Burning Wars

David Shamah, The Jerusalem Post February 14, 2006

Hoo boy. I just spent an afternoon with the bigwigs of CD/DVD burning programs – Nero 7 Ultra and Roxio Easy Media Creator 8 for the PC, and Roxio Toast 7 Titanium for the Mac. Let me tell you, if you've been restricting your burning activities to the occasional MP3 or media backup, you're missing out on a lot of potential power.

All three of these programs are, without question, the ultimate in software interfaces for their platforms, with slight differences and emphases, of course. Whatever use you ever imagined for your CD/DVD burner, these programs can do it. When it comes to DVD burning, for example, Toast Titanium can make up for the “iDVD blues,” as many who have tried to manipulate that program's strict discipline term it's obstinacy; Toast lets you get beyond the 1 hour iDVD burning limit and gives you far more flexibility in encoding, among other things.

As far as the PC programs are concerned, both EMC and Nero have similar tools, but with different orientations; EMC lives up to its name by trying to be as easy to use as possible for non-techies, rolling up all its functions in easy to identify tabs on the main screen. Each main tab heading – audio, DVD, backup, etc. - leads to “drill down” specific functions for each major task. Nero supplies similar tools (so similar, in fact, it's as if each company somehow managed to get advance copies of the competition's products), but utilizes a “suite” philosophy, with each function, built on tools formerly sold separately, available as a separate function in the program's folder, or from the single Smart Start window.

It really comes down to a matter of taste as to which one you'd want to buy, because along with doing the same things, they cost the same too (about US $80). But you get a lot of bang for your 80 bucks with both EMC and Nero Ultra, no question about it. Among the capabilities shared by both are the ability to do all the usual burning type stuff, including create ISOs (disc images), MP3s, and of course, all flavors of video discs, including DVDs, VCDs and SVCDs. There are all sorts of innovations as well; you can burn a WMA disc to be played on a sound system that supports this format, or, more interestingly, a music DVD disc, which can hold oodles of MP3s and play them through the home theater system connected to your TV's DVD player. Nero has a feature called Nero Home, which is supposed to evoke a Windows Media Center device interface. Nero touted this as a big deal, but it just didn't do it for me.

With both Nero and EMC, you can import video from files, DVD discs (importing the audio/video_ts folders), directly from a DV camera, or even from a video card connected to a VCR or TV set. Both programs also have the built in video editing and authoring capabilities, making them a “one stop shop” for video copying, editing and burning.

For editing, at least, I'd have to put my money on EMC. The easy to use and understand timeline was very reminiscent of iMovie (although not as easy or interface-simple, to be sure), whereas the Nero version, which also had significant capabilities, but its interface was a bit too stilted for my taste. EMC also now incorporates PhotoSuite, a program you have probably come across in the past bundled with cheap scanners and other graphic equipment, and probably didn't think too highly of. But in its latest iteration, PhotoSuite shines, and although it's no Photoshop, it's got plenty of sophisticated tools for graphics, including layering and masking. Once completed, you can move your pictures onto a CD, slideshow, a calendar or greeting card – or even a CD cover, which EMC will print out! On the other hand, you have to hand it to Nero's professional level (I thought) audio editing tools, which, if you are an audiophile, will let you make music sound better than you thought possible, as well as Nero's single interface to convert between audiotapes and MP3s. And Nero also has a built in component to print CD cover art. Also check out Nero Recode, which brings real portability to DVDs by allowing you to copy all components of a disc between hard drive and DVD.

And I've only scratched the surface! If you're used to the simple pleasures of Nero 5 or even 6, for example, you'll wonder where all the new “stuff” in these two latest editions came from. Indeed, some – many – have accused both of including a lot of “bloatware,” bundling useless features that few users are going to want. One man's bloat is another's feature, I suppose, but if you want effective and simple, you've got to use a Mac – and burn your media with Roxio Toast Titanium 7, which I found point for point easier to use than either of the PC programs (although it does not include a movie editing component - but of course your Mac already has its built-in iMovie). For Mac users, Toast's biggest innovation has to be support for Divx movies, which will allow you to compress your movies more effectively than iDVD is willing to do, thereby allowing you more movie per DVD.

Although Toast does not have an iMovie style video editor, it does have iDVD style authoring tools, including the ability to burn a movie with menus, using built in titles or inserting your own photos for the opening menus. Toast interfaces with iMovie and iTunes to search for file; you can also significantly compress your movie, as mentioned, and you can fine tune the compression settings. Toast can also do incremental backups, DVD or CD covers, and slide shows (using the bundled Motion Pictures HD). I also have to say a word about Toast's music editor CD Spin Doctor; while I was killing myself trying to figure out Audacity for music editing, this was sitting unused on my hard drive – and I lost precious hours by not using it to convert my cassettes, to MP3s because it's far easier to use than Audacity. And that's what's really great about Toast – it's simplicity. In four tabs, it covers almost all the functionality of the fancy PC programs – but you don't have a headache after learning how to us it.

Ds@newzgeek.com