Nero Multimedia Suite 10

Over the years, the two biggest names in disc-burning software – Nero and Roxio – have steadily built their products up into vast, all-conquering multimedia suites, including features such as video editing, format conversion, DVD authoring and music streaming on top of the basic remit of recording stuff to blank discs.

Of the two, Nero has traditionally taken a more straightforward approach, providing a powerful, no-nonsense set of tools, but arguably offering less in the way of hand-holding and integration.

With Multimedia Suite 10, however, Nero amalgamates three separate facets of its software range into one unified suite. The main Burning Rom tool is still there (and now includes Blu-ray burning as standard, though it still can’t be used to actually play Blu-ray discs), along with tools such as Sound Trax for digitising old LPs and Cover Designer for printing CD and DVD sleeves.

But this time, they are joined by a revamped video-editing package, Nero Vision Xtra, and a fully-fledged backup utility, Nero Back it up and Burn. Similar features were included in previous versions, but Multimedia Suite 10 introduces some big improvements.

Nero Vision Xtra, for instance, has gone from being a simplistic editing program to a multi-track, timeline-based video-editing program along with some advanced effects, such as support for chromakey (green screen). It also includes an improved version of Nero’s Smart Encode technology, which can now create high-definition discs from HD camcorder clips without the need to re-encode the footage (assuming your camcorder records in a compatible format, such as AVCHD), saving a lot of time and preventing potential loss of quality.

Multimedia Suite 10 also includes an interesting feature called Media Hub, a kind of one-stop shop for organising, playing, sharing and basic editing of your digital photos, videos and music. Media Hub provides a quick and easy way to make photo slideshows, listen to music playlists, post videos on Youtube and so on, rather like a cross between Windows Media Player and Google Picasa.

It’s certainly easy to use, but whether or not you actually need another media player in your life is another matter. It’s also slightly confusing that the suite includes Media Hub alongside the existing Smart Start, which is in itself a ‘hub’ for launching the various utilities contained in Multimedia Suite 10.

Though Media Hub has a simple, accessible interface, this approach is not consistent throughout Multimedia Suite 10. Many of the tools – including Burning ROM itself – remain a little more like the nuts-and-bolts Nero of old, though we’ll admit that this isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Effectively, it means that there’s something here for everyone, from inexperienced users who just want something to burn the odd disc without any fuss, to experts who want total control over their media files and the ability to rip, copy, burn, convert, edit and share just about anything.