Tuesday, February 15, 2022
5:06 a.m. Room 1102, Phannu House
Mae Sot, Thailand
The deed is done. I spent a large part of yesterday purchasing and then installing PowerDirector on this MacBook. I have no idea yet whether this was a wise idea. I know from experience that you can’t make a judgement about technology the same day that you get something. I’ll have to use PowerDirector for a few weeks before I’ll be able to get a sense of whether it will work for me. With technology, there is a very strong tendency to prefer what you are accustomed to. And when you open up a brand new video editing program, your instinct is always to hate it at first. It’s unfamiliar, and you dislike it just because it is unfamiliar, and you don’t know how to do anything. So you have to give it some time. You have to read the manuals and watch all the tutorial videos and learn all the controls and keyboard shortcuts before you can develop an accurate idea of how the program works and what it can or can’t do.
That being said, I can talk about the installation process. And that was a journey. Yikes. Before I could even get started, I thought it would be a good idea to upgrade my MacBook to the new Monterey IOS. My laptop has been bugging me about that for weeks. It was already downloaded to my computer. I just had to do it. But I’ve been delaying, and notifications about this pop up constantly. The thing is that I don’t really need it. The new IOS comes with all kinds of fancy features, I guess. But I scanned the list of all the new features, and I wouldn’t use any of them. But a new operating system can bring other benefits, and I figured I might as well keep my laptop up to date. And it seemed wise to do it before I installed a big program like PowerDirector. I didn’t check a clock for exact times, but this took a long time to complete. I think it took about an hour and a half from start to finish. And the way MacBooks work, it seems, every single system change requires me to input various passwords. That drives me crazy. Even installing a new application from the Apple Store requires passwords. My Windows computers never required that. I felt like I’d been on a technological journey before I’d even started to install PowerDirector.
I mentioned that PowerDirector isn’t available in the Apple Store. I had to go to the PowerDirector website and purchase it there. And this wasn’t a simple task, either. Nor was it obvious. I had to do quite a bit of research to even figure out how this was done. On top of all that, much of the installation information at the website was inaccurate or broken. I bought the program, and I was happy that I was able to use my credit card to do that. Normally, even that fails, as my bank in Canada blocks many transactions from overseas. But then I was staring at a computer screen that talked about a “download link above” and that sort of thing. I was supposed to click on a download link. And there was information about how long this link would be active for. However, there was no such link on the page.
It turns out that you had to download a completely separate program from a different page. This program is the Cyberlink Application Manager, or CAM. And once the CAM is on your computer and you have logged in to your Cyberlink account through the CAM, you will be given the option of downloading the program that you just purchased. But none of this was obvious to me. The entire purchasing procedure talked about clicking on the “download link above”. It even mentioned sending me an email with a download link, an email which never arrived. And this system may have existed long ago. But they now use the CAM. Yet, they didn’t update any of their instructions. I find that this kind of confusion is normal, and I was expecting it. It’s always like this. I know that downloading a new program is not going to be a simple matter. You have to set aside a full morning for a task like that to get it right.
Once I finally had the program up and running, I started working my way through the tutorials and learning about how to use the program. It was a bit of an impulse decision to buy PowerDirector, I have to admit. I’m taking a risk. I could end up investing weeks of study and research to master the program and then find out it doesn’t work for me. But there isn’t much I can do about that. PowerDirector also works on a subscription model. You can’t buy anything these days. You always have to buy a time-based subscription. I ended up signing up for their annual plan. They do have a monthly plan, but it costs $20 US per month. At first, I thought it made sense to just get one month and then I’m not risking so much. But the price for the first year of an annual subscription was $50. That seemed like the better way to go. My guess is that even if I bought just one month, I’d probably buy a second month. It would take me that long to decide if I liked the program or not, And that would already get me to $40. For just $10 more, I’d have the full program for a full year. So that’s what I did.
My first impressions weren’t great once I launched the program. After spending money, you want that little surge of excitement upon first using something. But that’s hard to get with a video editing program. There’s no novelty there for me. It’s not like getting to ooh and aah over a shiny new camera and getting excited about its new features. A video editing program just sits there being what it is. I’ve used so many of them by now, and they all have the same basic parts. There is nothing there to get excited about. It’s just a tool that gets a certain job done. So I tried to temper my expectations and not allow myself to feel disappointed. I have to give it time.
On the positive side, I can already feel the prosumer qualities of the program. And I like that. DaVinci Resolve, as a pro program, was overwhelming. It’s hard to locate the simple tools that I need because they are buried in a sea of complex tools. But PowerDirector is much simpler, and the tools I need are more accessible.
And other than working on videos, that was all I did for most of the day.