Nero Burning ROM 11

Still the best pun of any software product name, Nero Burning ROM 11 is available standalone for $49.99 direct, or you can get it from within the company's new, free consumer media organizer, Kwik Media (free, 3 stars); it also comes as part of the Nero 11 suite. Burning ROM was updated with Nero 11. New for this version of Burning ROM is its SecurDisc feature, which can protect your burn project discs from scratches and deterioration. The software includes class-leading DVD and Blu-ray movie project authoring—the latter of which you won't find in its closest competitor, CyberLink Power2Go ($49.95, 3.5 stars).

Setup

Nero Burning ROM 11  is available in a free, feature-complete 15-day trial download. The reasonable 122MB download lets you choose whether to install an updater, the ancillary RescueAgent utility, and help files, and then goes through multiple support file installations, including control center and runtimes. A reboot is required, and the installation process tries to install a browser toolbar and settings, but, thankfully, you can uncheck those options in the installation wizard.

Interface

At first run, you'll see a Welcome dialog, which succinctly summarizes all of the program's capabilities in four categories—burn & copy, disc images, audio & video, and Tools & Specials. Aside from this welcome, Burning ROM's interface is a lot less friendly and more dated than that of either Ashampoo Burning Studio ($49.99, 4 stars) or CyberLink Power2Go ($69.95, 3.5 stars). The company has been putting all its efforts into Kwik Media, while letting Burning ROM languish. The app does helpfully add an entry to the AutoPlay dialog that pops up when you put a disc in your drive, but there's no quick-burning gadget like those offered by Ashampoo and CyberLink.

When you close the info dialog, the New Compilation dialog covers the main program window. From here, you can start a data, music, or video burning project to any of the three optical disc types, CD, DVD, or Blu-ray. You also get the choice of mixed-mode CD, in which one disc can act as both an audio CD and a data disc. Each project type offers several tabs with very detailed options, such as multisession, spanning multiple discs, file system, and write speed. The interface had a habit of opening new main program windows often when I chose a new activity or a disc was inserted in a drive, even popping up the Welcome screen again.

Music
To rip an audio CD with Burning ROM, you head to the Extras menu and choose "Save Audio Tracks..." The program helpfully looked up the album and track names, and even showed the album cover art in the ensuing Match dialog, where you verify that the correct album was found. Ripping the 60 minute Buena Vista Social Club CD to 192kbps MP3 files took 2:20 minutes, compared with 2:03 for CyberLink Power2Go  and 2:02 for Ashampoo Burning Studio . The default output was Nero AAC (mp4), which took 2:25 minutes. There was no indication of time remaining, though progress bars for each track made the process clear.

Burning the same music to a blank CD took (using Nero's "Ultra Buffer") took a swift 2:25 minutes, the same time it took Power2Go, and faster than Ashampoo's 4 minutes and NCH's 6:30. But the program didn't offer the music CD contents I'd just ripped to burn to a new disc. And when I chose the Copy option, the program didn't detect the music CD in the drive. Once I selected the song files to burn, the program displayed a useful thermometer-style bar across the bottom, representing how much of the target disc's space would be taken up.