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Nero 7 Premium
Think of disc burning software and one of the first names to pop into your mind will probably be Nero. After all this software product has been around for a good many years and it is a popular choice for manufacturers to bundle with their rewritable drives. Following its brief flirtation with the Matrix theme with Nero 6 Reloaded, the latest version of the software is entitled Nero 7 Premium and arrives in a distinctive flip-top box.
Those with previous versions of the software will find that the members of the Nero family are not prepared to co-exist on the same system. Fortunately Nero 7 Premium carries out the removal of earlier versions before installing itself, so saving you the bother. Since its early days as disc burning software for the more technically minded, Nero has made strides to improve its usability and has spread its sphere of influence into different areas of digital media and home entertainment as it takes up 600MB of hard disk space for its files. Extra storage space will be required for any content you create.
Presenting a front-end view of the available features in Nero 7 is the Startsmart launcher which offers the user a task-based interface. You select the task required and Nero will automatically launch the appropriate application. The range of features covered is as if the developers have decided you will be able to burn, create, edit, share and enjoy your digital media without ever needing to leave the confines of Nero 7 Premium.
When it comes to burning, there is a choice of Nero Burning Rom 7 and the more user-friendly Nero Express 7. Both of these modules allow you to burn data, music, pictures and videos to disc with more hand-holding being available with the latter module. Support has been added for Blu-ray and HD-DVD for those luckily enough to have a burner capable of handling these formats. There is also an improvement in the Nero Digital format which now includes video and AVC (Advanced Video Coding).
Whether you work with DVD, DVD VP, Video CD, Super Video CD or miniDVD, Nero Vision 4 provides the tools you need to record, edit and burn files with associated menus. If you just need to copy DVD tracks that are not copy protected then Nero Recode 2 should fit the bill. Nero BackItUp 2 provides a similar function for archiving media content using various types of storage locations.
Bundled under the heading of Nero Toolkit are programs to test the speed of drives; create test media for data and audio; adjust the read rate for discs; repair discs; and provide feedback about drives, discs and software. Packet writing is possible with InCD 4 while audio falls under the remit of Nero Wave Editor 2 and Nero SoundTrax 2. Cover inserts and labels can be created and there is support for LightScribe.
Before burning your digital images to media you can carry out basic editing tasks with Nero PhotoSnap. Help in keeping track of all your media files is provided with Nero Scout which searches your hard disk and catalogues appropriate files. The database created is made available to the various programs making up this version of Nero.
Bringing all the media content together into an entertainment centre environment is the task assigned to MediaHome. This application lets you control access to different types of media categorised as audio, pictures, video and television. Unfortunately I was unable to fully test this feature of Nero as it failed to recognise my Pinnacle TV capture card.
Nero 7 Premium is a powerful collection of tools that will take care of all your digital media needs. At around £50 it is great value for money although its lack of support for my television capture card does have to be taken into consideration. Nero 7 Premium will run on any version of Windows from 98 onwards requiring on an 800MHz Pentium III processor with 128MB of RAM.
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