Nero Announces Nero 9

[Jason Dunn]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.nero.com/enu/nero9-introduction.html' target='_blank'>http://www.nero.com/enu/nero9-introduction.html</a><br /><br /></div><p><em>"Nero 9 is the next generation of the world's most trusted integrated digital media and home entertainment software suite. It features new cutting-edge functionality that makes enjoying digital media content simple. This easy-to-use yet powerful multimedia suite, gives you the freedom to create, rip, copy, burn, edit, share, and upload online. Whatever you want - music, video, photo, and data - enjoy and share with family and friends anytime, anywhere."</em></p><p><img src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/resizer/thumbs/size/600/dht/auto/1222882321.usr1.jpg" /></p><p>Nero 9 is out, and it consists of an amazing <a href="http://www.nero.com/enu/nero9-applications-included.html" target="_blank">22 different applications</a>. Wow. I'm all for "value for the dollar", but that seems to be getting a touch out of hand. Worse, I can't seem to find anything from Nero on exactly what's new and improved about Nero 9. I've tended to prefer Nero over Roxio in the past, but I'm honestly quite weary of these "mega suites" and all of the files and codecs they vomit all over my system. I have to write up a rant about codec rot this week, because my main media editing computer is in a funked-up state with codecs, and I think I'm going to have to wipe it out and roll it back to a squeaky-clean state in order to get things working again - and let me tell you, I'm not looking forward to that.</p><p>I tend to use Nero only for CD/DVD burning - most of the other apps they bundle with it aren't best-of-breed - so I think I could get by with a pure CD/DVD burning program. Any suggestions? If Windows Vista burned ISO files, I probably be able to get by with nothing at all.</p>

[mar2k]

I canned Nero and I am currently using a combo of ImgBurn and CDBurnerXP (which works great in Vista despite the name). If all you need is the abilty to burn .ISO files to what you can do through the OS you could probably get by with just ImgBurn. I added CDBurnerXP to the mix because I occasionally need to burn a music or data disc and it has the more familiar Nero/Roxio-esque interface. Both are free.

Yeah, the Nero/Roxio packages are definitely out of hand - total crapware bloat.

[John Lane]

Amen! I use it to burn DVDs only - none of the other stuff have I ever used. And this is the 3rd software that has come out where they cannot detail what has improved. That is crazy.

[BugDude10]

FYI, there's a MS PowerToy available for Vista that lets you burn .ISO images. I don't have the link handy, but Google will get you there.

[srsabu]

I second ImgBurn as a great free alternative for burning ISOs. Within the last few versions they've added a decent music cd burning feature as well.

[Jason Dunn]

Thanks for the suggestion on ImgBurn everyone - it looks like a solid application, I've downloaded it and will check it out.

In terms of commercial products, this is one that I like quite a bit:

http://www.roxio.com/enu/products/dvdcopy/premier/overview.html

[bryhawks]

Hi, Jason. Do you know if this product (Roxio Easy DVD Copy 4 Premier) will convert video (incl. Xvid and/or mkv) to the Zune/WMV9 format? I've been having a lot of trouble finding something that will work :mad:, even though there have been many suggestions in this and other forums.

Bryan

[Jason Dunn]

Hi, Jason. Do you know if this product (Roxio Easy DVD Copy 4 Premier) will convert video (incl. Xvid and/or mkv) to the Zune/WMV9 format?

I don't have that version of the Roxio product yet, so I can't say for sure, but here's something that I'm reviewing that works quite well:

http://tmpgenc.pegasys-inc.com/en/product/tms.html

Download the demo and see if it works for you...

[brianchris]

I can't agree more with the bloat that Nero and other similar software contain....I've avoided installing it for years. Why don't they just offer a basic package? A basic customer is better than no customer, isn't it?

Anyway, now that DVD burning is naitive in Vista, the only thing I need such an application for is BluRay burning. Anyone know of a basic app for that?

Actually, Microsoft is preparing to make bluray burning naitive, but I don't think its availible yet: http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=1530

[onlydarksets]

I don't have that version of the Roxio product yet, so I can't say for sure, but here's something that I'm reviewing that works quite well:

TMPGEnc - Products: TMPGEnc MovieStyle Product Information (http://tmpgenc.pegasys-inc.com/en/product/tms.html)

Download the demo and see if it works for you...
I've been using TMPGEnc 4.0 for 1.5 years, and it works great encoding to WMV3 (a/k/a WMV 9). It's MPEG-4 implementation is pretty bad, though.

If you are doing WMV conversion, there is a slider on the second tab of the Encoding screen. If you slide it to the left, the encoding times drop drastically (at the cost of quality, of course, but I don't see a big difference that outweighs the faster encoding speed).

[Jason Dunn]

I've been using TMPGEnc 4.0 for 1.5 years, and it works great encoding to WMV3 (a/k/a WMV 9). It's MPEG-4 implementation is pretty bad, though.

Hmm - really? What makes you say that? I've been using it to encode quite a bit of h.264 content and the results look excellent to me.

[onlydarksets]

Hmm - really? What makes you say that? I've been using it to encode quite a bit of h.264 content and the results look excellent to me.
I haven't done a lot of h.264 (mpeg4 part 10), so I can't really speak to that. For mpeg-4 (part 2), ffmpeg is a much better combo of speed/quality. To get TMPGEnc to produce decent quality mpeg4 output, it takes forever to encode.