For this “First Look” article, Nero AG – Germany were kind enough to send us the new Nero 8 software suite. We’ll be taking a brief run through the StartSmart application, and the various features and enhancements.

Before we start, we will take a look at the company and product information, taken from the company website.
 

Company Information

About Nero

Nero AG develops and distributes the world’s leading digital media solutions for consumers and professionals. Founded in 1995 as Ahead Software AG, Nero is best known for developing Nero Burning ROM, the fastest and easiest software package for burning CDs and DVDs. More than a decade later, Nero continues to lead the digital media software industry with a variety of products, including the all-in-one digital media solution, Nero 8, the current version of the company’s flagship product.

Created by a prominent team of international software developers, Nero products are renowned for being unrivalled in stability and comprehensive for both computer beginners and experts. Available in 26 languages, Nero products are used by more than 240 million users worldwide at home, in schools and universities, businesses, and by computer professionals.

Nero’s portfolio of products defines new levels of innovation in the company’s key areas of focus. Nero delivers digital media solutions through multimedia applications that let the user create, burn, edit, share, connect, and enjoy their data, audio, video, photo, and TV content. Nero also provides world-class technology for encoding and decoding digital audio and video files into dynamic content that is functional across the spectrum of digital media devices from mobile phone displays to Full HD resolution.

Nero sets itself apart from the competition by producing exceptionally user-friendly products, maintaining a policy of offering continual free updates for select products, and providing outstanding technical and sales support. This service, along with the reliability of Nero’s award-winning products, is why so many OEM manufacturers choose to bundle their hardware products with Nero software.

Nero provides worldwide coverage through Nero AG headquarters based in Karlsbad, Germany and four regional offices around the globe: Karlsbad, Germany (EMEA); Glendale, California, USA (Americas); Yokohama, Japan (APAC); and Hangzhou, China (China).

What’s new in Nero StartSmart 8?

Nero StartSmart, the Nero 8 project launcher has been redesigned to let users burn discs directly and access features quickly and easily. The new user interface gives users access to Nero features according to categories including:

• Create and Edit
• Home Entertainment
• Rip and Burn
• Back Up

Nero StartSmart 8: Direct Feature Access

• Prime digital features can be completed directly in Nero StartSmart: burn data by drag and drop; burn audio data in popular formats; rip audio CDs faster with a semi-automatic process; copy a disc with fewer clicks.
• Integrated RSS Newsfeeds offer current information about updates, special offers, and handy hints from Nero.
• Faster application start-up.

Nero RescueAgent: Data Recovery

• Recover lost data due to scratched discs, interrupted recording operations, bad recording quality etc.
• Restore deleted files or previous versions of files from ISO/UDF discs.

Internet upload feature

• Simple, one-click upload of video and photo content to online communities, such as My Nero, YouTube and MySpace.
• Video content from online communities can be downloaded directly and played back with Nero ShowTime.

What enhancements are in Nero 8?

The applications NeroVision 5, Nero WaveEditor 4, Nero Home 3, and Nero ShowTime 4 have been optimised and include new features:

Nero Vision 5

• Newly designed menu authoring function with powerful features to let you easily create detailed menu navigation structures.
• Enhanced menu transition effects
• New SD and HD templates, 3D DVD menu templates with Smart 3D. Customisable animated 2D templates with video background option
• Menu templates: 12 new static templates; 12 new 2D dynamic templates; 3 new 3D templates.
• Burning and authoring support for High Definition discs, including Blu-ray, HD-DVD, and AVCHD (a separate plug-in is required for HD-DVD authoring and playback, BD authoring, and BD-ROM playback).

Nero WaveEditor 4

The toolbars in the application work area can be individually organised, including turning the panels into separate windows.

Nero ShowTime 4

Integration with the My Nero community gives users a direct connection, to be able to view friends’ videos in Nero ShowTime.

Nero Home 3

• Expanded integration with Nero Vision and Nero Burn Plug-in for MCE. Individual menu templates can be created within Nero Vision, and then used with Nero Home and the Nero Burn plug-in for MCE.
• New SD and HD templates, new 3D DVD menu templates with Smart 3D
• Animated 2D templates with video background.

Optimised features for Windows Vista

Nero DiscCopy Gadget

• Copy a disc in any format with just one click
• Attractive, animated skin
• Minimal user interaction required
• Designed as a value-added feature to the 32-bit Windows Vista edition

Rich Preview Window

• Preview window for Windows Explorer
• Displays audio, video and photo files without opening the file.

Live Icons

• Offers enhanced browsing of thumbnails
• Supports a wide range of multimedia files
• Supports viewing of embedded album art for Nero Digital Audio+ files.

Test Machine

• Motherboard: Dell Dimension E520
• Processor: Intel Core2Duo E4300 (1.8GHz)
• RAM: 2GB DDR2-533
• Hard Disk: 250GB Seagate ST3250820AS SATA-II 7200RPM

Windows XP Pro SP2 was installed on this machine.

Let’s head on over to the next page, where we’ll take a further look at the StartSmart application….

Conclusion

Program Run-through