Nero 12 Platinum review

Over the years Nero’s created various apps to look after all the media viewing, editing and sharing you could reasonably want. In most respects version 12 is a relatively minor update, but it’s officially Windows 8 compatible and also includes a few useful new features.

You can buy the key Nero apps individually, but the full suite reviewed here includes Nero Burning ROM and Express disc-authoring software, along with the Kwik Media organiser and viewer, Nero Video, Nero Recode and Nero BackItUp.

MEDIA MOGUL

This version of Kwik Media is a subtle update to version 11. The interface is mostly clean and simple with photo and video content displayed in a timeline or in user-defined albums. You can search by filename or tags and easily share content via email or to online communities including Flickr, Facebook and YouTube.

KwikMedia is a good photo browser, but editing options are very limited

Kwik Media supports a good range of file formats including FLAC lossless audio, but it doesn’t make a very effective music player; there’s no way to enqueue a second set of tracks to those playing without creating a playlist, for example. Image-editing options are similarly basic, and are limited to simple actions like cropping or red-eye removal. Surprisingly, there’s no basket or similar device to let you tag multiple files to be burned to disc as you browse; you first need to install the free Kwik Burn using Kwik Media’s integrated Market. The key update from version 11 is the addition of media streaming, through which Kwik Media makes content available to DNLA and UPnP aware devices on your network. The free Kwik WiFi Sync app, available for Android, lets you stream media from a mobile device to your PC.

SAVE THE DATA
BackItUp is simple and reasonably competent backup software that now supports USB3 backup destinations and hard disks larger than 2TB. We got off to a shaky start when we clicked Drive Backup and were immediately prompted to install a driver and restart, but we had no problem after that. Backups are as simple as selecting a source and a target, although ‘destination’ would be a clearer term. You then set simple options for naming, compression and the schedule to run. You can choose full or incremental backup types, but differential backups aren’t supported.

Creating a backup is easy, although advanced options are limited

Advanced options include the ability to run a command immediately before or after a backup, but you can’t split backup archives into smaller files and the options for purging old backups are limited to the number of iterations to keep; you can’t set maximum disk space, for example.

VIDEO EDITING

We were impressed by the previous version of Nero Video, and it’s changed little other than support for AVCHD2 and, in the Platinum edition only, a new image stabilisation feature. Nero Video is one of the suite’s more comprehensive apps. It supports import and export from a variety of sources, such as directly from a camera or internet service. It also has a wide range of editing effects and transitions. You can use source videos, soundtracks or other material in your video project to create a finished film which you can then save, burn to disc or upload straight to YouTube.

Nero Video is a decent editor, but it didn’t like our 30fps AVCHD Lite files

It’s not particularly easy to use, though, and we encountered a few snags. Rather than just taking you straight to the main editing view there’s an intrusive welcome screen that displays each time you start the application, forcing you to select one of a big range of tasks. Rather than starting a new project by opening an existing video file, you must import it, at which point you’re prompted to select the options for the movie you’re creating – something you may not want to decide until the end.

We found Nero Video’s Welcome screen unwelcoming

Once the project is underway you can import additional source material or drag and drop it into place. We encountered playback issues with AVCHD Lite files taken from a Panasonic camera despite Nero’s comprehensive AVCHD support. The camera’s 30 frames-per-second framerate wasn’t supported: on playback the audio track was perfect but the video ran at twice the correct speed.

NERO HERO

Nero Burning ROM has changed little over its past few iterations, but without doubt it remains the highlight of the Nero suite. It’s a robust and comprehensive burning program, supporting all the optical media and disc types you could ever need. There are a couple of interesting additions in this version, the most notable of which is the new DiscSpan feature which helps where the files you’re trying to burn won’t fit on a single disc. Cleverly, this can burn your files to any mix of Blu-ray, DVD or CD discs, simply adding a file catalogue and extraction program to the last disc in the set. Files aren’t encoded, so you can read them from any PC, but you’ll need to run the extraction program to recover any large files spanned across two or more discs.

Burning ROM’s new DiscSpan feature helps you span big files across multiple discs

Nero Burning ROM and Nero Video are fairly powerful, but they help underline the comparative simplicity of other software in the Nero 12 Platinum suite. Overall, it’s a patchy experience. None of the applications are bad and most are easy to use, but only Burning ROM is truly class-leading in its own right and it’s available separately for £40.