NERO 9

Good (but Not Perfect) Media Creation



Every fall since 1995. Nero and archrival Roxio have come out with new versions of their media creation suites. Since these suites made their debuts, many of their functions have been incorporated into operating systems or are available as freeware. Nero 9 is the better of the two titans this year, but the question still remains: Is either of these monstersuites still worth its price?

One capability in Nero 9 that you can't get in Windows or Mac OS X is B1u-ray authoring and burning, although I did encounter some problems during testing. You can also burn ISO disc images, and you get data recovery along with the Nero Live TV-watching software. Nero has also added some subtle changes to its interface with this version. including the ability to play. rip, burn, copy, and back up content right from the main window. without launching another of the suite's applications. Vision, the suite's video-editing component, has a simpler, more workflow-oriented interface, which aggregates the whole process of adding videos, transitions, effects, and text overlays with the process of authoring and burning a disc. For DVD burning, there are several ways to go about this, and Nero's burn time for our test image was 18 minutes, far better than Roxio's 35. Nero has also added Gracenote support for finding song and artist information tin music files, along with a Music Grabber
feature to capture soundtracks from videos and add diem to your MP3 library. Some downsides to Nero are that it crashed a couple of times during testing and that the setup is cumbersome and time-consuming.



The Nero suite also includes PhotoSnap and PhotoSnap Viewer, the latter of which duplicates existing viewers in Windows and Mac. Its Edit button takes you to the full Nero PhotoSnap, which lets you do things like crop images and fix red-eye and lens distortion. A couple of nice extras are the hot pixel fixer and the JPEG Artifact Remover. And the RescueAgent file recovery tool can back up either to local storage or to Nero's online service (for an extra fee). So while Nero wins over Roxio this year. I did not award either an Editors' Choice, because neither is as polished as it should be for the money-Neil Rubenking

PC Magazine January 2009