Edit, save and protect your important photos, videos, music and PC files with Nero Multimedia Suite 10

Over the past few years multimedia software suites have picked up something of a bad reputation for being overcomplicated. The reason for this is simple enough: these days we all want to do far more with our computers than ever before. With more and more features piled on top of one another, though, it soon got to the point that it was hard to find the tool you needed. Nero Multimedia Suite 10 has a revolutionary new design that packs all the tools you’d expect and several you might not – including expert video-editing tools, reliable backup and recovery tools and Nero’s world-famous disc-burning software - into just three simple-to-use programs. This simple interface doesn’t mean, however, that the software has been merely cut down. Instead it’s packed with professional-quality technologies, but presented in a suite that’s simple and quick to use. For example, Nero Vision uses advanced GPU acceleration technology – but you don’t need to worry about what this means. The upshot is that Nero Vision can use all the power of your PC to edit videos in seconds. This powerful but simple approach starts the moment you open the program for the first time. The Nero StartSmart tool breaks all the key functions of the suite down into four groups: music tasks, video or photo tasks, data tasks and other tools. So, if you want to create a backup but don’t know where to start, the correct tool is just two clicks away – one to choose Data, the second to choose 'Back up data'. StartSmart isn’t just a clever way to launch the main programs in the suite, though – if the job you need to do is simple, it could be all you need. To quickly burn some files to DVD, for example, simply click the 'Data Burning' button, drag the files onto Nero SmartStart and click Burn.

Nero MediaHub is designed to manage all your photos, music and video files so that they are easy to browse, sort and search. It can be set to show photos and videos found in any folder you choose from the computer’s hard disk, and if you’re using Windows 7 it will automatically pick up all the files found in your Photo and Video libraries. Finding the song, photo or video you’re looking for can be a nightmare when you have thousands to sift through, but Nero MediaHub makes this easy: music tracks are sorted by album or artist, while digital photos can be instantly shuffled by year, month or date – ideal when trying to track down holiday snaps. Once you’ve found the photo you want you can view it easily, or attach it to an email ready to share with friends in just two clicks. If the picture isn’t quite right – perhaps it needs rotating, or one of the subjects is suffering from red-eye – then this can be fixed immediately. Nero MediaHub includes three automatic enhancement options, and as well as removing red-eye and cropping photos you can also add a number of artistic effects such as sepiatone. If you want to share photos with friends or family, then Nero MediaHub can help create an impressive photo disc. Simply select the photos and click the 'Create slide show' button to generate an impressive slideshow. This can be customised with a choice of professionally designed themes and titles for the start and end. Once ready you can burn the whole thing to a disc, making it easy to share with friends and family, or even upload the results to the internet. Slide shows created in Nero MediaHub don’t have to contain only photos, though. If you have some video files, whether shot on a digital camera or a camcorder, these can also be incorporated into slideshows and burned to DVD.

Nero MediaHub enables you to make simple slideshows and DVDs in seconds, but if at any time you want more control then clicking 'Advanced Editing' will open the show in Nero Vision 10. This completely updated application provides professional-level video and slideshow editing in an interface that’s as simple as you want it to be. Nero Vision can be used to make a video file for your computer, a video CD or DVD or even a high-definition disc that you can burn to DVD or Blu-ray. If your video files are already trimmed and finished ready to burn, turning them into a professional-looking disc takes just seconds: import the video clips, chose a menu template from the dozens that are included, edit the names and titles and burn the finished project to disc. Often, though, you’ll want to spend a little time editing video before you burn it to disc. This process can be as simple as you want, as Nero Vision’s storyboard mode makes it easy to combine various video clips and photos in order by simply dragging and dropping them into place before adding any effects or titles that you want. If you’re aiming for something a little more ambitious, then Nero Vision is ready to help you. Click once on the Timeline tab and you’ll gain access to a complete multi-track editing system that lets you add and manage as many video and audio tracks as you computer can handle, with precision control over keyframes and effects. There are dozens of video effects and transitions built-in and ready to use, including handy tools such as noise reduction and scene detection. If you’re editing video footage recorded from the TV Nero’s clever Ad Spotter can even help you pick up and delete any advertisements.

Of course, Nero still excels when it comes to burning anything to an optical disc – whether that’s a CD, a DVD or, these days, Blu-ray. Behind the familiar interface of Nero Burning ROM 10 you’ll find several new options, including Nero DiscSpan and SecurDisc 2.0. DiscSpan allows you to burn a large collection of files to an assortment of disc types. So, for example, if burning a backup that takes up slightly more than one Blu-ray disc, there’s no need to waste most of a second expensive Blu-ray – you can simply store the rest of the information on an inexpensive DVD or CD instead. The DiscMerge tool needed to put the pieces back together is automatically included on the last disc, so there’s no need for the recipient of the discs to have a copy of Media Suite 10. SecurDisc 2.0 allows you to scramble the contents of a DVD or Blu-ray disc so that it cannot be read without the password used when creating it – again, the program necessary to view the files is included on the disc itself. Where possible, SecurDisc also burns multiple copies of each file until the disc is full, helping to protect against scratches. High-definition video is fully supported, and as well as burning HD video to Blu-ray discs if you have a suitable drive it’s also possible to write this high-quality video to a DVD disc that will play in many Blu-ray players. As well as these new features, Nero Burning ROM adds a number of smaller tweaks, changes and updates designed to make burning discs simpler. If you find that your disc won’t hold all the files you want to burn, for example, you can quickly switch to another type without creating a new project. It also includes full Windows 7 support, with quick Jump List access from the taskbar.

Burning a DVD disc is a great way to store a backup of a few precious files, but these days most of us have hundreds of documents, photos and videos that need to be kept safe. With that in mind, Nero Multimedia Suite 10 includes a tool that makes safeguarding the entire contents of your PC easy. Nero BackItUp 10 includes an Autobackup wizard that, after being set up once, will make a backup copy of your files automatically every two hours, but also includes complete, customisable options for making a backup of either selected files or a complete drive. The drive backup options make it easy to protect every single thing on your computer – from Windows to your documents and any software that is installed – to either an external disk, DVD or Blu-ray discs or an online backup account. The program also allows you to create a bootable recovery DVD that can be used to restore your computer from this backup even if the system suffers a serious problem and won’t start up. If your problem isn’t so severe, restoring files or folders from a backup is as easy as could be: open the restore menu and in a few clicks you can recover anything from a single file to an entire drive. Nero BackItUp also includes a simple way to synchronise two folders – one on your hard disk and one on an external drive, perhaps. This makes it incredibly easy to keep a simple, instantly accessible backup of a few documents on another disk. Finally, if you’ve ever deleted a file only to realise seconds later that you have made a mistake and there’s no backup copy, never fear: Nero RescueAgent, included in Nero Multimedia Suite 10, can recover deleted files from CD, DVD, a USB memory key or even a hard disk: simply choose the disk in question and it’ll scan to see which deleted files can be restored. And that's just five of the best features of Nero Multimedia Suite 10. Look in the column to the right of this step-by-step guide to download your free 30-day trial version and explore this great new set of media tools for yourself.