Software Store: Nero Burning ROM 5.5 Software

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And Now, the plain truth,you know how it is! We all don't have 30 hours to read over the enclosed digital manual. Futhermore, with so many applications on my computer it will take me several years to really utilize the power of all my software suites. When I intially purchased my current computer: IBM 500 MHz P3, 256Mb,17HD windows 98. My Sony 4X cdwriter was bundled w/ Adaptec Easy CD Creator 4.

I have been using Easy CD4 for about 3 years without ever making a so called "coaster". However, I have only made direct CD copys or created a Audio CD from scratch. Again, never having any sort of problems. But when I was told by a friend that I could also make "mixed mode CDs" (A.K.A. Extra CD,Extended CD and CD Plus)I said what?? What is a mixed mode CD.

After diving into the Easy CD4 manual, sure enough there was the documentation and how to notes. After doing some reading and reviewing I finally said forget it. Too much toggling back and forth between the help file and the software. Later, while on the internet. I was reading a review about buring Video CD's and the like. I said WOW, I can do that with Easy CD4? Once again I dove into the manual but this time I couldn't find any documnetation with regards to burning Video CD's. Before I go on, some quick notes and review:

Some basic stuff you can do today with a CD burner: Create

1. CD-ROM - a CD with computer data

2. Audio CD - a CD with Audio tracks such as WAV or MP3 files. *If burned using a CD-R, Music can be played on a computer,a consumer DVD player and almost all Consumer CD players. *If burned using a CD-RW, Music can be played on a computer, some DVD players and most likely won't play on your consumer CD player be it Home or Automotive. - - *Applies only to CD's containing Wav. audio files/tracks.

3. Mixed Mode CD - a CD with Audio Tracks followed by computer data, such as a video file or web page. This is very similiar to some current music cds that will have an artist's music and a short music video - refered to as Enhanced CD

4. VCD or SVCD - a CD containg video files. "Video Compact Disc" "Super Video Compact Disc" The latter will contain video files in the form of the MPEG2 format. ( Better Resolution then Super Video Tape but less than DVD ) In addition, a SVCD can contain a slide show of picture files such as a jpeg file that you create and organize in any order.

5. Hybrid CD - a CD that can be played on a Windows OS or a Mac OS platform.

7. Etc.

Why?? You ask have I bothered to list all of these types of CD formats. Because, I think software engineers should design software and GUIs that enable the user to get the most out of their product. After all, we all shelled out the money. The last thing we want to do is have to pay again for an additional reference book, video tutorial or evening seminar. After 3 years of using Adaptec CD Burning software I was only using perhaps 80% of its potential worthiness. However, with Nero 5.5, new tasks with regards to CD burning was brought to my attention in less than 3 days while simply navigating through the software and wizard. Moreover, I was able to create all of the CD's listed above in less than 2 days. Many of which, Adaptic does not support. In short, Nero has a great little wizard that aids you through the CD burning process. then, when you become more of an audio engineer you can go it alone and utilze even more editing and authoring tools. This is just some of the stuff that made me smile within the Nero Burning software:

1. Recognizes both of my CD recorders and their properties.

2. I can now designate the pause time between audio tracks 2,3,4 5 etc. seconds between tracks.

3. You can burn CD text info onto your CD which many high end Home CD players recognize.

4. Several audio filters to manipulate your audio sound.

5. If you are a DJ and mix cd tracks so as to have no pause between tracks you can create a track list eventhough you have one long audio track. The track pointer can be put exactly where you want it.

6. You can fomart a CD-RW, then while working on your computer, if you want to write a file to a CD you simply Drag & Drop over your CD-RW drive and the file will be burned. Takes 2 seconds and you continue doing whatever.

7. Ever have this problem. You burned a audio cd. You listen to it and some tracks are either louder or softer in volume than others. With Nero you can make all tracks have the same volume

Finally, this list can continue for at least 6 more points. Without question Nero has won me over. My hat goes off to the German Software Engineers who designed and created this CD Burning software. Thanks......Nero

CD Creator works fine under Windows 98, but the problem is I use XP now and to burn a CD requires that I maintain a double- boot configuration and boot back into 98 to write a CD. This is a little inconvenient, so I was hoping to get something that would work with XP. Two support techs said they use Nero and it's worked for them, which CD Creator didn't.

I bought Nero, but unfortunately it doesn't work very well, either, at least on my system, and it's a 2 1/2 year old HP Pavilion that is pretty typical, with nothing special in the way of hardware or software. I tried burning 3 CDs right off the bat, and it locked up in the middle of two of the three. The only one that worked was a much smaller credit-card CD that burned okay, and they only hold about 50 megs. The two other CD's were the larger ones and were for several hundred megs, and it never got to the end.

Nero also seems much more sensitive to potential read/write problems. Both of the CD sessions that hung in the middle had a dialog box pop up just before they hung, saying that a read from the disk had encountered a problem, and did I want to continue? I said yes, and it went on, then a minute later the program hung, so it probably wasn't related to the bad read. But when I tried to burn the same information with CD Creator under Windows 98, it never complains about any read problem from the hard disk. In any case, you don't want the entire session to get screwed up because of one bad file; it should just skip that and continue on. Also, Nero didn't say which file was affected, only that there was a problem. In that case it might as well ignore it and just continue anyway.

I also haven't tried the Nero packet-writing feature, which allows you to just drag and drop files onto the CD without firing up the entire Nero program and going through the usual file selection and burn session process. Maybe that would be more successful, but I found this to have problems occasionally with CD Creator under 98 so I've never tried it.

Nero's interface is simpler than CD Creator's, but I like the latter's more detailed interface and the greater amount of information displayed, and it allows you somewhat greater control over the different options. Many people might not care about this, and I wouldn't either if Nero actually worked well under XP for me, which it doesn't.

So unfortuately I have to give the thumbs down to Nero although I had high hopes for it. For now I'm continuing to boot back into Windows 98 and hope that soon there will be a fix for either Nero or CD Creator that will work with XP.