softofobia: Nero

Nero 7 Premium enables you to experience your digital media in completely new and innovative ways. With the addition of a Nero Home media manager, you can now have the complete PC and TV experience. Whether you want to access your media files from the comfort of your living room, or complete digital media projects on your PC, Nero 7 Premium is all you need. Now, with more features than ever before, this powerful software can transform your digital photos into professional animated slideshows, backup all of your valuable data, manage or search your media files, edit video or photos, create DVDs (including menus), and stream your files over a media server, and compress files to take on the go. Beginners and experts alike will be amazed by what one solution can do. Really, it's that good.

- Quick & easy access to all your digital media files from the comfort of your living room using a remote control
- Integrates TV time-shifting, DVD, video, photo and audio playback
- Easy wizard setup and user interface
- Support for all popular media formats
- Powerful database for storing and organizing of media files into playlists
- Advanced search options
- Complete multiple tasks concurrently

For all the Pyros who love to burn

This second review will be focusing primarily on Nero's main 'Burning' functionalities. The apple doesn't fall very far from the tree with Nero 7 Premium. With many upgrades, burning any sorts of file format is still a breeze. Get ready to buy a whole lot more CD's.

What Nero's made of:

Nero SmartStart� This central hub of stockpiled information lets you access any application within Nero. It's the starting point of all audio, video, backup and recording tasks. From here you can customize your own preferences within the 'Favorites' menu.

SmartStart is very customizable, allowing you to choose which specific Burning application you want to burn with. You can specify burning programs for specific purposes, like using SoundTrax to burn audio CD's, or if you have a general job you want to burn, just go ahead and send it directly to Nero Express.

The interface is always easy to understand since it's set up like a wizard. All you need to do is just keep on hitting next button until you finish the job. I only wish other things in life were that easy.

For the music junkies out there, get ready for a treat. I liked how Nero's SoundTrax looks and feels. You get yet another simple interface with lots of options. When creating a multi-track project, it lets you see how much space you're allotted, what songs you already have on there and how you can mix/cut/fade/ and bump them into each other to create a professional sounding mix that you can make at home.

SoundTrax also gives you the options to make CD mixes, multi-track stereo projects, 5.1 surround projects (with discrete channel and auto-LFE options), and surround 7.1 projects with the same options in 5.1. It's a good burning interface for audio-only projects. Other options include the S.T. Wizard, which it lets you transfer your LP records to CD's or your tape recordings to CD.

For the more technically advanced users who don't really need the simplicity and aesthetics of the SmartCenter, you're able to bypass the eye candy and jump right into the nitty gritty approach to creating any visual, audio, or other types of projects.