Last month we looked at the Adobe Production Suite so this month we decided to look at another video production tool, this time from the low end of the market. Cyberlink's PowerProducer 4 comes in around the $70.00 USD mark is Vista ready, has Blu-Ray authoring in-built and a myriad of other features.

New features in Version 4 include:

• Authoring DVDs, Blu-ray Discs and HD DVDs.
• Capturing High Definition Video
• Burning videos or photo slideshows to multiple disc formats
• Editing videos and photos
• Storing photos and videos on a DVD, Blu-ray Disc or HD DVD
• Creating slideshows
• Creating personalized discs with menus, effects and music

With support for capturing high definition video up to 1920x1080, 25mbps MPEG-2, the quality is exceptional. There is also support for widescreen (16:9) video content ... so films are kept in their natural display ratio.

There are new magic tools Magic Fix, Magic Style, Magic Cut and Magic Clean which stablize, sharpen, remove red eye, add style themes, trim, match backgrounds and reduce noise on audio tracks. With the bonus of a great GUI the home enthusiast is going to love this package.

There is also a new menu template which provides around 61 new menu designs as well as, on the title front, allowing for the inclusion of both regular and widescreen titles on one disc.

PowerProducer 4 earns a thumbs up ... its good value for money, has enough features to excite the home enthusiast and its easy to use. Its all good news for video producers.