Happy New Year everyone.

I'm a video-editing semi-newb just getting back into the hobby after some years. I got Sony's MSP 13 Suite, and after around 20 hours of messing around, like it a lot. Powerful, accessible, stable, yay ! I'm also at home with the GUI and general workflow as I've used Sony products (Acid, Acid Pro, Sound Forger) for some time now.

Yesterday, I realized, though, that it has a 20 track limit, and while that can be worked around by rendering things to keep the track count in check, it's not always ideal.

So I looked around, decided Vegas is just too expensive for me now, and long story short, got PowerDirector 14 Ultimate on sale. The 100 track count was the main reason; my basic idea was that if I have projects with loads of tracks, I'd create "stem" clips in Sony and then arrange them in PD14.

Only after purchase did I realize -- wow, PD14 is, on paper at least, quite a full-featured editor in its own right, with a lot of cool-sounding features.

Time will tell which I prefer. I don't mind shuffling things between two editors sometime if there's a real benefit to doing so.

For now, though, I have to get to grips with what each does / does best. I already have Steve Grisetti's book on MSP13 as well as a lot of video tutorials. I now see there is also a full book on PD14 , as well as a lot of other learning material out there, including a hefty manual.

Ok, I am willing to learn by the usual methods -- by reading, watching tutorials, trying things out, asking questions ... BUT the thing is .. between this hobby and my main one, music production, I am now really drowning in software to learn. With sooo many features out there I strongly prefer to ration my time by trying to learn about something only if it can offer some real advantage over what I already have / know. There's just so many hours in a day, and so much my ageing brain can absorb.

With that in mind -- would anyone care to share their thoughts -- in your opinion, between MSP13 nd PD14,

a) which would be the better one to concentrate on? This is basically asking, what's the better DAW for a hobbyist, who of course likes cool features, is willing to learn new stuff within limits, but who can't stand bugginess / instability? (I really hate learning a feature which turns out not to work -- or making a full clip or film which turns out not to render -- in the end)

b) if that question is too big / broad, may I ask are there, in summary, things which MSP13 dos a lot better than PD14, and vice-versa? Several years ago I tried PD, and my impression was that while it had some cool, unique / uniquely good FX, it was freezey / crashy as hell. So I ended up using it to apply certain FX to individual clips, rendering hem, and the using them in another editor.

That was many verions ago, in a 32 bit XP world. Fast forward to now (Win 64 Pro, i7 2.7 Ghz CPU, 16 GB RAM). Maybe things have changed?

Anyway, I'd be grateful for any guidance.