Nero Multimedia Suite 10 review
Elsewhere, there's a whole array of useful disc-burning options, from ISO image burning to disc spanning, and also the potentially invaluable SecurDisc feature, which allows you to burn redundancy, password protection and encryption into your optical data discs. Useful for those "customer database left in the back of a cab" moments.
The aforementioned audio-editing applications, although still no great shakes, do offer surprising power, including the ability to produce 5.1 audio mixes for home movies, and support for VST plugins.
Video editing
But the most significant upgrade comes courtesy of Nero's video-editing application - Nero Vision Xtra. Where the previous version offered a streamlined, easy-to-use interface, yet basic facilities, Multimedia Suite 10 adds a series of much more serious features.
Foremost among these is support for more tracks - you can now add more than just the one main video track, so enabling picture-in-picture support and an array of other effects.
There's a wide array of the latter too, including chroma-keying, colour correction and rotation (in addition to the useful ad-detection tool from the previous version), and all effects can be animated via keyframes.
Thanks to Nero's efficient collection of video codecs, the most impressive thing is that editing HD video won't require a PC of Herculean power. We found editing 1080p AVCHD footage (shot on a Panasonic SDC-TM700 camcorder) a smooth and responsive affair, and only once three or four demanding effects were applied did playback in the editor begin to stutter.
Throw in Blu-ray authoring, CUDA support for AVCHD encoding plus Facebook and YouTube upload options and you have a great value video editor.
Weaknesses
Its main weaknesses are an over-cluttered editing screen, convoluted workflow and an occasionally illogical approach to control placement. Even on a relatively high-resolution screen we found ourselves clicking to expand and collapse the media manager, effects stack and track Properties panes; there's simply too much crammed into one screen.
And we're not too keen on the general lack of stability either - on a couple of occasions, we'd be editing a project only to have it mysteriously and instantaneously shut down.
Altogether, the components of Nero Multimedia Suite 10 go together to make up a tempting package, on a par all round with its main rival, CyberLink Media Suite 8. It even pulls ahead in some departments, with its backup module and superior video-editing power. But stability is a concern, and it falls behind Media Suite in its lack of a Blu-ray playback upgrade option. For us that means CyberLink's suite remains, only just, the media suite of choice.
Price when reviewed: £36 (£42 inc VAT)Laptops
