. You can import video files and photographs.

Understanding how to use PowerProducer isn’t difficult but we found that the software is a bit of a system hog and the result was longer response time, more frequent error messages and system shutdowns. Additionally we found modifying templates to be a little more difficult with this software than most of the others we’ve reviewed.

In the menu edit screen we would like to see more obvious options like inserting new background images or adding text. Another difficulty is since PowerProducer doesn’t come included with templates, frames or buttons you have to find everything online in the Members Zone. Sometimes this is inconvenient.

Quality of Copy:  

Sadly, this is the ultimate reason PowerProducer ranked so poorly in this review. Most of the strange features and some of the system freezes we could maybe look past, but in the end you are using DVD Authoring software to create a physical copy of your memories and the DVD PowerProducer created was well below expectations.

We authored a couple of DVDs using PowerProducer. The biggest problem with every DVD we created was we were unable to navigate once our video started. We could not skip chapters, even in Play All mode, nor was the DVD able to return to the menu screen. Once the video started playing you were stuck. We had to stop the DVD and eject it from the player to return to the menu screen. This problem was farther complicated by some of PowerProducer’s defaults. By default the software programs your DVD to start playing about five seconds after your menu displays on your screen.

Additionally, we found the quality of the templates we chose poorly translated to a television set; there was a lot of screen flicker and the copied video had some strange pauses.

Ease of Installation/ Stability:  

Although stability issues are quite common among system intensive software like DVD Authoring or Video Editing, PowerProducer crashed more frequently than any other program we reviewed. We found that PowerProducer uses a significant amount of computer resources and often froze while performing what seems like simple tasks, importing, chaptering or playback.

We do not suggest you use any other applications or windows at the same time as this software. This is rater unfortunate considering you have to download a lot of menu options from the internet for customization.

Help/Support:  

PowerProducer includes a built-in user guide, online FAQ and a downloadable user guide. Cyberlink also includes a couple of online tutorials about authoring a DVD and direct to disc recording but we noticed that the screenshots depicted in the tutorial are from a previous version of the program.

You can also contact Cyberlink through an email ticket or telephone. Telephone support starts at $29.95 for a two month package.

Cyberlink software has a reputation of being decent software; however, we found the constant system crashes to be a nuisance and the DVD quality is unacceptable.

For more reliable DVD Authoring software that produces an excellent DVD see the top three products, DVD MovieFactory, Sony DVD Architect Studio or AVS DVD Authoring.