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Topic: Nero 6 -- SOOO close to great (Read 5745 times) previous topic - next topic
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Nero 6 -- SOOO close to great

I've been looking for a good ripping/m4a (mp4/aac) encoding solution and the best I've found so far is Nero. I paid for Nero 5 and actually bought the Nero AAC encoder, and almost loved it but had a couple gripes
- no tagging
- the UI forgets the settings every time you close it
- non-intelligent directory behavior
Basically, it just wasn't quite suitable for bulk encoding projects.

Now they've released Nero 6 and the AAC encoder comes with it, and fixes the tagging problem. But the other problems (UI issues) persist -- I wrote Nero tech support about this months ago and heard nothing, so I'm hoping that by posting here maybe Ivan will notice  or maybe enough other people will agree to make Ahead take notice.

So in more detail:
- every time I open the Save Tracks dialog, the settings have returned to default. So I have to click Settings, choose the preset I want, click OK. (At least, improved from the previous version, it remembers my custom file naming settings now, BUT doesn't remember THAT I want to use those instead of the default.)
- I want my music organized in folders like so: Artist/Album/Songs. Various other rippers I've used (Audiograbber, EAC, even, gasp, WiMP) can do this; Nero dumps all the files in the exact directory named in the Path field. And doesn't allow directory separators in the "filename". Please add a way to let me specify a directory as well as filename from the artist/album info.

Other wishlist:
- more transparent CDDB behavior; I know CDDB works and I just want Nero to retrieve the disc info without asking me. The "don't show this dialog again" button doesn't help! And if I have turned off automatic query of CDDB, there should be a button in the Save Tracks dialog to manually query.
- ability to rip/encode 2 discs at the same time, since I have 2 drives. I can do this with 2 instances of Nero but it's annoying.

So, the work for me to rip a single cd is:
1) Extras->Save Tracks
2) Select a drive in the Choose Drive dialog, click OK
3) Click "Access Internet Database", then "Selected CD" in the Title and CD Database dialog
4) click Settings, choose preset "VBR/Stereo - audiophile" or otherwise customize these settings, click OK
5) manually create a folder for the new tracks, enter it in the Path field
6) click the dropdown next to File Name Creation Method, choose User Defined, click OK
7) click Go

Really, steps 3, 4, 5 and 6 should be able to be eliminated, because I always do the same thing. And that's a lot of clicking.

Anyone else out there agree? Thx for listening.

Nero 6 -- SOOO close to great

Reply #1
Oh. And if they fix all this, I'll pay for the upgrade to Nero 6  B)

Nero 6 -- SOOO close to great

Reply #2
Check out the latest BeSweet or Nencoder (availible at RareWares) which can encode without the Nero app running.  You still obviously have to own Nero 6 to use it though (if Nero 5 codec keeps being updated, then it would be fine as well).

Nero 6 -- SOOO close to great

Reply #3
Quote
Check out the latest BeSweet or Nencoder (availible at RareWares) which can encode without the Nero app running.  You still obviously have to own Nero 6 to use it though (if Nero 5 codec keeps being updated, then it would be fine as well).

There's also foo_neromp4.dll plugin, which allows encoding directly from Foobar2000 0.7 (uses Nero6's AAC encoder dlls).

http://www.saunalahti.fi/~cse/foobar2000/f...foo_neromp4.zip
Juha Laaksonheimo

Nero 6 -- SOOO close to great

Reply #4
Quote
Quote
Check out the latest BeSweet or Nencoder (availible at RareWares) which can encode without the Nero app running.  You still obviously have to own Nero 6 to use it though (if Nero 5 codec keeps being updated, then it would be fine as well).

There's also foo_neromp4.dll plugin, which allows encoding directly from Foobar2000 0.7 (uses Nero6's AAC encoder dlls).

http://www.saunalahti.fi/~cse/foobar2000/f...foo_neromp4.zip

Sorry to hijack the thread, but i just tried that plugin for foobar and it works ok, but when the file is downmixed to mono using the options, foobar plays it back at half speed so it's length is double, very odd, and im not sure wether its the plugin fault, foobar or what? Does this only occur on my system?

Kristian

Nero 6 -- SOOO close to great

Reply #5
Quote
- the UI forgets the settings every time you close it
- non-intelligent directory behavior

I hate this two "bugs", too. I capture daily two Simpsons. And everytime I encode the audio, I have to set settings again. It's so difficult to implement this two "features"???

Big_Berny

Nero 6 -- SOOO close to great

Reply #6
Actually,

"File / Preferences / Plug-in Lookup / Encoders..."

And then editing the encoder setting will make them default.

Nero 6 -- SOOO close to great

Reply #7
For NEncode and foo_neromp4, which is based off NEncode,
the settings are stored in the following registry branch:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Smeshka\Nencode\MPEG-4 Advanced Audio Coding (AAC)

My settings are always saved with no problems.

Nero 6 -- SOOO close to great

Reply #8
Quote
"File / Preferences / Plug-in Lookup / Encoders..."


Thanks! That's totally non-obvious, but it works.

Now if it would just put my files where I want them...

(slight aside, now that some of the individual features like Save Tracks are available separately from StartSmart, it might be time to rethink the configuration UI. I mean, I can get directly at Save Tracks by clicking the "Rip CD Tracks" button in StartSmart, but to edit settings for Save Tracks -- the above Encoder preferences, or creating the user database, etc. -- I have to run "normal" Nero by clicking on one of the data buttons, then use Preferences.

The first time I ran Nero 6, the first thing I wanted to play with was the encoder so I went to Save Tracks, it told me there was no database and offered to create one, and when I gave it a directory, it hung. Tried this 3 times, kept having to kill the nero process. Finally I went in through the "front door", running the normal Nero UI, used Database->Create A New User Database, this of course worked fine, and now if I go straight to "Rip CD Tracks" it works fine from there too.

The point I'm trying to make is StartSmart tries to let you go straight to a bunch of subfeatures without going through the main Nero UI, but it doesn't work all that well.)

Nero 6 -- SOOO close to great

Reply #9
if someone wants to integrate Nero's AAC/MP4 encoder to tools like CDEX, i believe BSN.dll could be very useful.
BSN.dll integrates darp's nencode with Richard's mp4 tagger.

source-code + binary bundle can be found here.

Cheers,
Dg.


edit : typos..

Nero 6 -- SOOO close to great

Reply #10
Sounds great DspGuru. I hope someone is up to the challenge

 

Nero 6 -- SOOO close to great

Reply #11
Quote
Actually,

"File / Preferences / Plug-in Lookup / Encoders..."

And then editing the encoder setting will make them default.

Also found in the Nero Wave Editor under 'Options, Encoders, Configure Save Options.'

I *always* leave my MP4/AAC options for encoding at TRANSCODING: ULTRA level with VBR and High-Quality Encoding, LC.
It never forgets those.

SJ