Guillotine

So you just bought a new DVD writer and while loading the software you get yet another copy of Nero Essentials. If you are like me you usually delete the program as a worthless pile of junk. Typically it winds up requiring you to buy the full version to enable the encoder for whatever happens to be the current standard video codec (h.264/MPEG 4 at the moment), and even on the features that are included it usually did a so-so job. It also tends to be sluggish.

Well… This week I needed to burn some DVDs… From MPEG 4 files as it happens. I tried several free online programs and trials only to get lousy results (from choppy picture to missing sound), or a watermark. Now I could live with a watermark… If they didn’t take up 1/4th of the screen. Finally I decided to break down and buy a full DVD suite. The major players being Roxio, Cyberlink, and Nero… Ulead was not considered because I downloaded a trial version with hideous results and a lousy interface (and I’m usually a big fan of Corel products so was terribly disappointed). Roxio looks nice, but it’s quite expensive… Cyberlink I’ve used before and liked the program, but it comes in two versions… Standard for around $79, and the Ultra at around $130. Well… Some of the features I wanted were only available in the Ultra version, and I wasn’t quite ready to drop $130 on software I will rarely use. I was really starting to miss my Mac with iMovie and iDVD right about then. The only remaining product for consideration was Nero 9, and as I mentioned above I have never been impressed with their OEM bundle versions.

Read the rest after the jump.

At $59 with all features included it seemed like the best offer going at the time. Another point is that if you have an OEM bundle (or at least a valid serial number from one) you can get an upgrade for $49. Looking even better, so I took the risk and went for it.

To say the least I am very impressed. The full version seems about 1000 times better than the bundled versions. The interface is smooth and rather quick as well as being pretty straightforward to work with. It encodes at a respectable speed, and has a very easy to use and very flexible menu creator. I was able to create some rather impressive custom menus for my DVD s in a matter of minutes. I’m used to programs that give you a template and customizing is worse than programming a VCR. With Nero 9 it is rather simple to make truly custom menus. It even allows you to add custom graphic and animation elements or even animated backgrounds.

The the quality of the final product is rather impressive as well. Several of the clips I was burning to DVD were Youtube videos, and with complete control over the encoding quality I was rather shocked when viewing the DVD s, and seeing the Youtube clips came out much better than I expected or have seen from other products. It seems to have cleaned them up quite a bit in the encoding process, and while it’s not exactly HD it is still quite passable.

So what else??? Another nice bit about Nero 9 is that it’s an all in one program. Rather than using Movie Maker to edit, then going to Quicktime to encode to h.264, and finally transferring it all into a burner program Nero does it all. It includes a video editor (that looks at first glance to be every bit as good as Windows Movie Maker), A file encoder that allows you to export movies (and audio) without using a separate program, and of course the burning suite which handles just about every type of CD, DVD, and even Blu Ray media. It even has a built in application to create LightScribe labels in program. It also includes a Wave editor so I may finally have a program to create MP3s besides Audacity.

I honestly have to say I was extremely surprised and impressed with Nero 9. A very worthwhile purchase, and half the price of similarly outfitted suites from other companies. I am willing to bet they would do much better if they worked on their OEM bundles a bit more though… They are not exactly very good representations of the full version, and more likely to wind up in the trash bin than to entice people into buying their product. If not for taking a risk I probably would have shelled out the extra cash for Cyberlink rather than basing my purchase on the OEM bundle (the serial number does make for a nice $10 off coupon though so I guess it wasn’t a total waste). All in all if you have been hesitant about buying a DVD suite I don’t think you can go wrong with Nero 9, and for the price it’s quite a good deal even for someone like me who will barely get any use out of it. I find the money is well worth it for the few occasions when I will need it.