Nero 12 Platinum review

Over the years Nero’s created various apps to look after all the media viewing, editing and sharing you could reasonably want. In most respects version 12 is a relatively minor update, but it's officially Windows 8 compatible and also includes a few useful new features.

You can buy the key Nero apps individually, but the full suite reviewed here includes Nero Burning ROM and Express disc-authoring software, along with the Kwik Media organiser and viewer, Nero Video, Nero Recode and Nero BackItUp.

MEDIA MOGUL

This version of Kwik Media is a subtle update to version 11. The interface is mostly clean and simple with photo and video content displayed in a timeline or in user-defined albums. You can search by filename or tags and easily share content via email or to online communities including Flickr, Facebook and YouTube.

KwikMedia is a good photo browser, but editing options are very limited

Kwik Media supports a good range of file formats including FLAC lossless audio, but it doesn't make a very effective music player; there's no way to enqueue a second set of tracks to those playing without creating a playlist, for example. Image-editing options are similarly basic, and are limited to simple actions like cropping or red-eye removal. Surprisingly, there's no basket or similar device to let you tag multiple files to be burned to disc as you browse; you first need to install the free Kwik Burn using Kwik Media's integrated Market. The key update from version 11 is the addition of media streaming, through which Kwik Media makes content available to DNLA and UPnP aware devices on your network. The free Kwik WiFi Sync app, available for Android, lets you stream media from a mobile device to your PC.

SAVE THE DATA
BackItUp is simple and reasonably competent backup software that now supports USB3 backup destinations and hard disks larger than 2TB. We got off to a shaky start when we clicked Drive Backup and were immediately prompted to install a driver and restart, but we had no problem after that. Backups are as simple as selecting a source and a target, although 'destination' would be a clearer term. You then set simple options for naming, compression and the schedule to run. You can choose full or incremental backup types, but differential backups aren't supported.

Creating a backup is easy, although advanced options are limited

Advanced options include the ability to run a command immediately before or after a backup, but you can't split backup archives into smaller files and the options for purging old backups are limited to the number of iterations to keep; you can't set maximum disk space, for example.