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.



Nero Core is the essential tool most burning functions. This application gives you the option to burn: ISO's, Audio-CD's, info CD's, Video CD's, Super Video CD's, miniDVD's, Boot disks, hybrids, UDF.ISO's and more. I personally use about a third of the total options that are offered.

It's not as fun to play around with, but it's a quick way to get a job done when it comes to knowing what you want.

When it comes to getting what you want, Nero supplies its customers with more than enough. With Nero Recode2, you get to enjoy easy as pie burning without any hassles. Just make sure you read what you're actually allowed to do. Nero's been kind enough to remind us that we're allowed to recode any "non-copy-protected DVD."



You get the options to recode any DVD to DVD and leave out any unwanted subtitles that were included, or remove unwanted video content. You're also able to recode a main movie to DVD, remake a DVD and, finally, you can recode any DVD or movie to Nero Digital, an MPEG-4 filetype.

Recode2's walkthrough's are easy enough for a trained monkey to follow. But don't worry, even if you're not a trained monkey, you can still figure out how to use the recoder.

Nero Vision has got to be one of the most enjoyable video editing programs that are on the market. Not only is it used for editing, but Vision lets you make a Video/Super Video CD, make movies and slideshows. But the most useful thing in my opinion is the fact that it lets you capture images from video to your hard drive.

I think that this, along with Nero Express, is one of the most practical things Nero has to offer. You record a show that you don't have time to watch that very second, so you go ahead and burn it onto a CD/DVD within the very same program. Very practical indeed.

Finally, we've come to the icing on the cake. Nero Express. It's one of the easiest and reliable applications when it comes to any burning project. It's adaptable to any task from video recording to audio, to video and audio. You can grab, slash and mix data files with audio files, video files with data files… and so on…

This concludes the more in depth coverage of Nero 7 Premium. Now the end results.

The good

It's still fast, it's still easy and it's even better. When it comes to burning, you really can't get any better than Nero period. This package is great since it includes easy to use video, audio and data burning applications.

The Bad

I feel as though they overlap the functionality of a lot of these apps. With Express you can do any of the following video, data or audio burns without opening the specified one. Although I understand the use of specialization, Express can easily handle nearly any job you will probably do.

The Truth

Nero premium 7 is a great overall package. It has applications for nearly every burning aspect. Although it's a bit pricy, there's good reason since it includes incredible applications for specified uses while staying generally open to user's needs.

Check out the screens below: