Nero has released a new major update, Nero 7.5.

Of particular interest:

• AVC / H.264 High Profile encoding, with multithreaded encoder
• Blu-ray and HD-DVD support
• new version of Nero Mobile music player for PDA and SmartPhones
• Improved mp3PRO support

Main page
Download link

Thanks, just one question: Yahoo! Toolbar not present anymore or not optional anymore please?

I too cam curious about the Yahoo! Toolbar. I guess I will see in 3.5 hours. One additional comment/question though (it has nothing to do with audio encoding):
When will Nero Recode 2 support high resolution mepg-4 AVC encoding with the iPod profile? The newer 5.5G iPod support mpeg-4 AVC video encoded up to 640X480 and 1500kbps. Additionally, Apple updated the older 5G iPod firmware to be compatible with these higher resolution and higher bitrate videos.

If Nero Recode 2 supports high resolution mpeg-4 AVC encoding in the iPod profile then thanks.

Now I will have to wait and go through all the new features, thanks.

Cool now i'll just wait for the micro installer version for it.
Blueray and HD DVD support too, one step ahead I see. Drives cost $1000.

Won't it pay off for Nero to address the size issue at some stage? It would sure make a lot of people happy. The package has increased with 60MB again to 189MB. I can't imagine Nero likes to waste as much bandwidth as possible?

it's only 189mb until you try to install it... then you'll have over 500MB of crap in your temp files folder (which never gets deleted) plus whatever gets copied over to the program files folder. IOW you'll have over a gig of Nero on your disk if you do a default install.
Thanks garf, it's a pretty good chunk of programs despite the size.

One more thing: how come you no longer state below your avatar you're a Nero MP4 dev Garf?
Did I miss something?

Garf, what about interlaced support in newest H.264 encoder? I heard that Nero 7.5 still doesn't have it.

And, can new H.264 encoder fully utilize future Quad-core Intel, Core 2 Quadro?

One other quick question, when is Windows Vista compatibility coming?
thanks

Nero is following the lead of Microsoft... and Adobe... and Symantec... and...

It appears at least the AVC encoder is completely broken and generates way oversized files.

I hope your downloads didn't finish yet....

Oh noes!

I still got mine queued in GetRight... will the filename be the same after fixing? And more importantly: When will it be fixed?

Gee, I'd better get it off the queue in the meanwhile...

I just used the AVC encoder a bit ago in 7.5.1.1, but didn't check the file size, it seemed to work great though.

Can you explain how to reproduce?

Finally h.264 high profile!

It was something like 1.5 years between core encoder beeing ready and integration into Nero suite. I was really wondering if it would be integrated one day.

Also, some will notice that now Recode is also using new Nero AAC encoder for the best possible quality.

nevermind

The burning part works reliable, and apart from two annoying bugs (sorting of files in the compilation window and selecting speed for DVD copying) is pretty much usable now. But I seriously haven't seen a Recode version that would work. The ammount of bugs we've seen in Recode is simply ridiculous.

Yes. And it's broken. 1,5 years is too much. During this period 2 high quality H.264 High Profile encoders have released. x264 and Elecard/Mainconcept AVC. Competitors won't wait. Elecard is preparing a really BOMB! New beta AVC is actually very fast with highest quality.

This software is a complete embarrasment.. One of the worst I have ever encountered (since its 7-th version).

I do think we still require arguments and reasons, particularly before making such a generalizing statement.

Garf, can you please answer my two questions (Yahoo! Toolbar and your "title" change)? Thanks.

His reasoning may be bare but I agree with him.

Nero obviously has moved far away from being a burner. For that purpose it *was* the best around, years ago. Now it's just another part of a fat bloated 'shovelware' suite full of stuff that i'm sure most people never make much use of.

I see what Ahead are trying to do. Unfortunately this puts them in the same market as Microsoft and many others who want to own the whole media 'experience' on a users electronics. Like Microsoft you figure that the effect on installing this shovelware on a PC is marginal. Unfortunately your suite doesn't run in isolation. It'll be installed on plenty of PCs with WMP, Realplayer, Quicktime etc. All with their own file association stealing apps and added advertorial crap. Maybe most users don't care but I do. It annoys me when I see someones PC that i'm fixing is slower than mine even though the nominal spec is double that of my own, purely due to all the startup crap installed and 'software updaters'.

And when you do everything, you don't do it properly. Recode is horrible. Burning Rom is now horrible. I use cdburner XP pro nopwadays, which is free, because it does as much as I want. Smartstart is just taking the piss out of the user. I don't know anyone who uses the cd cover generator tool more than once or twice before giving up.

Ahead, please, stop trying to own the media market (you won't), hows about giving us a break and using your undoubted technical skills to create lightweight apps with industry standard GUIs that don't need a gig of space to install? I'd probably buy another license if you did. Thereis a reason that people do remixed lite and portable versions of Nero...

seanyseansean's right, Nero 7 has unfortunately gone the Roxio way, I'm keeping Nero 6.6.1.4 as my main CD/DVD app (burning with ImgBurn tho) but don't mind testing new releases anyway.

well it seems all it offers of high profile is 8x8dct, not much really (ateme supports much more)

There is not much more than 8x8 in the "basic" high profile. The only 3 other things that come to my mind are monochrome, different quantizers for both chroma planes, and custom quant. matrixes.
I don't think that custom quant would fit into a product such as recode.

In my opinion the Nero suite has evolved a lot since the old burning rom days. Acquisition of external software expanded it, but without using a full "integration/merge" phase. Now, it's a big suite of different pieces of software, and users (at least me) are not sure about which one to use for a given task.

(note: this big suite is probably a nightmare to validate, beeing so big and "un-integrated")

However, I understand what they are trying to achieve: relying on just burning would be increadibly risky, Microsoft itself beeing a huge competitor. They are transforming the formerly-know-as-burning-rom into a media suite, and are trying to be a major player in the media/codecs field. It's likely to be a good strategical choice.

The only problem is the "race" to new features and new versions, which seems to prevent a major rework of existing software. To several outsiders, it seems that this suite might be near to the entropy explosion point.

All this is just my own personnal opinion, and I wish that Nero will be able to "restore" this suite.

Or to put it shorter: Ahead has transformed from a technical, product oriented company to a marketing-driven bloatware seller. One sure sign that something is seriously wrong. Hope they don't wait until all the smart guys have left.

As much as i like the Nero devs, i think that the company is doing the WRONG thing. Why do i have to buy a Recode product, if i only want the Burner? Or why do i have to buy the burner, if i only want the recode? Why don't sell the products, as a whole, and as separate entities? Why doesn't the installer allows me to install only what i want? Is not that dificult to do. They can continue to sell the "bundle", if they want, but give freedom of choice.

It does. After customizing your installation, you'll find Nero 7 a very convenient, non intrusive piece of sotware.

last time i tried, i had to manually remove "scouter" or something like that, don't remember the correct name.

Nero Mobile not for Palm, why?

Same here. Despite unchecking all non-necessary thingies, lots (and I do mean lots!) of unessential crap got installed. Like that search-thingy that installs itself to the Taskbar. I surely can do without!

Went as far as searching for related .dll's in the registry... only to discover that there's some 50-ish registry entries that I have to delete to get rid of that turd...

If it were not for my less-than-technical brother and sister-in-law, I would not hesitate to end my use of Nero.

Palm is dead. And the new Palm devices use Windows Mobile, so actually Nero Mobile will work.

http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?t=154953

exactly.

By the way, for me at least, this is a friendly recommendation to NERO, i don't want NERO to disapear, and if i care about it is because i like the app. I'm still using my OEM Nero 5.5 but 6 and 7 got way bloated. Even if i do like Recode2 a lot, i don't have any use for the other components.

Nero Mobile was a huge disappointment. I tried first to play MP3-files stored on my PDA. The program didn't find the files automatically, I had to browse to each folder containing music and mark every track within them to add them to the library. When doing this the program crashed several times. Then I tried to play it back. The tracks were played in random order, and I can't find a way to sort them. The sound was OK, but it was difficult to fine tune the volume - it was either way too loud or too soft. I tried to encode an album as Nero Digital files. This sounded fine, but was still played back in random order. The program was supposed to support album art, but that was not displayed, although the album art was present in the same folder as the music files. Next I activated Nero Media Home to play back streamed TV or music over wifi. The program found the TV channels and music folders on my harddisk. But when I clicked nothing happened. I don't know how long time I am supposed to wait before anything happens with this, but I think I waited long without anything happening.

Perhaps I am doing everything wrong. Does anyone else have better experiences?


best wishes

Trondis

Thanks for your report!

Unfortunately, Nero Mobile still does not index the files on the first run, but this feature will be added very soon.

As for the crashes - please send me more data to my PM / e-mail and I will make sure this gets fixed as soon as possible.



Will be checked.

Also, to all people using Nero Mobile - please feel free to send or copy all the feedback to me. I am responsible for this product line and I will review all your comments / suggestions with the greatest attention. Thanks for your help!

Same, um, nearly, here.

I am not against Nero, per se, I have many nice memories about Nero... until 6.

I do hope Nero will return to its lean & mean roots.

Edit: And that thread given by DARcode should not be necessary... If only Nero will honestly provide an option during installation to not install the farking Scout.

It's a guess, but that feature probably only works for album art embedded in MP4.

Should be easy to fix, though.

Garf?

I didn't see any Yahoo toolbar, but I'm on 64 bit Windows, so I don't even know if perhaps Yahoo toolbar simply doesn't support that.

I think that if it would be required, more people would have bitched.

I would love to do that Ivan, however I'm using a, according to Garf, 'dead' Palm PDA called the Tungsten T5. Surely an Intel 416Mhz XScale CPU, 256MB non-volatile RAM and a 3,7'' 320 x 480 TFT are hopelessly outdated specs indeed. Also the vast amount of decent medical PALM OS available and the continously updated medical software from e.g. Skyscape don't help me at all to get me fast and reliable information every day in my profession as a children's doctor.

Please, Garf, in this thread you say 'we still require arguments and reasons, particularly before making such a generalizing statement.' only to make, in your very next post, the evidently generalizing statement 'Palm is dead' with little to no argument or reasons at all! I respect and appreciate your work and the time and effort you take to inform and help us on this board but I just had to say this.

/sorry to astray offtopic here...

Uhm, I pointed out that Palm has switched to Windows Mobile for their future devices. What exactly don't you understand about that?

If that's not enough: their marketshare is one of the fastest dropping ones.

http://www.palminfocenter.com/news/8564/ga...rt-for-q1-2006/
http://www.itwire.com.au/content/view/5228/53/

Look! Now you're bringing 'arguments and reasons'... However according to your own sources:



True, the new Treo 700 sports Windows Mobile 5.0. But still the sale of 'legacy' Palm & Treo and the vast amount of Palm OS machines people bought in the last 2-3 years certainly remain substantial. Not substantial enough for Nero to think its commercially viable to release a Palm OS based Nero Mobile? Ofcourse that's their decision, I cannot judge that.

Palm OS dead? Dying, slowly, perhaps. In any case your 'Palm is dead' phrase remains a 'generalizing statement' for which you gave and still have arguable 'arguments and reasons'.

Legacy devices?

Nero Mobile decodes and plays audio & video. Attempting to do that on a device that is too slow to actually decode the video and/or has a tiny resolution is not going to get you many happy customers.

If you want legacy Palm applications, there are good solutions for Windows Mobile. I happily use StyleTap to run some of the more interesting Palm applications on my Dell Axim.

But to target a *new* application to Palm OS? Not the best allotment of resources, IMHO.

With 'legacy' I meant the older Palm OS based PDA/Smartphones.

The Tungsten T3, Tungsten T5, Tungsten Livedrive and the Treo 650 have a >400MHz Intel XScale CPU and a screen size/resolution comparable to Sony's PSP and the new 5.5G iPod. So by no means to slow to decode MPEG-4 Part 2 (ASP) or even Part 10(AVC) or having a too small screen to enjoy video (I regularly do this while traveling by train using TCPMP).

Like I said I can perfectly well imagine that aiming a new application to Palm OS is regarded by Nero as a not commercially sound thing to do. I just find it a pity that me & my IMHO perfectly capable Palm OS based PDA are missing out on the (future) Nero Mobile fun!

/edit

Yes Ivan, quite a bit more than 'Palm is dead' , thank you .

I would personally like to see Nero Mobile running on any mobile/pda/pmp device. That means also that I would be happy seeing Nero Mobile running on the older Palm devices.

However, there are priorities - like:

- Making sure you run on devices that are able to support rich media experience such as e.g. AVC
- Making sure you run on devices representing important part of the market share
- Making sure your product features are up to date, your usability is up to date
- Making sure you satisfy your OEM customers
- Making sure your engineering team is optimally working on the most important features as well

Unfortunately, as you don't have unlimited numbers of skilled engineers in your team, having an unlimited time - you sometimes have to make decisions to prioritize some activities over some other activities - this happens in the software industry all the time - and, no matter how fast you are growing and getting the new blood in, there will still be things that have to be left for the future.

So, in essence - this means that older Palm devices will not be supported this year and the focus is to get Symbian version of Nero Mobile rolling and some more very exciting features - this of course does not exclude the possibility to support older Palm devices at some point in the future, but - like I said, this kind of decision is having to be in line with the priorities and not block something which is maybe more important to majority of people.

I hope this explains it a bit more.

Why dosen't Nero just release a "Nero Lite" version, that has just the Burning ROM? That way you can have a choice of just the burning program, or "everything"
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