The Nero Platinum suite of apps has numerous uses that are designed to give the everyday user both control and a creative outlet. It aims to reduce the confusion and disorganization of having important files spread across multiple devices and to allow you to edit important media files like photos and videos to share with family and friends. The Nero Video app is the most powerful of the bundle, allowing you to import, edit, and export a wide variety of video files, including more specialized formats like H.265 and AVCHD. Nero Video also has some unique features like an easy-to-use automatic montage creator, as well as a more advanced timeline editor to compile your home movies or edit travel diaries for the ‘gram.
Design: Consolidate and create
If you’re feeling overwhelmed by all the media you’ve got stashed on your phone and PC, Nero has a solution. Enter Nero’s Drive Span app, designed to allow you to easily consolidate all your files from different devices into a single place, like an external hard drive. It also lets you transfer your selected files without making duplicates. With your files consolidated, the MediaHome app lets you easily navigate or play them, which in turn pairs well with Nero Video. The Nero Video software is designed to be used in direct combination with the MediaHome library and includes streaming features for showcasing your videos and slideshows. While Video is great for home movie and personal video compilation projects, it’s not really designed to be used as a prosumer editing program. The interface is basic and welcoming to new users and like all the apps it features a Live Guide for reference, but it lacks some of the advanced features of other (more expensive) editing suites.
Setup Process: Simple installation
Nero Platinum is straightforward and simple to install. The software comes on a single disc and one program installs all the apps and Content Packs, which include the creative effects and movie themes for Nero Video, plus DVD disc menus and more. Onscreen instructions will walk you through the installation process and you will be ready to start editing, burning, and organizing your media in no time.
Performance: Levels for everyone
Nero Video makes creating home movies and slideshows of your pictures and videos both personalized and simple, with a thousand templates and movie themes to choose from. It also has a feature that can easily import and display vertical videos taken on a smartphone to make them effortless to incorporate into a montage or home movie. Another easy-to-use feature with new editors in mind is the 1-Click Slideshow theme, which automatically selects from a host of different titles to include text at the start of a video and incorporate background music from your library. When you open Nero Video you can import media from a camera or storage device, select from projects you may be working on, or burn a disc. The Nero Video Timeline is very easy to use and one of the most accessible we tested. The timeline workspace opens by default in the ‘Express Editing’ view, which shows a thumbnail pic for your different clips segments in your sequence. It’s a nice way to keep track of your footage as you edit. Unfortunately, the Express UI makes everything feel like the software is a bit behind the times with the way the clips are laid out as thumbnails with white space between, above, and below the footage. It looks and feels less sophisticated than other editors. Functionally, however, it does everything you want it to, and features recent developments in video editing capabilities like a magnetic snap feature. Plus, an ‘Advanced Editing’ mode gives you more editing features and changes the UI to a more complex track-based timeline, with multiple video tracks to layer and arrange your clips. After completing a montage or video, you may be interested in burning it to a DVD. The Nero Burning app is easy to use and a good solution for users who want to burn different media files in different formats to one DVD without editing a sequence together. When burning to DVD you want to ensure all the files are video disc compatible, which the app will help you with by converting a selection of different formats you may have into an appropriate format all at once. It’s as simple as dragging and dropping files to convert and then burning the disc.
Price: Often on sale
Nero Platinum 2019 vs. Movavi 15 Video Editor Personal Edition
Despite Nero Video’s various features for creating shareable content for family and friends, it doesn’t have a direct export setting to upload to social media sites like other many other video editors. If the feature to export as a direct upload to a site like YouTube would be significant to you, a program we have also tested called the Movavi 15 Video Editor may be worth checking out. Movavi 15 Video Editor Personal edition sells for $54.95, which is still quite cheap for video editing software. Movavi is designed for editing personal footage like travel diaries, wedding videos, or birthday slideshows. Movavi can also quickly assist you in making a montage from multiple clips with its ‘Montage Wizard.’ The full feature mode goes more in depth and lets you adjust a variety of video parameters or add effects, titles, graphics, emoji style stickers, and animations. Movavi has a bit more of an advanced interface than Nero Video, and the company also sells a selection of additional title templates, graphics, and animations on their website. Movavi’s export options have been designed specifically with YouTube users and vloggers in mind. You can export projects directly as an upload to YouTube which essentially combines the export rendering and upload process into one step. The Movavi export window even includes a YouTube specific form to add relevant information like a description and set the video’s privacy. Nero Platinum is designed to provide easy to use editing and organizing software for your media files, and it largely does a good job in those departments. While each component individually may not be as fully featured as some competing products, for around $140 it’s a broad, all-in-one multimedia management solution that will please casual users and may surprise some veteran editors.
