A few changes have taken place on the 3.0 interface. Older PowerDVD builds STRAINED when using FAST FORWARD or REWIND. That made using the JOG-WHEEL speed control rough, as on slower systems, the sudden speed shifts the wheel provides could freeze the player. Now, the speed control system has been optimized. The controls work much smoother, and so the JOG-WHEEL works much better now. Also, for FRAME ADVANCE when a movie is PAUSED, Cyberlink has added 2 buttons specifically for single frame forward/backward navigation, on the OSCAR interface, they are on either side of the main JOG-WHEEL. On other skins, they may or not be available, as the skin buttons are only what the artist chose, and so far only OSCAR and SUBMARINE include the frame buttons (small note, the frame-back button moves to the last keyframe, which can be upto 1-15 frames back).

Another neat visual feature is BOOKMARK BROWSING. I've said in the past that bookmarking was nice, but hard to manage because most players simply use NAMES or TIME-INDEX location when you list saved BOOKMARKS. So, if you have 10 bookmarks saved, you will have to REMEMBER which Name/TimeIndex takes you where. It's either that or trying them all till you get where you want to be. Cyberlink have heard these pleas! They now offer a BOOKMARK VIEWER.

(the image size and colors were reduced for page formatting)

The bookmarks are listed in thumbnails to SHOW you exactly where in the movie the bookmark points to. WAY COOL! UNFORTUNATELY, on the Test System I couldn't use the Viewer unless I disabled HARDWARE ACCEL.