Image and video fun with Nero 6 Ultra Edition

About this article

FIGURE A

RIGHT (click for larger image)

Over the years, we at ZATZ have had the opportunity to publish articles by some well known authors and true experts in the field. When we set out to review Nero 6 Ultra Edition, we really wanted to find someone who truly understood the product. No one could possibly have a better, comprehensive perspective of Nero than Wallace Wang, author of The Book of Nero.

The Book of Nero published by No Starch Press (at http://www.nostarch.com/nero.htm), guides readers into understanding the various features of Nero, one of the most powerful CD and DVD burning programs on the market today. We're thrilled that Wally's able to write this review for us.

And now, Wallace Wang's review...

Nero's greatest strengths involve burning music and data to CD or DVD, but Nero also includes several features that may be of particular interest to both still and video photographers interested in storing and presenting their work on CD or DVD. This article will cover those features.

Making a slideshow

While you could store digital images on a CD or DVD as just another collection of files, Nero gives you the option to arrange your digital images in a slideshow complete with background music and visual transitions that appear between each image.

No matter how perfect your digital images may appear, they may still contain a few blemishes such as appearing slightly darker or lighter than you might want. Rather than rely on a separate digital editing program like Adobe Photoshop Elements to modify your images, you can modify your digital images directly within Nero itself. It's nice to be able to quickly modify the brightness and contrast of an image.

Once you've edited your digital images, you may want to add special effects to them. At the simplest level, you can rotate images or make them appear as negatives (dark images appear light and light images appear dark). Nero also includes features to pinch or swirl images as shown in Figure A, or apply filters so your images can appear as if seen through a mosaic.

Just looking at a slideshow of images might be interesting, but Nero also lets you add a background soundtrack of your favorite music. Once you've arranged your images in the proper order, added transitions and a soundtrack, you can burn the whole thing to a CD or DVD to distribute to others.

Capturing, creating, and playing a video

If you have a digital video camera, you can use Nero to record your video directly to a CD or DVD. In case you're one of the handful of people able to watch TV shows on your computer, you can use Nero to record your favorite shows on DVD for you to watch later.

More important than capturing video is Nero's ability to edit it as well. On a basic level, you can trim your video to remove unnecessary footage. On a more advanced level, you can add transitions between scenes, add visual effects to your video, and type in text to appear as titles over specific frames of your video.

Since trimming video manually might take a long time, Nero even offers a special trimming feature that detects scene changes and cuts your breaks your video into separate clips automatically. After you've edited your video, you can then add a soundtrack to it and then save the whole project.

Most people are likely to save their edited video to a DVD but Nero also supports lesser known video standards including VCD and Super VCD discs, which are two video standards that let you store video on CDs. You can also export your video back to a digital video camera or compress your video to a much smaller size so you can email it to someone. With so many export options for your video, you should have no problems saving your video in a format that you need.

Nero also includes a video player that can play DVDs or a variety of video file formats including MPEG and AVI. By using Nero's video player, you can watch view your edited videos before giving them to someone else.

Is Nero right for you?

If you want a quick solution for burning digital images or video files to CD or DVD, then Nero is the program for you. It's simple, but effective, image and video editing tools also insures that you won't have to invest in a separate image and video editing program, like Adobe Photoshop Elements or Pinnacle Studio, just to edit your image and video files before burning them to a CD or DVD.

Of course, Nero isn't without its drawbacks. Because Nero crams so many features into a single program, it's inevitable that the sheer multitude of available commands will intimidate and possibly overwhelm a beginner. To partially overcome this problem, Nero includes a special StartSmart menu, which lets you choose a particular task you want to do and then Nero loads the program most appropriate for your particular goal.

Despite Nero's bulk and complexity, the program offers plenty of features that can meet the needs of everyone from the casual digital photographer to the professional who wants to store their digital image and video files on a CD or DVD. Nero may not be an indispensable tool for digital photographers, but it's the next best thing if you want to save your pictures and videos on CD or DVD.

Wallace Wang is the author of The Book of Nero 6 and Steal This Computer Book, both published by No Starch Press. Besides writing computer books, he also performs stand-up comedy, having appeared on A&E's "Evening at the Improv" and appearing regularly at the Riviera comedy club in Las Vegas.