Review: Nero 9 CD burning software

There was a time when merely burning a DVD required extra software, and Nero’s Burning ROM was one of the best tools available for that job.

These days, with Windows Vista quite happy to burn DVD discs on its own and loads of free tools available for Windows XP users, it’s easy to understand why the company has packed its flagship product full of extra tools.

The main Burning ROM tool is present, and with tools to create bootable discs and tweak burning settings it’ll appeal to expert users.

Those who don’t want to mess with the finer points of the DVD file system will feel more at home with Nero Express, which uses a simpler task-based interface where the user can choose a project then drag and drop files.

The latest version of the Backitup tool isn’t included in the suite, but there’s a copy on the DVD that can be installed separately.

Also included on the disc is a trial version of Nero’s Mediahome UPnP media server – given the significant price of the Nero 9 package we were disappointed that a full version wasn’t included. Similarly, authoring HD Blu-ray discs requires an extra plug-in that costs $10 (£6).

Most of the extra programs in the Nero suite work well. Photosnap is a simple photo-editing tool that allows non-technical users to perform the most common retouching tasks – cropping, fixing red eye, and so on – with a couple of clicks. Nero Vision has a slightly ugly interface, but it’s a capable way to edit home movies, add titles and transitions then burn the results directly onto a DVD disc.

Nero Rescueagent, which was previously able to salvage files from optical discs only, can now use other media, and we successfully used it to recover a deleted file from a USB thumb drive. The Nero Live program, which can show and record TV, seems slightly redundant given that most Vista computers will already have the excellent Media Center PVR tool.

Some of the other tools in the suite have some noticeably rough edges. Nero Recode is still a great way to squash DVD movies down so that they’ll fit onto a single-layer disc, but it also includes tools for converting video files into a format that will play on an Apple iPod or Sony PSP.

We failed to successfully convert any files using the iPod setting, which produced only an assortment of Directshow errors, and we had no luck with the Sony PSP setting either. On a related note, the task of converting video to iPod is one of a few that we found oddly absent from the otherwise helpful Nero Smartstart tool that guides users to other parts of the suite.

Also missing from Smartstart and buried in the settings for Nero Vision is the option to upload finished videos directly to the web. Myspace and Youtube are supported alongside Nero’s own My Nero service, but we were unable to successfully upload a clip to our Youtube account – after encoding and transferring, the video seemed to disappear. We encountered other annoying errors, too, such as help files that linked to nonexistent pages on the Nero website.

It’s important to note that these errors affected only peripheral areas of the Nero suite and that the main disc-burning tools, as well as the key functions of both Recode and Vision, worked fine. Nonetheless, at this price they’re annoying, so hopefully an update will smooth out these problems, and leave Nero as a good, if slightly pricey, tool. For current users of Nero 8, though, we can see little reason to upgrade.