Taipei (Taiwan) - CyberLink is known mostly for its PowerDVD software and brilliant Magic Sports, but the company keeps on expanding in other areas as well. PowerDirector is their version of video-editing software, and latest version brings full support for BD movie authoring.

All the talk about Blu-ray and HD-DVD movies was all nice candy and dandy, but the sad fact that both camps forgot to hear were demands from end-users, who honestly more care about holiday pictures and movies being captured in best possible way.

We received numerous questions from readers about HDMI-in, since massive number of HD video cameras has the output, but to no avail. Both ATI and Nvidia want to hear only about outputting HDMI audio/video signal, instead of capturing it and enable users seamless capturing of their home movies. Of course, all the manufacturers are happily giving away user freedoms and presuming that everybody is a pirate (HDMI-in could be used for seamless capture of movies from DVD/BD/HD-DVD players, for instance).

But if HDMI-in is still outside realm of possibility - CyberLink is at least providing software that will enable authoring of Blu-ray discs (both BDAV and BDMV formats are supported). If you’re picture-in-picture nut, you’ll be happy to hear that your video can contain up to six independent PiP tracks, and use key frame for adding special effects and motion paths. All in all, your home recording of a race/match/game or holiday can become quite memorable and get almost professional-grade results.

Staying in tune with social networking this and that, CyberLink opened DirectorZone, a web community where users can upload, download and share templates for menus, frames, motion objects and a lot of other features. Web-enabled features include direct access to Flickr and Freesound. You can browse and download photos and audio tracks and use it for home production. Fair usage policies from those sites apply.

Application works with capturing video from HD/HDV camcorders, splitting audio into 6-channel Dolby Digital experience and burning the whole result in DVD or Blu-ray format (or iPod, PSP, AVCHD or Flash Video/YouTube).

All in all, PowerDirector 7 features quite an impressive feature set, yet user friendly. Just like most of CyberLink applications, PowerDirector 7 is available in two variants: Deluxe and Ultra. Deluxe will set you back for $69.95, while Ultra goes for $119.95. You can see differences between the two on this link.

We’ll be checking this software out for our first tradeshow, and see can this baby replace stripped down versions of Adobe Premiere or Ulead’s Video editing tools, two favorite applications when it comes to video editing software bundle with graphics cards, sound cards, digital cameras etc.