kengland4's Full Review: Ahead Software Nero 6.0 for PC (160006)
My sister-in-law called on me to create a photo slideshow for my nephew's christening within 24 hours. She said she'd drop the CD's off at 2:30, but her brother delivered them at 8:30, and I started the project around 11:30. I initially used Roxio Easy CD and DVD Creator, which I wasn't very familiar with, but, after many hours, decided to go with Nero, which quickly did a very slick job. It's a good thing, too, because only the Nero disc worked in the end.
Nero was both easier to use, quicker, and looked a lot better. In addition, despite the title, I was told that I had to "upgrade" to create anything more than a video-CD with the Roxio software. This, after several painstaking hours of tedious work. Then Nero came to the rescue.
You simply load your photos into Nero from your source disc or folder, which, for 300 pictures, took about 10 minutes on my 750 Mhz Athlon rig. That's the hardest part. I had tried to arrange them in the folder beforehand, so I didn't try to reorder them. I right-clicked on one of the spaces between the pictures, and selected "insert random transitions," or something or other. I didn't bother with rotating all the pictures upright, although I could've selected all of the pics that needed, for example, to be rotated 90 degrees clockwise, and done it in one go. With the Roxio title, I had to rotate each picture individually, which took a really long time.
I could've added a musical background, such as an MP3 file, or recorded from an audio source, such as anything that will go into the sound card's inputs (ie. microphone, record player, etc.), but this seemed too complicated. I couldn't insert multiple songs to play through the show with either Roxio or Nero, so that is one caveat, but the finished product looked slicker even without the music. The Roxio product will play an entire song, or a recorded narration, but will only attach it to ONE PICTURE, so you could look at at pic of, say, grandma, and groove to Elvis to your heart's content, but who besides grandpa would want to do that? In the end, I hooked up a CD player to the big screen TV's audio inputs and dropped in the CD that she wanted as a soundtrack, and it worked like a charm.
The randomly-selected transitional effects were breathtaking and professional-looking, and I received many compliments, even though I'd left some pictures sideways. It made the viewer look forward to seeing what the next transition was going to be, which greatly added to the fun. This show actually made the evening (it was shown at the reception following the christening), as the food took a while to come, and we simply replayed the 24-minute show with slightly different music.
I've used prior iterations of Nero, with fair success, as well as Roxio Easy CD & DVD Creator, and this (version 6.6.06) is by far the easiest and most comprehensive suite I've seen. The Nero Smart Start Center is simple and straightforward enough for the lamest amateur to turn out great-looking CD's, CD-videos, Super VCD's, DVD's, and even mini-DVD's (a regular video CD, but with enhanced DVD-like features and quality, but not tested). In addition, you can make DVD's with MP3 or WMA music files. In fact, there are so many features that I will only be able to further discuss those which I primarily use this product for--converting video files to DVD and VCD format, and burning data CDs and DVDs.
Starting with the great graphical interface of Smartstart, you can access all of Nero's features, and it's great fun just to explore all of the power at your fingertips. If you have a video file ready (ie. mpg or wmv), you can be encoding a DVD, ready to burn, in about 90 seconds. You just click on "Make Your Own DVD-Video," then "Add Video Files," which Nero checks for errors, then "Create Chapters," where you pick the parts of the film where you want to appear as graphic thumbnails in your menu--you simply move the slider over, and click the button when you see the frame that you want to appear. Click "next" 2 times, enter your header and/or footer, "next," Preview the finished product if you like, "next," then select the recording device, make any final settings, like burn speed, then click "burn." It doesn't get much simpler than that.
Suggestion--always record to the image recorder, a virtual recorder which is actually a location on your hard drive. This creates an image file, which can take 1-8 hours or more depending on your processor speed, but from which you can burn as many copies you like at about 7 minutes apiece at 8X for a full disc (and about 15 minutes at 4X). If you however pick your DVD or CD (for CD-Video files), and your burner doesn't cooperate for some reason, then you'll have to start all over, which usually means quite a few wasted hours and several frustrated people. Another suggestion is to never try to burn a disc at higher than the rated speed of the disc. Even though your drive may complete the burn, the disc may not play correctly on your DVD player, and you'll have the additional frustration of having to either reburn at the slower speed (assuming you kept the image file), or completing the viewing of the film on your relatively tiny computer monitor.
Burning music DVD's is straightforward. You simply make the selection from Smartstart, browse through your files, and select the tracks you want. Nero error-checks the files, and you can drag the tracks up and down, or right-click to do the same. The slider along the bottom shows you how much space is left on the disc, and the duration of each song is listed. There are also detailed options for how the disc is burned (speed and so on), whether to fade the music in and out between tracks, how long the silence is between songs, etc. When you're finished, click "burn." Again, you can also first burn to an image file if your burner is picky. I imagine burning music DVD's is similarly simple, but I have not tried this.
Burning data discs is similar to the music process. Simply browse and select the files, watching the bottom slider which tracks the amount of disc space used. You can delete files you don't want. There are the usual options of enabling overburn (not recommended, as damage to your drive could occur), which is burning more data than your disc is rated to hold, enabling Joliet, more than 255 characters for file names, etc. So much more than you'll ever use or need. Simply select the safest options and click "burn."
Nero will also rip DVD video into Nero digital format. Although you can watch a commercial DVD ripped into this format and stored on your hard drive, you won't be able to produce a backup copy of your disc onto a blank DVD. For this, a free tool, easily found, called DVD Decrypter is available to remove the copy protection so you can easily create legal backups of your own DVDs. You can then use Nero's "copy DVD" option or, better yet, the also free tool (and easily found), DVD Shrink, to again, and I stress, legally back up your own DVDs. Nero has myriad options for copying just the main movie, the entire DVD, or totally rearranging the DVD, including menus, or just removing them altogether.
Nero also includes many miscellaneous tools. With a video capture card, you can capture TV, camcorder, DV, VCR, etc., files, which you can eventually put on DVD or CD-V. There's a great set of tools to test your CD or DVD burner and examine its capabilities in depth. And lastly, you can back up your hard drive to CD or DVD media, although I haven't used this. With previous versions of Nero, you had to backup every bit of your hard drive, instead of just what you wanted. I don't know about you, but I don't want to span 160 GB of my drive over about 40 DVD's. Better to use a dedicated backup program like Norton Ghost, which I use and recommend.
Another reviewer mentioned being prompted to upgrade in order to use certain features. With my product and version, I only encountered one such message, and this was after updating the product several times via the web. Upon adding a video file to make your own DVD, it will give this message--"Due to patent restrictions, MPEG-4 decoding is not available..," but that you can add this feature by installing the retail package or web version. The product will allow you to continue creating your DVD, but I believe some of the highest-quality options in this area has not been completely implemented, for some apparently legal or technical reason, and I believe this is reflection of Nero's dogged and unending pursuit of perfection. And, if I'm not mistaken, MPG-4 is a version of the newer DIVX format. Nero does encode DIVX files, but, apparently, not at the very highest quality (but superbly in my opinion).
In short, Nero is the last tool, along with some 3rd-party helper applications, that you'll ever need. From photo slideshows, to encoding video, and testing your drives, it's got you covered.
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