Nero 5.0 preview - Page 1

Press Release:
The official release of version 5.0 of Ahead Software's, Nero Burning Rom will be April 30th. There have been extensive enhancements to what is already being called the 'Emperor of CD Recording software'.

These include Multiple Burning options, or simply the ability to write to more than one CDRW at the same time (retail version or upgrade purchase). The new engine has improved multi-tasking capability, allowing both greater stability and improved speed.

Super Video CD support has now been added, allowing the capability to record MPEG2 files directly onto CD. At its maximum rate, a SVCD can store around 35 minutes of video in DVD quality. Along with Super Video CD, you can add still images and create a slideshow on a Video CD disc for playback on your pC or stand alone players.

Nero 5.0 now has significantly enhanced audio filters. You can now test the filters in real time and apply multiple filters simultaneously. New filters include a Karaoke filter, which cancels the voice track of music and a Cross Fading filter, which allows the blending of songs into each other. Also new is a Split function, which allows for the easy (multiple) splitting of a sound file. This is ideal for large wave files containing whole LP sides. The user interface has been improved to make playing with sounds extremely easy and fun.

During 1999, Nero became the first CD mastering software to incorporate MP3 encoding and decoding. This is further extended in 5.0 with the support of M3U playlists. These files contain lists of audio files in ASCII text format, meaning they can be edited using the Windows program Notepad, for example. They are read by most MP3 playback programs and can now also be read and generated by Nero. If such an M3U playlist file is dragged into a Nero audio compilation window, then Nero will add all audio files of the M3U playlist to its audio compilation automatically.

Nero again looks to the future by supporting Twin VQ, the audio compression system developed by NTT. It is now possible to encode and decode Twin VQ files, which typically are much smaller than MP3 files, at a better quality.

Nero 5.0 supports a CD and title database allowing you to find title and artist information on a given audio CD. The title and artist information will be stored within the audio file, if the file format supports this kind of information [VQF (Sound VQ), MP3 or WMA (MS Audio)]. The powerful database allows to store an almost unlimited amount of CD titles and songs, and access them very fast. As an example, the FreeDB-Database with more than 1.000.000 song titles can be imported to Nero and then each entry can be accessed in less than 0.1 sec.

Support for the copying of CD-Extra discs is now possible, and for the retail version a CD label kit will now be included. Nero users can check the upgrade policy.