[vip_students] Complete list of Nero shortcut keys!
- From: "Lists" <lists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <vip_students@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 3 Jul 2006 13:30:27 +0100
Hi All,
Its been a while since I sent in anything to the list. Today I came across a
very useful list of keystrokes which are used with the Nero CD burning
package and so I thought I would kick off what seems to be a long time lack
of activity on the list. If anyone wishes me to repost my origional nero
tutorials or update anything in connection with nero please let me know.
Visually impaired computer users are the target group for this
tutorial. Keyboard access methods and descriptions, using
screenreaders and no mouse or monitor, are the basis of this
work. The guide assumes that you have a basic understanding of
the Windows operating system, general Windows concepts and your
specific screenreader, although tips and reminders about all of
these things will be given from time to time in the text.
********
CONVENTIONS
In the writing of this manual, terms have the following meanings:
ALT F, A Means hold down the left ALT key and whilst still
holding it down press the letter f, then release both and press
the letter A.
CONTROL S Means hold down the control key and whilst keeping
it held down press the letter S and then release both.
SHIFT END Means hold down the SHIFT key and whilst keeping
it held down press the END key.
ALT E, C, and press ENTER Means hold down the left ALT key
and whilst keeping it held down press the letter E key, then
release both and then press the letter C key followed by the
enter key.
When a key combination such as ALT R (for CD-Recorder), S (for
Save Track) is suggested to go into the "CD-Recorder" menu and
run the "Save Track" menu option, the user may follow this
method of operation or may prefer to ARROW up and down a menu and
press ENTER. In this latter case, the keystrokes would be: press
the ALT key, right ARROW to the "CD-Recorder" menu heading, then
ARROW down (or up) until the "Save Track" line is spoken, then
press ENTER.
********
Suggested Approaches for Effective Learning with this Tutorial
It is, of course, entirely up to the individual as to how they
glean information and work through this tutorial, but a few
suggestions might assist the learner who is relatively new to
computers. I would propose that you read through the whole of a
section before attempting to practise it to obtain a general
overview and impression of what is being done.
There are a number of approaches which might be taken to make
reading the tutorial as a text file and simultaneously carrying
out the instructions more fluid and easier to follow. Try one of
the below methods.
Ideally, if you have two computers, you can load the tutorial
into your text editor or word-processor on one PC and have the
software program running on the other. You can then listen to the
directions on one computer whilst practising them on the other.
Alternatively, as is likely to be the case, if you only have the
one computer, you could launch your text editor or word-processor
and load the tutorial into it for reading. You could then launch
the program you wish to learn how to use in order to practise the
lessons. You would have to keep cycling between each running
program by pressing ALT TAB in this case.
Yet another approach might be to take a tape recorder or
dictaphone and get your screenreader to read the contents of a
given section or sub-section onto the tape. You could then play
the tape back and follow the instructions through on your PC
without having to keep moving from one running program to
another.
Other options would be for you to print out a copy of the
tutorial in large print if you can use this and work from this
hard copy, or you could get your local library or resource centre
to produce a Braille version for you to work from if you have one
in your area and you are a Braillist.
********
>SECTION 1
INTRODUCTION
This tutorial concentrates on the use of Nero Burning-ROM Version
6 to create your own data and audio Cds. It also covers
facilities such as burning hard disk back-ups and converting MP3
files to WAV or CDA files with Nero. There is also coverage of
Nero's INCD rewritable CD formatting program but the old Nero
Media Player is not covered in this edition of the Nero tutorial
because it has now become obsolete, having been replaced by other
facilities which are in-built in the main Nero program for
playing tracks and by other much more sophisticated alternative
music playing and editing Nero software. Additionally, some
general sections have been provided, including a look at the
Windows Volume Control and how to install an internal CD-RW disk
drive. The burning of DVDs and DD Cds is discussed and briefly
covered in some sections, and I can confirm that the steps in
burning DVDs are almost identical to burning Cds. There are
therefore no separate sections for burning DVD and DDCDs, because
you go through the same procedures as with burning Cds.
Nero is a fast-moving program and there is rarely a month which
goes by without something having been added to the program or
something having undergone a small change, so it is impossible
to keep up with all of these changes. This tutorial, nonetheless,
will provide the essentials to allow the competent use of Nero
Version 6.
Nero Burning-ROM 6 is a multi-featured suite of programs for all
types of CD and DVD video and audio burning and copying. AS the
Table of Contents indicates, this tutorial will be concentrating
on the burning of audio much more than with video for visually
impaired users. Whilst most of the essential elements and
programs in the Nero suite are accessible and usable from a non-
mouse and non-monitor perspective, some of the extra add-ons of
the Nero 6 suite are not as accessible, e.g. the Nero Express
burning interface and the Nero Wave Editor, and so these will not
be covered here. Perhaps they will be made more keyboard
accessible in later Nero releases or updates.
Nero Burning-ROM Version 6 has a number of different methods in
which you can elect to work with the various elements of the
program suite. If you like, you can use the old-style main Nero
Burning-ROM program interface and thereby avoid the more exotic
and sometimes more difficult to use interfaces of Nero Express
and Nero StartSmart. In fact, you are probably advised to give
the Nero Express a wide birth from a keyboard and non-monitor
point of view, as it is not very keyboard-friendly. On the other
hand, you should find the Nero StartSmart feature OK to work with
once you get used to it and you may, eventually, come to prefer
this as your burning interface of choice.
If you have been a user of an earlier version of Nero, such as
Version 4, 5 or 5.5, you will find not only extra programs and
different user interfaces to work with in Nero 6 but you will
also discover that some of the old options and menu choices are
still there but have been moved to different places. Some of the
ways you can select folders and files for burning and how you
work with the New Compilation and Browser windows have also
changed. Additionally, the Nero Wizard has been replaced and is
no longer available.
As already stated, because of the keyboard and screenreader-
unfriendly nature of the Nero Express feature, this will not be
covered in the tutorial. You can do everything that the Nero
Express can do in the other two interfaces provided by the Nero
main program or the Nero StartSmart feature, only more easily.
Having said this, I have successfully burnt both data and audio
disks using Nero Express, so it can be done, but the procedure
and number of times you have to ALT TAB to regain focus on what
you are doing and then ALT TAB again back to where you were is
so tortuous and frustrating that, if you do decide to have a play
with it, I am sure that you will soon abandon it and use one of
the other two more stable interfaces.
This tutorial is written from the viewpoint of a screenreader
user via speech or Braille display from the keyboard. No monitor
or physical mouse have been employed.
You can buy Nero Burning-ROM, together with INCD and Nero Media
Player plus several extra utilities which do not come with the
version bundled with CD-RWs from:
www.nero.com
but I am not sure if you will save any money by buying a
downloaded copy. Alternatively, you can purchase it from branches
of PC World and Dixons.
Lastly, for those with a curiosity to know, I believe that the
name of the software, Nero Burning-ROM, is a play on words or
type of parody. It hails from the famous historical emperor of
Rome who was said to have played his fiddle whilst Rome burnt:
hence Nero Burning-ROM.
********
>SECTION 2
TYPES OF CD DRIVES, DVD DRIVES AND DISKS
2.1. Types of Recordable CD Disks
There are two main modern kinds of recordable blank CD disks:
2.1.1. Write-Only Compact Disks
Write-only disks, once written to and closed or finalised, cannot
be used again. However, if you do not close a disk after half
filling it, you can normally write more to the end of where you
last copied MP3 or data files but you will not be able to play
an audio disk until you close it.
An Audio (HI-FI music) disk falls into the write-only category.
It is a disk capable of holding digital audio tracks recorded in
CDDA format (compact disk digital audio). Such audio files have
a .CDA extension. These audio CDs are usually 74 or 80 minutes
long and can hold up to 99 separate tracks--but the tracks would
have to be very short to get this many on in the 74 or 80
minutes!
2.1.2. Rewritable Compact Disks
A rewritable disk, as its name implies, can be used over and over
again in the same way that a hard disk or floppy disk can be re-
used. You can either write music files straight to the disk with
a program such as Easy CD Creator or you can configure (format)
the disk and use it like a hard or floppy disk by creating
folders or directories and sub-folders and sub-directories, for
instance, with Adaptec Direct CD or Nero INCD software.
2.2. Compact Disk and DDCD Capacities
Typically the older type of write-only or rewritable CD disk will
hold around 650 Mb of music or data files. From a music point of
view this means that these older CDs can hold up to 74 minutes
of regular audio, HI-FI style music tracks. Some Cds, if your
copying software and/or Cd drive will support this (which they
will if they are anything like up to date), can hold up to 80
minutes of traditional music or 700 Mb of data. Very recently 90
minute Cds have come into being but, again, your burning software
and CD-RW drive will have to support this new standard to be able
to use them.
Another point to be aware of in respect of this read-only CD
time/space availability, is that when burning many individual
files or tracks to a read-only CD, you also have to be conscious
that with, say, an 80 minute/700 Mb CD you will not get this full
80 minute/700 Mb capacity out of the CD. This is because A Read-
only CD is split up into space areas known as clusters. When you
burn a file or a music track to a CD, it will use all of the
clusters it needs for the size of the file or track and will
invariably take up part only of a cluster at its end. This last,
partially used cluster, can no longer be used for any other
file/track burning and so what remains of it is lost CD space.
Thus, for example, if an 80 minute CD was to have 13 music tracks
burned to it, there would be 12 partially lost clusters on the
CD, which may mean a loss of some 10 or so minutes playing time
on the CD. By contrast, a CD which was full but with only two
very long music tracks would permit you to burn almost the full
80 minutes of music to the CD due to much less partial cluster
loss between tracks.
On the other hand, if you wish to format a rewritable disk, in
order to create folders and use it in the same way as you might
use a floppy diskette, then the resultant disk space is reduced,
because the formatting itself takes up some of the disk's
capacity. After formatting a 650 Mb rewritable CD, you will be
left with around 545 Mb of disk space to copy files to.
Another kind of CD, which is a kind of halfway stage between a
CD and DVD, is a "DDCD". this is a double density compact disk
(DDCD) and can hold 1.3 Gb of data.
2.3. Types of CD Drives
There are three main standards for modern CD drives:
2.3.1. CD-ROM
A CD-ROM drive (compact disk read-only memory) is only able to
play sound files and allow you to remove programs and other data
from it. It cannot itself record onto blank CD disks. This is the
traditional CD drive which has been supplied with most computers
for a few years now. The CD-ROM is the type of drive which you
would install your Windows programs and other software from. You
can play traditional HI-FI music CDs from a CD-ROM, as well as
speech or music compressed MP3 files.
The first CD-ROM drives were very slow at reading data from a cd
disk but modern ones are much faster. 1-speed CD-ROMs can only
read data on a disk at around 150 kilobytes per second and it is
this benchmark reading figure which is multiplied to derive the
speed of faster CD-ROMs, e.g. a 50 speed CD-ROM would read data
at a maximum speed of about 50 X 150 Kb per second. Modern CD-
ROMs can read a CD at 50 or 60 times faster than the first
drives. Today's CD-ROM drives run at typical speeds of 52 or 60
speed but it is true to say that the increase in speed is not
exactly proportionate to the number a drive carries, as there are
diminishing performance returns the faster a CD drive is rated.
You must also be aware that, when using a CD-ROM drive to burn
(copy) audio tracks from such as a music CD to a second CD drive
(a CD-RW drive), the copying speed is likely to be much slower
than the 40X or 50X speed which can be obtained when copying
plain data files. Some CD-ROMs can only achieve a speed of 2X or
3X when copying audio tracks by this drive to drive method.
2.3.2. CD-R
CD-R (compact disk recordable) drives have now mainly been
replaced by CD-RW drives. A CD-R can read files as with a CD-ROM
but, in addition, it can write (copy) music and other audio media
and data to a blank disk, such as copying HI-FI music or MP3
files. However, it cannot rewrite to a rewritable CD disk in the
way that a CD-RW can.
2.3.3. CD-RW
A CD-RW drive (compact disk rewritable) is a drive which can
read, write and rewrite to a compact disk. This means that, in
addition to being able to perform what the above two drives can
achieve, you can insert rewritable disks into this type of drive
and use them over and over again. For example, you can format a
CD disk in a similar way to formatting a floppy disk and copy
files to it, make folders/directories on it, etc, and then delete
these later and rewrite other files or folders to the same disk
to over-write the space which the first files occupied.
CD-RWs typically quote specifications such as 12X8X32 speed.
These figures mean that the drive is able to read the information
on a disk at 32 speed, write data to a blank write-only disk at
12 speed and write data to a rewritable disk at 8 speed. The
speed at which data can be written is also based on multiples of
the 1-speed benchmark of 150 Kb per second, e.g. a 12-8-32 speed
CD-RW drive can write data to a disk at approximately 12 X 150
Kb per second. Thus, it would typically take around 7 minutes to
completely fill a 700 Mb CD if writing at 12-speed.
2.4. CD Labels and Duel Case Inserts
A CD label is the small round sticker which you would stick to
the centre of the back of a CD with the CDs title, artist's name,
etc, on it. A duel case insert is the double-sided information
insert which you read through the see-through plastic case, with
such as CD title, artist's name, individual track titles,
artist's picture, etc, on it.
You can create and print out such labels and inserts on plain or
coloured A4 paper and then cut them out with scissors or you can
purchase specially printed and die-cut labels and inserts which
do not require cutting with scissors from shops such as PC World,
Staples, etc. Most CD burning programs like Nero Burning-ROM and
Easy Cd Creator provide software to permit the creation of these
labels and inserts but not all of them are very accessible.
You can also buy all-purpose packages from PC World and no doubt
other computer suppliers which contain the die-cut labels and
inserts plus a round spindle or template to use to ensure that
you get your label onto the back of the CD in the correct centred
position. You place the label onto the spindle in its centre,
adhesive side up, and then lower the CD down onto the spindle to
pick up the label.
There is also a Website where you can go to create or download
CD labels and to produce paper inserts from A4 paper. Its URL is:
www.papercdcase.com
2.5. Types of Recordable Digital Versatile disks (DVD)
As with CDs, there are several types of DVD disks.
2.5.1. Write-Only DVDs
Similarly to with CDs, you can only fill a write-only DVD once,
after which it can no longer be used again.
2.5.2. Rewritable DVDs
rewritable DVDs can be used over and over again just like a
rewritable CD or floppy disk. You can clear the disk by burning
its contents off (erasing it) and then refill it by burning new
data to it.
2.6. DVD Capacities
A DVDs capacity ranges from 4.38 Gb to 15.95 Gb. This depends on
whether it is single sided, single layered; single sided, double
layered; double sided, single layered; or double sided, double
layered. However, the most common capacities are single sided 4.7
Gb disks and double sided with twice the capacity.
2.7. Types of DVD Drives
At present there are two format standards with DVDs, one being
DVD+ and the other DVD-. Most computer drives can normally play
both formats, but external DVD recorders can usually only play
their own format and not the opposition's, although there are
some more expensive stand-alone external DVD units which can deal
with both formats.
2.7.1. DVD-ROM
A DVD-ROM drive (digital versatile disk read-only memory) is only
able to play sound and video files from a DVD disk and allow you
to remove programs and other data from it. It cannot itself
record onto blank DVD disks. This is the first kind of DVD drive
which has been supplied with most computers for a few years now.
You can play traditional HI-FI music and video DVDs from a DVD-
ROM drive, as well as speech or music compressed MP3 files.
The benchmark single speed which DVD drive speeds are calculated
from is different from that of CD drives; it is a faster starting
point. The original 1-speed DVD-ROM drive could read at 1.25
megabytes per second, so 4 times DVD-ROM speed would mean that
it could read data at 5 Mb/s. In comparative terms in relation
to the speed of a CD drive, this means that a 1 times speed DVD
is approximately equivalent to an 8 times CD-ROM.
2.7.2. DVD-RW
A DVD-RW drive (digital versatile disk rewritable) is a drive
which can read, write and rewrite to a DVD disk. This means that,
in addition to being able to perform what the above drive can
achieve, you can insert both write once only disks and also
rewritable disks into this type of drive. If using rewritable
disks, you can use them over and over again. You can fill a disk
and then erase its contents and refill the disk with new data at
a later date if you like.
The typical speed of a DVD-RW drive would be something like 20
times 12 times 8. The way the speed figures are written is often
the opposite to how CD drives express them. So, with a 20 times
12 times 8 specification, you would have a DVD drive which reads
DVDs at 20 speed, writes to write-only DVDs at 12 speed and can
write to rewritable DVDs at 8 speed.
Note: Some DVD drives only specify two speeds, e.g. 16 times 8,
in which case this drive would have a 16 speed reading ability
and an 8 speed ability for both writing to write-only and
rewritable disks.
2.8. Combined CD and DVD Drives
You can purchase drives which will read, write and rewrite to
both Cds and DVDs. Such a drive will not normally be as fast as
dedicated stand-alone CD or DVD drives, as there is usually a
trade-off or compromise in speed with combination drives. For
example, a combination drive may have a specification of such as
16 times 4 times 2.5 for DVDs and it may have such as 16 times
12 times 24 for CDs.
2.9.CD and DVD Cleaning
Remember, you can purchase special CD and DVD cleaning fluid from
many outlets. If you cannot get hold of any of this or prefer to
keep your cash in your pocket you should try the following.
Always follow the specific cleaning and general maintenance
instructions which come with a particular make of CD or DVD. In
the absence of any instructions, the below-described means of
cleaning CDs and DVDs when they are not performing correctly
should work fine.
1. Take a very soft, clean cloth and wet it with warm clean
water.
2. Wipe the CD or DVD from the centre outwards. Do not clean in
a circular motion, as this could damage the tracks.
3. If a disk is very dirty or sticky, you might also use a little
mild toilet soap on the cloth as well and then thoroughly remove
this from the disk with clean water.
********
>SECTION 3
INSTALLING An Internal CD DRIVE
As a visually impaired person the idea of opening up your
computer and installing a Cd drive may not appeal to you. Others
may have sighted friends to help them in this and may relish the
challenge. This section will help you install a new CD-ROM, CD-R
or CD-RW into a desktop PC or at least give you an insight into
what has to be done and the components involved.
Alternatively, you may wish to take the easy way out, albeit a
little more expensive, and purchase an external CD-RW instead of
an internal one. This is also the route you are likely to have
to take if you have a laptop and not a desktop computer. External
drives simply plug into a port on the back of the computer, such
as a USB or serial port, if you have a spare one. If not, you may
have to purchase a port splitter or fit another port to the PC
or connect it via a SCSI card.
Whether you connect an internal CD-RW drive via the IDE socket
on the motherboard or via a SCSI card in a slot on the
motherboard there will be no difference in performance, although
the latter method will be more expensive. By contrast, if you
connect an external CD-RW using the parallel port, this will
result in slower performance than if you had attached it with a
SCSI card.
Please note, however, that opening your own PC and installing new
components may invalidate your hardware warranty, if it is still
running. You should therefore check the warranty clauses to
ensure that you do not invalidate this, unless, of course, you
are confident of what you are doing and not too concerned about
the possible ramifications of doing your own upgrade work.
3.1. Hardware Components
The three types of CD drives all have the same essential
components. These are:
* The disk drive box itself.
* Four securing screws.
* A thin audio cable.
* A wide IDE cable about 30 or 40 cm long.
3.2. CD Drive Description
For a description of the front of a CD drive, see Section 4
below. For the present, a description of the back of the CD drive
box is all that is required. If you hold the CD drive in front
of you, with the back facing you, the right way up, the following
plugs and switches can be observed:
1. At the very left side there is usually a small square or
oblong hole, which can be ignored.
2. Moving right by a centimetre or so, will bring you to the
plughole for the audio cable plug.
3. Now move a further centimetre or two to the right and you will
encounter a small oblong cavity which holds a "jumper". A jumper
is a small squarish, thin piece of plastic which has a thin vain
of metal running through it and can therefore conduct an
electrical signal. It slides between two small pins in this
jumper bay, which grip it fairly tightly. Normally, a jumper will
be factory set to the "slave" (SL) position, which is in the
middle of the jumper bay. If the jumper is pulled out with the
finger nails or a pair of tweezers, it can be reinserted a
millimetre or two to the left to place it in the "master" (MAR)
position. There is also a third jumper pin position to the right
of the middle slave position but this does not affect this type
of installation.
4. Another centimetre or so to the right of the jumper cavity is
the biggest socket at the back of the CD drive box, which is a
40-pin IDE plug socket. It is about 5 centimetres long and quite
thin.
5. Just to the right of the IDE socket you will find the last
component at the back of the drive. This is the power supply plug
socket.
3.3. Installation Procedure
1. With the computer switched off, remove the PC cover, after
detaching the cables at the back.
2. To remove any static from your body, earth yourself by
touching the box metal of the PC frame with both hands.
3. Remove one of the plastic covers at the front of the computer
to reveal a spare drive bay. There may also be a metal plate-like
tag behind this to pull off as well.
4. Slide the CD drive box into the slot at the front of the PC
where you just moved the plastic facing cover from and use the
four securing screws to hold it in place flush with the front of
the computer box. They insert through the metal housings provided
in the interior of the Pc case. You may not wish to fully tighten
them up immediately, as you may have to slide the drive backwards
and forwards a time or two whilst completing some of the below
steps. Afterwards make sure that the drive box is flush with the
front of the PC and the screws are tightened up.
5.A. If you do not already have a CD-ROM in your PC, you can
connect your new CD-RW onto the same IDE cable that your hard
disk is connected to. The IDE cable will have two identical plugs
near its end. This means that you do not have to use the extra
supplied IDE cable which came with your drive. Genteelly insert
the second IDE cable plug into the IDE Socket at the back of the
CD drive. It will only normally go in one way. This means of
connecting the CD drive to your motherboard is the "slave"
method, which means that the jumper should be in the slave
position. This is likely to be the way it is set up when you
receive the drive.
5.B. Alternatively, if you already have a CD-ROM in your computer
and are fitting your new CD-RW as a second CD drive, you will
have to use the new cable which came with the drive. Insert one
of the two plugs at the end of the IDE ribbon cable into the IDE
socket at the back of the drive and plug the other end onto the
second IDE socket pins on your motherboard. Most motherboards
have two IDE sockets which are normally located very close
together and parallel to one another. Just follow your hard disk
IDE cable to where it is plugged into the motherboard and the
second IDE plug connector should be next to that one. In this
configuration, you will need to move the jumper from the slave
position to the left and reinsert it in the master position.
Note: A PC normally only has two IDE sockets on its motherboard
(a primary and secondary connector) and each can only take two
drives. This means that, if all four connectors are already in
use, you will have to purchase a SCSI card to connect your new
CD-RW drive to.
Warning: Do not place your CD-R and CD-RW drives on the same
single IDE cable, as this may cause your burning software to
generate error messages when you try to fast copy on the fly
directly from your CD-R drive to your CD-RW drive.
6. Take the thin audio cable and plug it into the audio cable
socket on the back of the CD drive box, which is almost at the
very left. The other end of the audio cable should be plugged
into the sound card, if your sound card is separate from the
motherboard and is the PCI type, or plug it onto the pins on the
motherboard if it is the sort of card which comes as an integral
part of the motherboard itself. If the latter, you may need
sighted assistance to find these motherboard pins amongst all of
the other cables and bric-a-brac as they are only small. Your
motherboard manual will tell you which are the correct pins.
7. You should now take one of the unused power cables which
sprout out of the side or bottom of your computer power supply
at the back of the PC and plug it into the power in socket at the
very right of the CD drive box. It should only go in one way
round but if you find that it can be inserted both ways, then do
not switch the computer on before getting sighted help to tell
you which is the correct way to plug this in. Switching your
computer on with this plugged in the wrong way is likely to
damage the drive and may also damage your motherboard.
8. This is the end of the installation, so replace the computer
cover, plug everything into the back, screw everything up and
turn the PC on. If there is no blue flash or loud bang, chances
are that you've done it correctly!
9. The plug-and-play facility of Windows 9X, ME or XP should find
your new CD-RW and recognise the new CD drive automatically. It
should be working OK at this stage.
10. If you also like your CD drives to be accessible from DOS,
you should install a suitable generic or specific CD drive driver
which permits access via the command line. It is likely that your
new CD-RW came supplied with one of these on a standard floppy
disk. Just insert the floppy and type "A:\install" and press
ENTER to install it. If this does not work, consult the readme
or other file which should be provided on the disk for
instructions.
Note: You are now ready to commence testing your internal or
external CD-RW drive. You may have received at least two
complimentary CD disks with your Cd drive purchase. Typically,
one of these will be a standard disk which you can write to only
once but the other should be a rewritable disk which you can use
to practise on without wasting several standard disks.
********
>SECTION 4
BASIC COMPACT DISK MUSIC PLAYING
DIRECTLY FROM THE CD DRIVE
4.1. Features of the Front Panel of a CD Drive
Typically, your CD-ROM or CD-RW drive front panel is likely to
be the same as or similar to this description, although some very
basic CD drives feature only a CD drawer open and eject button.
Usually the panel has one or two lights to show that it is
powered up and working. Obviously, it also has a drawer which
ejects to permit the insertion of a CD disk in the same way you
would insert a music CD into your HI-FI CD player. On the left
side of the panel you are likely to find a mini jack stereo plug
socket where you can plug in headphones. Next to this will be
housed a small wheel for increasing or decreasing the volume of
the headphones only. On the right of the CD drive there is likely
to be two press buttons, the right of which is the CD drawer
close/eject button and the one just to its left is the
skip/recommence play button for skipping from the current music
track to the next one. Just above the close/eject button there
is generally an emergency eject hole, which should only be used
if the automatic eject button fails. You activate this by
inserting something like the end of a straightened-out paperclip
into the whole until the disk drawer pops out a little, then you
gently pull it out the whole way by hand.
4.2. Enabling the AutoPlay feature of Windows
The AutoPlay feature is what makes your audio music CDs commence
playing as soon as you insert one into the CD drive and shut it.
If you do not want AutoPlay to start up immediately, you should
hold down the left SHIFT key and then shut the CD drive drawer
and keep the SHIFT key down for several seconds before releasing
it. AutoPlay for CDs should already be enabled by default but,
if it is not, you can turn it on by:
1. Press Windows key followed by S (for Settings), then press C
(for Control Panel) and lastly press S several times until you
get to System, then press ENTER.
2. You will land in the "General" property sheet, so press
CONTROL TAB to get to "Device Manager" and then ARROW down or
press C until you reach "CD-ROM". You then open this folder by
pressing right ARROW. ARROWing down will now reveal your single
or several CD drives by manufacturer names. With the focus on the
one you wish to enable AutoPlay on you should TAB to "Properties"
and press ENTER.
3. From Properties you should CONTROL TAB to the "Settings"
property sheet and then press TAB until you reach "Auto Insert
Notification" and if this is not already checked, press the
SPACEBAR to check and therefore enable it.
4. After this TAB to "OK" and press ENTER and do the same on the
next dialogue, followed by pressing ALT F4 to exit the Control
Panel.
4.3. Windows Music CD AutoPlay
1. As stated above, when AutoPlay is enabled, all you need do to
hear a standard HI-FI music CD is insert it into the CD drive
drawer and press the close/eject button. It should start playing
automatically within a few seconds without you doing anything
else. If it does not start playing, just press the
skip/recommence play button. The disk will play until the last
track has been played and then stop.
2. Whilst playing, if you wish to skip to the next track, just
press the skip button. Repeated presses will move you further
into the CD track by track.
3. If you wish to pause the playing of a track, you can press the
close/eject button once. To recommence the playing of the track,
press the skip button once.
4. To eject the CD, press the close/eject button twice.
Note: To hear music using the headphone socket at the front of
the CD drive you do not need a sound card. On the other hand, if
you wish to hear tracks via your PC external stereo speakers, you
would require a sound card on your computer's motherboard.
4.4. Changing C D Playback Volume and Quality
1. Whilst a CD is playing you can alter the music volume in
several ways:
A. If using headphones, adjust the volume wheel to the right of
the headphone jack socket.
B. If listening to speakers, either use the volume knob on the
speakers; or
C. If the speakers do not have a volume knob or the volume knob
does not increase the volume sufficiently, you may be able to
increase the playback volume in a more permanent way via the
Windows Volume Control. You can go straight to this from within
the menus of some music playing programs, or through the System
Tray or by navigating to it via:
C:\Program Files\Accessories\Multimedia\Volume control
in Windows 95, or
C:\Program Files\Accessories\Entertainment\Volume Control
in Windows 98.
(See Section 5 below to discover how to use the Volume Control).
2. You can also make adjustments in volume and quality of music
output from the Multimedia section of the Control Panel. Do this
by:
A. Press Windows Logo key followed by S (for Settings) and then
C (for control Panel).
B. Then press M several times until Multimedia is selected, then
press ENTER to open it.
C. You will fall on the "Audio" property sheet. TAB down this and
make your desired changes to the "playback volume" and Recording
Volume" with the ARROW up and down and PAGE up and down keys.
D. Then TAB to "Preferred Quality" and ARROW through the choices.
You should set this to CD quality for best quality playback
results.
E. Press ENTER on "Apply" and then press CONTROL TAB to look at
the other three property sheets in this multi-sheet dialogue box.
They include "Video", "MIDI", "CD Music" and "Advanced". Make any
changes you think would suit your particular needs and set-up.
For instance, if you can make use of large scale pictures/print
on a monitor, you might wish to ARROW to the "Double Original
Size" option in the "Video" sheet and therefore select this. In
the "Advanced" sheet you have a tree of multimedia audio, video,
mixer devices, etc, which you can change, select, view the
properties of or remove, as you like, but you are likely to have
to go into navigation or mouse mode to be able to use your right
mouse key to open and thus view or change any of a particular
device driver's properties.
F. You should ensure that, in the "CD Music" sheet, "Headphones"
is set to 100 per cent by pressing PAGE down to achieve this.
G. Then TAB to "OK" and press ENTER to finish.
********
>SECTION 5
SOUND CARDS AND WINDOWS VOLUME CONTROL
5.1. Sound Cards and Their Capabilities
The many different sound cards can have massively different input
and output abilities and may support varying sets of surround
speakers.
5.1.1. Types of Sound Cards
For best results, you will need a good quality sound card. The
more up-to-date Creative Labs Sound Blaster cards should meet
this requirement, such as the Sound Blaster 128 or 1024 Live
(preferably the latter as it is multi-channel whereas the former
is not). Even more recent and better Sound Blaster cards are the
Sound Blaster 5.1, the Audigy I and the Audigy II cards, which
provide such as extra speaker support and greater depth of sound
sampling. Another range of good multi-channel sound cards is made
by Roland and there are also the Turtle Beach Montigo cards.
You can listen to music and voice recordings with more basic 16-
bit sound cards but the quality may be substandard.
You can also make music and voice recordings with basic 16-bit
sound cards but, again, the quality of the recording may be
affected, for instance, you may get more background hiss and you
may find that the volume of the recording, even with the Volume
Control levels on full, is well below that obtained with a better
quality card. Using the option to increase the volume of a
recording after it has been made, which some recording programs
provide, may succeed in bringing the volume of a recording up but
you may also experience a proportionate increase in background
noise, crackle and hiss. This type of substandard audio input
recording result is often found with the on-the-motherboard
varieties of 16-bit sound cards, so you may have to upgrade these
to Sound Blaster Live or equivalent standards.
Just because your software synthesiser works well and is plenty
loud enough through a basic sound card does not mean that music
or voice recordings will be as loud or clear.
Note: Some sound cards may not allow a software synthesiser and
music or speech from such as an MP3 file to work together. This
may be because your sound card is single-channel, not the
recommended multi-channel type. In this case, you would have to
unload your screenreader before the music or other sound file can
play, e.g. with HAL do this with CONTROL SPACEBAR, then ALT
SPACEBAR followed by Q and then ENTER; with JAWS use INSERT F4
and then press ENTER; and with Window-Eyes use CONTROL \, then
ALT F4, X and ENTER; after first placing focus on the link you
wish to play, then press ENTER to hear the audio content.
Alternatively, if your screenreader has a "sleep" mode, you may
find that using this has the desired result (see "Putting your
Screenreader to Sleep" in the section below entitled "Putting
Your Screenreader to Sleep").
5.1.2. What Does Such as 5.1 and 7.1 Surround Sound Mean?
A couple of years ago sound cards were produced with 5.1 surround
sound capabilities, e.g. the Sound Blaster 5.1 card. This means
that you have a six speaker system with two stereo speakers in
front of you, two stereo speakers behind you and a bass speaker
located anywhere else in the room you like. the sixth speaker is
the dialogue speaker, which you would normally place at the
source of any speech which may come through your system, e.g. on
top of or underneath your TV set.
More recently, 7.1 systems have been supported by sound cards,
such as the Audigy II and the Video Logic Sonic Explosion DVD
sound and video cards. A 7.1 system replicates the type of all-
round sound you would expect to hear at a cinema and has the same
speaker configuration as that just described for a 5.1 system but
also features two more stereo speakers, one immediately to your
left and another to your right.
You can purchase the above-mentioned types of 7.1 surround sound
sound and video cards from such as:
Audigy II: WWW.Creative.com
Video Logic: www.puredigital.com
Turtle Beach: www.turtlebeach.comYahamah: www.yamaha.com
Terratec: www.en.terratec.net
Yamaha: www.yamaha.com
5.2. Putting Your Screenreader to Sleep
You may wish to silence your screenreader by permanently putting
it to "sleep" whenever a particular program is launched rather
than unloading it if it prevents you from getting the required
sound card throughput or if the screenreader speech chatters at
the same time as you are trying to listen to other audio output.
This may be especially annoying if you are trying to record
speech onto disk via your microphone in programs such as Windows
Sound Recorder and Sound Forge. You should consult your
screenreader manual to find out how to do this. However, I have
provided below an example of how this is done with the JFW
screenreader:
1. Launch your audio program, e.g. RealPlayer, and then press
INSERT F2 to load the JAWS Manager.
2. From the list provided, press ENTER on "Configuration
Manager", which will open the RealPlayer configuration file.
3. Press ALT S (for Set Options" and ARROW up to "Advanced
Options" and press ENTER.
4. In the Advanced Options dialogue you will immediately be on
"Sleep Mode Enable". You should press the SPACEBAR to enable this
and therefore reduce the chance of JFW speaking and interrupting
the flow of streaming audio.
5. TAB to "OK" and press ENTER twice, followed by CONTROL S to
save the change and then ALT F4 to leave the manager. You will
have to unload and then reload JFW to have the changes
recognised.
6. If you wish to return to how things were before, you should,
without Realplayer running, open and edit the realplay.jcf file
in a plain text editor such as Notepad (not in a word-processor
unless you then know how to save the result as a text file) and
change the line which reads "sleepmode=1" to "sleepmode=0", save
the file and then unload and reload JFW. The realplay.jcf file
is found in the folder:
c:\jaws37\settings\enu\realplay.jcf
Note: Putting JAWS into sleep mode will, of course, drastically
reduce the amount of screenreader feedback which you get whilst
using such programs and you will have to be able to remember the
keystrokes to make things work, so some users may not be happy
with this and may rather leave their screenreader as it is and
just unload it at times when it conflicts with other sound files.
You may also find the JAWS INSERT S hot key of use as it toggles
between speak all changes on the screen, speak highlighted only
and speak none modes.
Warning: Do not mess with these settings if you are likely to be
unable to reverse the above procedure or if you are not
comfortable with reinstalling your screenreader should you get
into trouble.
5.3. Enabling a Multi-Channel Sound Card
Somewhat in contrast to what we have just done above, but just
as essential for general PC use, a multi-channel sound card may
need to be enabled before it will work properly. With JFW, to
ensure that a multi-channel sound card works properly, allowing
your synthesiser and other sounds to be heard simultaneously when
this is desirable, rather than operating as a single-channel
card:
1. With no program running, press INSERT F2 again and hit ENTER
on "Configuration Manager".
2. Press CONTROL SHIFT D to open the "default.jcf" file.
3. Press ALT S (for Set Options) and then S (for Synthesiser
Options).
4. TAB to "Allow Wave Files with Software Synthesisers" and if
it is not already selected, press SPACEBAR to check it on.
5. Tab to "OK" and press ENTER.
6. To save this change and leave the manager, Press CONTROL s,
then ENTER followed by ALT F4. Now unload and then reload JFW to
have the saved changes recognised.
Note: Obviously, this type of enabling will not be necessary if
your sound card already works satisfactorily with both your
synthesiser and other sound files.
5.4. The Windows Volume Control
You can enter the Volume Control by going to the Windows System
Tray (if your screenreader is able to take you there, e.g. INSERT
F11 with JAWS, INSERT S with WE or left SHIFT Numpad SLASH with
HAL 5) or by:
pressing Windows Logo key, P (for Program Files, A (for
Accessories), M (for Multimedia) and then V (for Volume Control)
in Windows 95; or
Pressing Windows Logo key, P (for Program Files), A (for
Accessories), E (for Entertainment) and then V (for Volume
Control)
in Windows 98 and ME.
When in the Volume Control you can change the various levels of
volume, the balance between left and right channels and mute a
particular type of sound if you do not want it coming through.
You can do this for various types of input and output media, such
as the volume of sound out of your speakers, the volume of
ringing tone you hear when your modem dials, the volume of your
line in and microphone sockets at the back of your computer where
the sound card interfaces with the outside world, etc.
When you first enter the Volume Control, you can TAB through
several balance and volume adjusters. The most important for
output and input of audio data are "CD Audio Volume" which,
depending on the quality of your sound card, you may need on
between 70 and 100 per cent. The "Volume" option may also need
adjusting, depending on your sound card and how loud you want
output volume as against input volume, e.g. if you are using a
headset with its own microphone, you may wish to have the
"Playback" setting lower for your ears and the "Microphone"
setting louder for any voice recording you are doing.
5.5. Example of Changing a Sound Property--The Microphone
settings
To change the microphone settings you would:
1.A. Launch the Volume Control by the Program Files\ path method
outlined above; or
1.B. If you elect to launch the Volume Control via the System
Tray, you should press ENTER on the (Open Volume Control" choice.
Do not get side tracked at this stage with this--come back to it
later--but Note that there is also an "Adjust Audio Properties"
choice in here as well which, if you press ENTER on it, will give
you a list of five or so preferred recording devices, such as SB
Live, Use any available device, game compatible device, etc. In
this second choice dialogue, you can also press ENTER on
"Playback Advanced Properties" and select from several types of
playback speaker types, such as Desktop stereo speakers, Stereo
headphones, laptop mono speakers, etc, and you can CONTROL TAB
to a "Performance" property sheet to reduce speaker performance
playback demands to less than 100 per cent if things are not
working as well as you would like because your computer is not
powerful enough to take the maximum settings. You can also TAB
to a slider to move the "Sample Rate Conversion" from zero to
either 50 or 100 per cent to further enhance sampling conversion
quality but be aware that increasing the levels in here can also
slow down the speed of response of your computer due to extra CPU
overhead. Experiment with the various options to see what is best
for your PC set-up.
2. Press the ALT key to open the "Options" menu. Then ARROW down
to "Properties" and press ENTER.
3. You will land on the line which tells you the type of sound
card in your PC which is being used, e.g. SB Live . . ..
4. Press TAB once to "Adjust Volume For" and the first option
will be "Playback". ARROW down once to "Recording" and then TAB
once to a list of recording options.
5. ARROW down this list to "Microphone", ensure that it is
checked (pressing SPACEBAR will do this if it is not already
checked) and then TAB to "OK" and press ENTER.
6. You will now have entered the Microphone adjustment controls
where you can make alterations to the input volume for your
microphone input to the jack on the sound card at the back of the
computer. If you are not already on it, TAB forward to
"Microphone Volume" and view its volume level, increasing or
decreasing this as suits your PC set-up, microphone and sound
card sensitivity. Use the PAGE up or down and ARROW up or down
keys to increase or decrease this.
ARROWING or PAGING up increases the volume, although some
screenreaders may announce decreasing levels of calibration,
making this a little misleading.
7. Then TAB to the "Select" button and press the SPACEBAR to turn
it on if it is not already selected.
8. Sometimes you can just TAB again at this stage to the
"Advanced" button and press ENTER; otherwise, see how to get into
advance settings in 9 below. In here you can make a few further
fine advanced adjustments, such as checking on the "Mik Boost (20
Db)" box for further volume increases if these are required. Then
TAB to "Close" and press ENTER.
9. If you did not find the "Advanced" button as described above
in 8, you can now press ALT O (for Options) again and press ENTER
on "Advanced" to enable the advanced features, which may vary
depending on the type of sound card you have. If you do not enter
the advanced features box when you do this, it is because the
advanced features are already enabled. In this case, you can
enter the Advanced dialogue to view the Mik boost feature by
pressing ALT and then ARROWING to "Advanced" and pressing ENTER
or SPACEBAR.
10. Lastly, press ALT O (or just ALT if ALT O does not work) and
ARROW to "Exit" and press ENTER to finish.
Note 1: Some of the features in the Volume Control can vary,
depending on the type of sound card your PC is fitted with, so
some may have, for instance, more "Advanced" features and some
may have none. The above example was done with a Sound Blaster
Live 1024 card fitted.
Note 2: You will normally use the microphone jack plug on your
sound card and the microphone settings in the Volume Control for
your mic and the line in jack plug and line in setting in the
Volume Control for inputting sound data such as from a tape
recorder, record deck, mini Cd player, etc, if you have a good
sound card. The mic input is usually much more sensitive than the
line in socket. However, if you have a poorer sound card, such
as an on-the-motherboard type, you may find the line in socket
not sensitive enough and so wish to use the mic jack socket for
both mic and tape recorder input. You will have to experiment
with sockets and various volume levels until you find out what
is best for your requirements and sound card.
Note 3: If you would like to experiment with a different way of
manipulating the Volume Control, which may suit some
screenreaders, you can try a utility called "Sound Control Plus".
This is downloadable from:
http://software.reallyeffective.co.uk
********
>SECTION 6
NERO BURNING-ROM VERSION 6
Nero Burning-ROM is a multi-featured suite of programs for all
types of CD and DVD video and audio burning and copying. AS the
Table of Contents indicates, this tutorial will be concentrating
on the burning of audio much more than with video for visually
impaired users. Whilst most of the essential elements and
programs in the Nero suite are accessible and usable from a non-
mouse and non-monitor perspective, some of the extra add-ons of
the Nero suite are not as accessible, e.g. the Nero Express
burning interface and the Nero Wave Editor, and so these cannot
be covered here. Perhaps they will be made more keyboard
accessible in later Nero releases or updates.
Nero Burning-ROM Version 6 has a number of different methods in
which you can elect to work with the various elements of the
program suite. If you like, you can use the old-style main Nero
Burning-ROM program interface and thereby avoid the more exotic
and sometimes more difficult to use interfaces of Nero Express
and Nero StartSmart. In fact, you are probably advised to give
the Nero Express a wide birth from a keyboard and non-monitor
point of view, as it is not very keyboard-friendly. On the other
hand, you should find the Nero StartSmart feature OK to work with
once you get used to it and you may, eventually, come to prefer
this as your burning interface of choice.
If you have been a user of an earlier version of Nero, such as
Version 4, 5 or 5.5, you will find not only extra programs and
different user interfaces to work with in Nero 6 but you will
also discover that some of the old options and menu choices are
still there but have been moved to different places. Some of the
ways you can select folders and files for burning and how you
work with the New Compilation and Browser windows have also
changed. Additionally--and perhaps somewhat unfortunately for
keyboard users--the Nero Wizard has had a vanishing spell placed
upon him and so no longer exists. The Nero StartSmart and Express
take over the old Wizard's magical duties.
Because of the keyboard-unfriendly nature of the Nero Express
feature, this will not be covered in the tutorial. You can do
everything that the Nero Express can do in the other two
interfaces provided by the main Nero Burning-ROM program or the
Nero StartSmart feature, only more easily.
6.1. Installing Nero and System Requirements
System requirements and Nero installation are as follows:
6.1.1. System Requirements
For Nero Burning-ROM and Nero StartSmart to function you will
need:
1. a Pentium 100 or better--probably a Pentium 166 or better if
using a screenreader.
2. 32 Mb or more of RAM.
3. 10 Mb of spare hard disk space.
4. Windows 98 or Windows 95 OSR2 or later operating systems.
5. A supported CD-RW or DVD-RW burning drive.
6.1.2. Installing Nero 6
If you have an older version of Nero on the computer hard disk
partition you are installing Nero 6 to, Nero 6 will remove this
and overwrite it. You cannot have such as Nero 5.5 and Nero 6
installed to and both working on the same hard disk partition,
although you can have different versions of Nero on different
hard disk partitions.
Installation may vary slightly, depending on whether you have a
shop-bought CD or downloaded version, but it should go something
like this:
1.A. With the CD version, insert the program CD disk into your
CD-ROM or CD-RW drive, when it should autorun. If it does not,
use Windows Explorer or the Run feature on the Start Menu to
locate the setup.exe file on the CD and press ENTER on it. It is
likely to be at:
d:\nero\setup.exe
1.B. With the downloaded demo version, to run it either as a demo
for the trial period or to register the demo for ongoing use, go
to the downloaded Nero .exe file with Windows Explorer or My
Computer and press ENTER on it.
2. The install wizard will start the installation and you just
press ENTER on the "Next" button.
3. You next come to the license agreement, so TAB to "I do not
Accept" and ARROW up to "I Accept all Terms of the License
Agreement" and then TAB to "Next" and press ENTER.
4. Complete the name editfield if your name is not automatically
placed there already and then TAB to "Company" and type this in
or just enter "None". Then TAB to "Next" and press ENTER.
5. The installation will commence and may take a few minutes,
after which you will be on a "Finish" button to press ENTER on
to complete the installation process. However, before pressing
ENTER on "Finish", you are advised to TAB to and press SPACEBAR
to check on "Add a Shortcut to Nero StartSmart to the Desktop"
and press SPACEBAR to "Automatically Launch Nero StartSmart when
a Disk is Inserted" to turn this off if it is checked on. If,
later, you would like this latter option on, you can always
reactivate it from within the program. Later sub-versions of Nero
6 also feature a "Launch the Appropriate Application when a disk
is Inserted" option and if you have this checked on, Nero will
start up automatically when you insert such as a CD; or turn it
off if you do not want these things to happen automatically.
6. Whilst this is not strictly speaking essential, I would
recommend that you now remove the installation CD from the CD
drive, close Nero with ALT F4 and then reboot your PC.
7. To launch Nero press Windows key and then P (for Program
files), then N (for Nero) and then ARROW to "Nero Burning-ROM"
and press ENTER.
8. When you first run Nero, you will get a dialogue box requiring
you to personalise Nero by typing your name, company and Nero
serial number into it. The number should be on the stickers which
came with the installation disk. So TAB to the "Serial Number"
editfield and type the full number in with the dashes. Then TAB
to "OK" and press ENTER. Otherwise, if you are trying out the
downloaded demo only, skip the serial number editfield and press
ENTER on the "Demo" button instead.
Note 1: If you already have a copy of Nero Burning-ROM on your
PC and have just downloaded a free update to it from the
Ahead/nero Website, you can simply run the executable file you
downloaded and Nero will go through the usual above installation
procedure.
Note 2: When you download and install Nero, what you are
installing is the full, all-features version of Nero, which
includes Nero Express, Nero Burning-ROM Ultra and Nero Burning-
ROM Enterprise Edition. It is the serial number you get or
purchase to run Nero with which determines which version of the
full software you are able to unlock and use. So, if you are only
entitled to use the "free" OEM version of Nero which comes with
some CD-RW drives (which does not feature the Nero Burning-ROM
program itself), the serial number you are provided with will be
different from that you would use if you are authorised to unlock
the Nero Ultra software and yet another possible serial number
will enable the unlocking of the most professional version of
Nero with extra features and software known as Nero Enterprise.
6.2. Launching Nero
Normally, Nero 6 places a quick start icon on your Desktop to run
the new Nero StartSmart front-end interface from but it does not
do this for the main Nero Burning-ROM or Nero Express interfaces.
It expects you to do all of your selecting and burning through
Nero StartSmart, because there is a list in StartSmart which lets
you drop into either Nero Express or Nero Burning-ROM after
making your initial command choices. However, I recommend that
you create a direct link to the main Nero Burning-ROM program on
your Desktop to be able to go straight there without the added
step of having to launch Nero StartSmart.
6.2.1. Launching Nero Burning-ROM via the Program Files Path
To run the standard Nero Burning-ROM program or Nero Express you
may also wish to place a shortcut on your Start Menu or Desktop.
Otherwise, launch Nero Burning-ROm or Nero Express by:
1. Pressing Windows key, then P (for Program Files).
2. Then press N (for Nero) until you reach it and then press
ENTER.
3. In the list of Nero programs you are now in, ARROW to and
press ENTER on "Nero Burning-ROM or "Nero Express".
6.2.2. Creating a Desktop Icon from which to Launch Nero Burning-
ROM
Alternatively (or additionally), if you prefer this, you
may wish to put a shortcut icon on your Desktop to run
the main Nero Burning-ROM program from. You can use this
procedure to create shortcuts for any of your other programs as
well. To do this:
1. place focus on the "Nero Burning-ROM" launch link by
navigating to it as in Folders Navigation Method above but do not
press ENTER to launch it.
2. Now press SHIFT F10 to bring up a Context Menu and ARROW to
"Send To" and press ENTER.
3. Lastly, ARROW down to "Desktop" and press ENTER.
4. If you do not like the default name which has been given to
the Nero icon on your Desktop, just go to it after pressing
Windows key and M and then press F2 to open up an editfield. Type
in here the new icon name you would like to hear when you go to
it to launch Nero Burning-ROM, e.g. "Nero 6" and press ENTER to
save this new Desktop Word icon title.
5. You can now, in the normal way, go to this shortcut on
your Desktop by pressing Windows key M or Windows key D followed
by N until "Nero Burning-ROM" (or whatever you renamed it to) is
spoken and then press ENTER to load it.
Warning: When you first launch Nero 6, you may encounter a
complaint by Nero that it cannot find a given ASPI driver on your
operating system and so it will not be able to work with full
functionality. To be honest, this aspi driver is essential, so
you must obtain a copy. You should have this driver but you may
not. I certainly did not have it on my system and had to obtain
a copy from another computer. If this happens to you, just let
me know and I will e-mail you a copy or you can get one from the
Microsoft Website (if you live long enough to find it there!) or
beg a copy from a friend. The ASPI driver in question is called
"aspi32.sys" and needs to be copied to the following
folder/directory:
C:\Windows\system32\drivers\
Note 1: It is recommended that to burn CDs and DVDs you use
either the Nero StartSmart or Nero Burning-ROM program interfaces
and not the Nero Express.
Note 2: In the above list of Nero programs you can also launch
the individual Nero components as well as launching them via such
as the Nero Express and Nero StartSmart interfaces.
6.3. The Nero Compilation/Browser Window and Customisation
In contrast to older versions of Nero, where the New Compilation
window and Browser windows were separate so that you had to press
the F6 key to move between them, Nero 6 displays a combined
Compilation and Browser window which you can simply TAB through.
6.3.1. The Default Look of Nero
The browser and compilation windows are where you make your
selections for which tracks or files you wish to burn (copy) to
your hard disk or directly to your CD-RW or DVD-RW burning
drives. The intended method of selecting files/tracks from the
Browser files list and then dragging and dropping them in the
files/tracks list is best replaced, from a screenreader and
keyboard point of view, by a more circuitous operation but it is
still possible to do this and it has got easier with each upgrade
of Nero. You can do it with the Nero StartSmart feature or in the
standard main Nero Burning-ROM program mode. What you do is
outlined below. Essentially, the browser has a Windows Explorer-
type appearance and functionality, with one combined window
showing a files or tracks listbox and also lists where you go to
any given drive or folder and another list where you select
individual folders or files/tracks or groups of folders or
files/tracks.
6.3.2. Customising Nero for Visually Impaired Users
You might like to start by making a few changes in the way Nero
does things by default. setting things up as suggested below
should make it clearer just what is happening and at what stage
you are at whilst using Nero, although these configuration
changes are by no means essential and if you are not confident
enough to do this at this stage, leave things as they are and
come back to this section later. Additionally, more configuration
suggestions and possibilities are outlined near the end of this
whole Nero section for you to consider, under the heading
"Viewing and Customising Nero Preferences". Initially, just make
the below few configuration changes.
1. Launch the main Nero Burning-ROM program (not Nero StartSmart
or Nero Express) by one of the methods outlined in the last
section and then press ESCAPE to close the Nero Burning-ROM
compilation window. Then press ALT F (for File), followed by F
(for Preferences).
2. You will come into a nine property sheet multi-dialogue box
in which you can press CONTROL TAB to move between sheets and
then TAB to cycle through individual sheets.
3. Press CONTROL tab to the "Sounds" property sheet and TAB to
each of three checkboxes in here and press SPACEBAR to turn them
all on so that you can get Nero to provide you with specific
musical sounds to indicate what has happened whilst you are
burning CDs and DVDs, e.g. Checking all three of the controls in
here will provide a trumpet sound to let you know that your burn
was successful, a boo sound to let you know if it was
unsuccessful and a dingdong sound to tell you to place a CD in
the CD drawer. I would recommend that you check all three of
these on by pressing the SPACEBAR on them.
4. TAB to "OK" and press ENTER to finish. That is all for now.
6.4. Burning Data or Audio Tracks to CD or DVD with the Standard
Nero Burning-ROM Interface
You can burn CDs without using Nero StartSmart or Nero Express.
You use the main, standard Nero Burning-rOM program and
interface. This may suite some users and/or their screenreaders
better than the other two interface methods. It does also
sometimes give more access to the full range of options and
formats available in the program.
To use the main Nero Burning-ROM interface you would:
1. Launch Nero Burning-ROM from your Desktop icon link or by:
Pressing Windows key, then P (for Program Files), then N (for
Nero) ENTER, then press ENTER again on "Nero 6 . . ." followed
by ARROWING to "Nero Burning-ROM" and pressing ENTER.
2. You should load into the "NEW Compilation" multi-property
sheet. If you do not, press CONTROL N to get there. This
multipage dialogue has six property sheets within it which you
can CONTROL TAB through. The one you are on now is the
"Multisession" sheet.
3. You will be on a list of three types of session you can elect
to choose from. They are "Start Multisession Disk", "Continue
Multisession Disk" and "No Multisession". So ARROW to the one you
want. The former is for burning one of many sessions to a CD or
DVD, i.e. leaving it open for future burning as it will not be
filled on this session, the second is for when you will be
inserting a multisession disk which is already partly filled from
a previous burning session and the third option is for burning
a disk in one session so that it will not be available for
additional burns to that disk without loosing the already burned
data.
So, for this example, leave focus on "Start Multisession Disk"
or on "No Multisession", whichever suits your needs.
4. Now TAB four times to a list of around 10 to 13 different
formats you can burn a CD or DVD to (depending on the sub-version
of Nero 6 Ultra or Enterprise you are using), e.g. starting with
"CD-ROM (ISO)", and under it comes such as "Audio CD", "Mixed
Mode CD", "CD Extra", etc. The "ISO" option is to be used if you
want to copy standard data files or MP3 files to a CD. One press
of ARROW down takes you to "Audio-CD" where you would place the
focus if you wanted to create an audio music CD. "Mixed Mode CD"
permits the making of CDs with both data and audio files on them,
the latter intended for playing on a car stereo, a home stereo
or on a computer and the former for playing on a PC only. "CD-
Copy" permits you to clone (duplicate) any type of CD precisely
as the original in the CD-ROM drawer. There are other types of
CD and DVD burning selections but, for visually impaired people,
these are likely to be of secondary importance, e.g. creating
video CDs, Creating CDs for use on Apple Mac PCs, creating a
system boot CD (you can do this with your Windows operating
system on a floppy disk, etc. You also get a couple of extra
burning facilities if you have the Enterprise Edition of Nero,
such as "MiniDVD" and "CD-ROM (EFI Boot)".
Note: If you accidentally close this Mew Compilation dialogue,
you can reopen it by pressing CONTROL N.
5. Leave focus on the "CD-ROM (ISO)" line to burn data files and
ensure that you have a standard write-only CD-R or DVD-R or
rewritable CD-RW or DVD-RW blank disk inserted into the burning
drive drawer. You can use any reasonable quality blank CD-R or
DVD disk for this type of copying. On the other hand, you may,
for learning and practise purposes only, wish to use a rewritable
disk so that it can be erased and used again without wasting
write-only disks in trial and error burns.
Note 1: If you had of wanted to burn audio tracks, such as wave
or CDA tracks, instead of data files, you would, of course, have
left focus on "Audio CD" in the last step instead of on "CD-ROM
(ISO)". However, this would not apply to MP3 audio files, as
these are, in fact, not standard audio files but rather they are
data files.
Note 2: There is an "Open" button just before you get to the next
stage, which you can use if you do not need to create a new
compilation template but already have one created earlier which
you now wish to have loaded in for burning. More about this
later.
6. Tab to the "New" button and press ENTER.
7. Now you are at the browsing and compilation stage, in a blank
compilation window, and you must select tracks or files for
burning directly to CD or DVD, as described below. However,
firstly note that you will be on the title (also known as the
volume label) of your about to be created CD. the default title
is "New" but you are not likely to want to call all of your CDs
"New", so to change this to a label of your own preference, just
press the F2 key to open up an editfield and in here type the
label name you would like to give to and have burnt to this CD,
e.g. type in something like "Audio Sounds 2", "myfiles 3", etc,
and press ENTEr. You will now observe that "New" has changed to
your own label title.
8. Now, to add your complete folders of files or to select
individual files for burning, press TAB twice to move from the
CD title to the File browsing tree/list and you will now be in
a standard Windows browsing tree (similar to being in Windows
Explorer or My Computer) to be able to ARROW down and open disk
drives or folders in by pressing ENTER on them or right ARROWING
on them. This is the normal Windows-type tree structure with your
drives and folders on the left and the individual files within
each folder on the right, which you may have to press the TAB key
to move to. You can now leave focus on a whole folder of data
files to get it and all of its contents burnt or open that folder
and individually highlight sub-folders or files for burning as
required. For instance, if you have opened a folder and only want
the files from within it burnt and not the folder itself, just
press CONTROL A to get all files highlighted for burning or, if
you want only file 1, 3 and 6 of a list of 10 files burning,
ARROW to file 1, and then hold down the CONTROL key, which will
automatically select/highlight this first file for you, then,
keeping the CONTROL key held down all of the time, ARROW down to
file 3 and press and release the SPACEbar, then ARROW to file 6
and again press the SPACEBAR to select that as well. You should
have had the CONTROL key held down all of the time and you will
now have your three non-contiguous files highlighted for burning.
Other standard Windows selecting and highlighting keystrokes will
also work fine in here as well.
9. Now that you have got your folder(s) or files highlighted,
just press CONTROL C to copy them to the Clipboard.
10. After selecting files and copying them to the Clipboard, you
press TAB twice to move past the CD title/volume label to a files
listbox which will be empty. To get your selected folders or
files pasted into this listbox, just press CONTROL V. They are
now in place for burning to CD but you can make changes to them
before burning them if you like. For example, if you ARROW to any
of the folder or filenames in the files to be burnt listbox and
press F2, you can overtype the current folder or filename with
a new name of your own choice, e.g. type over track01.mp3 with
something more meaningful such as Sergeant Pepper.mp3.
Note: You can also use an alternative method of copying selected
files to the above files list with the shortcut keystroke of
CONTROL 1. This would replace steps 9 and 10 above. For example,
after highlighting/selecting files at step 8, you would then skip
step 9 and achieve the results of step 10 by pressing CONTROL 1
to insert your selected tracks straight into the files list. If
you were adding non-consecutive files to the files list, you
could also do this by ARROWING to each file in turn and getting
each inserted into the files list individually by pressing
CONTROL 1 on each file in turn.
11. With all files now selected and renamed if necessary, you
press ALT R (for Recorder) followed by O (for Burn Compilation)
and the burn dialogue will load in for you to finish the process
off. You can also load this burn dialogue at this stage with
later sub-versions of Nero 6 with the shortcut of CONTROL B.
Note: Unfortunately, with Nero, you cannot determine the order
in which data files (including MP3 audio files) will copy to CD
in by use of the keyboard. This can only be done with the sighted
drag-and-drop procedure. The data/MP3 files will copy in
alphabetical or numeric order. Happily, however, you can move
audio tracks around into your preferred order, which will be
demonstrated later.
12. In the burn dialogue box:
A. You will be on a "Determine Maximum Speed" checkbox to press
SPACEBAR on to ensure that Nero always burns at your CD-RWs
maximum speed if you would like to do this.
B. TABBING to the "Simulation" checkbox and ensuring that this
is turned on can make Nero test your CD and burner/buffering
abilities and do a dummy run before then actually burning the
files to CD to ensure that the copying will be successful and
warn you if there are likely to be any problems, so that you can
abort the burning if you wish and not waste a CD. However, you
will also have to have the "Write" option checked off as well to
ensure that this feature works without burning the CD. The
"Write" checkbox is immediately underneath the "Simulation"
checkbox.
C. TABBING to the "Finalise CD" checkbox allows you to ensure
that only the files you firstly burn to a given disk can be put
on it if you want to close the disk. However, you will not be
able to burn more data to the disk if you check this on, so leave
the finalise option checked off for burning successive data files
in different sessions to a disk so that you will be able to fill
it. Be aware, though, that you will need to check the finalise
box on if you want to be able to play an audio CD on a standard
HI-FI system, because a HI-FI CD player needs both certain disk
beginning and disk ending data/markers to be present before it
will play properly.
D. The "Write Speed" option lets you ARROW up and down to the
speed you would like to write at, e.g. 48X if your CD-RW can work
at this speed, but remember that cheaper quality disks may
require a slower writing speed to be successful, such as 12X or
24X speed. Similarly, some older CD-ROMs cannot extract at more
than 1X or 2X speed, particularly with audio tracks, despite what
their data reading speed may be said to be. The slower the
writing speed, the more likely you are to obtain an unblemished
copy. you'll just have to experiment with different qualities of
compact disks and different speeds to familiarise yourself with
your CD-ROM's/DVD-ROM's, CPUs and different blank disk
capabilities.
E. TABBING to the "Write Method" will let you ARROW to and select
from either "Track-at-Once" to get files or tracks burnt
separately with short gaps between them (the CD-RW laser turns
off for a couple of seconds between tracks), or "Disk-at-Once"
where you can get the burning done without the laser turning off
between tracks or "Disk-at-Once 96" for another format of disk-
at-once burning.
F. In the other options in here, you can sometimes elect to get
more than one copy burnt successively one after another with one
burning drive, to get more than one copy burnt simultaneously
using more than one CD-RW or DVD-RW recording drive (if you have
more than one) and you can get the Nero virus-checker to run on
the files before they are burnt to ensure that they are virus-
free (if you own a shop bought full version of the Nero 6 Ultra
or Reloaded program or the Enterprise Edition--not the
complimentary copy which comes with some CD-RW drives). Having
set these burning parameters, most of them will hold as the
defaults for future burning sessions, unless you change them or
some of the earlier selections.
13. Lastly, press TAB until you reach the "Burn" button and press
ENTER to start the copying process.The program may say that it
is waiting for a CD but just ignore this if you have already
inserted a CD into the CD-RW drive.
14. When the copying/burning to CD has finished, Nero will tell
you that the burning process was successful--hopefully! You will
have an "OK" button to press ENTER on. During the burning you can
check the progress of burning if you like by using your
screenreader's read title Bar hot key to hear the percentage of
burning already completed (INSERT T with JAWS, CONTROL SHIFT T
with Window-Eyes and Numpad 7 with HAL) and you can also view
this in mouse mode but if you are burning audio files for the
finished product it is probably a good idea not to do this too
often in case you cause pops or clicks on the resultant sound
file. I would therefore advise that, when you are in the
learning/practising stage and still need to know and be assured
of what is going on, you use a rewritable disk which can be later
erased and practised on again to save wasting CD-R or DVD-R
(write-once only) disks. You can then use your screenreader's
mouse mode and informational hot keys as much as you like until
you get the hang of things, e.g. JAWS users might want to press
INSERT S to circulate between reading highlighted text, no text
at all and all text and changes on screen, leaving things on
"All" to listen to the simulating and then burning as it goes
through the various steps. (Once your CD-RW disk is full, you
will have to erase it to be able to work with it again, so see
"Erasing the Contents of a Rewritable CD or DVD" below for how
to erase a rewritable disk.)
15. To finish with the current burning session and start another
or to exit Nero, TAB to "Done" and press ENTER, when your disk
will automatically be ejected by Nero. You can then start another
burning session by pressing CONTROL N or exit Nero by pressing
ALT F4 and answering "No" to the message you will receive about
saving changes to the ISO1 compilation.
Note 1: Depending on whether you have the "Simulate" option
checked on or off and/or the "Write" option on or off, the usual
"Burn" button at step 12 above may appear as either a "Simulate"
or a "OK" button.
Note 2: If, in step 8 above, you find it difficult to highlight
non-consecutive files, you could always copy the files you want
to an empty folder on your hard disk first and then burn/copy
them from there to a CD or DVD after pressing CONTROL A to
highlight them all. You should also remember the Nero shortcut
of CONTROL 1 to get individual files inserted into the burning
files list as well.
Note 3: At step 8 above, if you had of wanted to place individual
tracks within a folder on the CD which you wish to create at this
stage yourself, before pressing CONTROL V to paste the files into
the compilation, you could have created this folder at this stage
by pressing ALT E (for Edit) and then R (for Create Folder). The
default folder name will be "New", so type over this with a
folder name of your own liking, e.g. "workfiles", "memos", etc,
and press ENTRE to create the folder on the CD. If this empty
folder now has focus when you copy other sub-folders or files
into the Compilation window, then the sub-folder or files will
be copied inside this main folder which you have created. If you
want to create a second main folder on the CD (not a sub-folder),
just ARROW up to your volume label first and then create your
second main level folder in the same way as you created the first
main level folder with ALT E and then R. If you want to create
a sub-folder running from any of your main folders, put focus on
that main folder and go through the process again with ALT E and
then R.
6.5. Creating a Data CD from Files on Your Hard Disk Drive with
Nero StartSmart
You can create data Cds in a variety of ways, one of which is
outlined in this section and another of which is described near
the end of Section 6 (the Windows Explorer method).
Whilst this section has been called creating Cds with Nero
StartSmart, the same procedures would apply if you were creating
DVDs in this way.
To clarify, Nero StartSmart is really only a front-end command
interface which you can launch prior to then electing to do the
remainder of your selecting and burning via the other two Nero
interfaces of the Nero express (not recommended) or the Nero
Burning-ROM interface (strongly recommended).
One very good aspect of the StartSmart interface is that, for
beginners, it makes it clearer exactly what types of files and
formats can be burnt using a given type of procedure. The
category or type of files/tracks/disk to be created can be
selected firstly and then later in the StartSmart dialogue you
get a list of the kinds of CD you can create and burn with that
particular format/type of file. Below is a simple example using
a straightforward data burning category.
To burn folders and/or files to disk using the Nero StartSmart
feature:
1. Put a blank CD-R or CD-RW disk into your CD writer drive and
then launch the Nero StartSmart Program interface by pressing
ENTER on it on your Desktop, after pressing ALT M to get to the
Desktop. Note that if Nero tries to take you online to the
Internet each time you launch StartSmart, it is doing this
because "Automatically check for Updates" is checked on in the
"Nero Product Centre", so press ENTER on this and uncheck it with
the SPACEBAR. You can always re-enter this dialogue at any time
to get updates manually if you like (see the section entitled
"Automatic and Manual Updating of the Nero Program via the Nero
Website" for more details about Nero updating.
2. Now SHIFT TAB back and press ENTER on the "Show/Hide
Applications and Help" button to open up more of the options and
choices which the StartSmart interface offers.
3. You now have to TAB to "Choose Your Category" and select the
type of CD you would like to produce by ARROWING left or right
amongst the six options, i.e. Favourites, Data, Audio, Photo and
Video, Copy and Backup and Extras. For this example, leave focus
on "Data". the data option is for a CD containing such as text
files, programs, MP3 tracks, etc, but not uncompressed music or
video files like Wav or JPeg files.
4. Now, before starting the process, ensure that the Nero burning
program and not the Nero Express is selected by TABBING twice to
"Open With", where "Nero Burning-ROM" should be selected rather
than "Nero Express". You ARROW up or down to the one you want.
5. Now SHIFT TAB backwards to a "Make Data Disk" button and press
ENTER.
6. Now you are at the browsing and compilation stage, in a blank
compilation window, and you must select tracks or files for
burning directly to CD, as described below. However, firstly note
that you will be on the title (also known as the volume label)
of your about to be created CD. the default title is "New" but
you are not likely to want to call all of your Cds "New", so to
change this to a label of your own preference, just press the F2
key to open up an editfield and in here type the label name you
would like to give to and have burnt to this CD, e.g. type in
something like "Audio Sounds 2", "myfiles 3", etc, and press
ENTEr. You will now observe that "New" has changed to your own
label title.
7. Next, to add your complete folders of files or to select
individual files for burning, press TAB twice to move from the
CD title to the File browsing tree/list and you will now be in
a standard Windows browsing tree (similar to being in Windows
Explorer) to be able to ARROW down and open disk drives or
folders in by pressing ENTER on them or right ARROWING on them.
This is the normal Windows-type tree structure with your drives
and folders on the left and the individual files within each
folder on the right, which you may have to press the TAB key to
move to. You can now leave focus on a whole folder of data files
to get it and all of its contents burnt or open that folder and
individually highlight sub-folders or files for burning as
required. For instance, if you have opened a folder and only want
the files from within it burnt and not the folder, just press
CONTROL A to get them all highlighted for burning or, if you want
only file 1, 3 and 6 of a list of 10 files burning, ARROW to file
1, and then hold down the CONTROL key, which will automatically
select/highlight this first file for you, then, keeping the
CONTROL key held down all of the time, ARROW down to file 3 and
press and release the SPACEbar, then ARROW to file 6 and again
press the SPACEBAR to select that as well. You should have had
the CONTROL key held down all of the time and you will now have
your three non-contiguous files highlighted for burning. Other
selecting and highlighting keystrokes will also work fine in here
as well.
8. Now that you have got your folder(s) or files highlighted,
just press CONTROL C to copy them to the Clipboard.
9. After selecting files and copying them to the Clipboard, you
press TAB twice to move past the CD title/volume label to a files
listbox which will be empty. To get your selected folders or
files pasted into this listbox, just press CONTROL V. They are
now in place for burning to CD but you can make changes to them
before burning them if you like. For example, if you ARROW to any
of the folder or filenames in the files to be burnt listbox and
press F2, you can overtype the current folder or filename with
a new name of your own choice, e.g. type over track01.mp3 with
something more meaningful such as Sergeant Pepper.mp3.
10. With all files now selected and renamed if necessary, you
press ALT R (for Recorder) followed by O (for Burn Compilation)
and the burn dialogue will load in for you to finish the process
off.
Note: Unfortunately, with Nero, you cannot determine the order
in which data (including MP3) files will copy to CD in by use of
the keyboard. This can only be done with the sighted drag-and-
drop procedure. The files will copy in alphabetical or numeric
order. Happily, however, you can move audio tracks around into
your preferred order, which will be demonstrated later.
11. In the burn dialogue box:
A. You will be on a "Determine Maximum Speed" checkbox to press
SPACEBAR
on to ensure that Nero always burns at your CD-RWs
maximum speed if you would like to do this.
B. TABBING to the "Simulation" checkbox and ensuring that this
is turned on will make Nero test your CD and do a dummy run
before then actually burning the files to CD to ensure that the
copying will be successful and warn you if there are likely to
be any problems, so that you can abort the burning if you wish
and not waste a CD. If you want to do this simulating
successfully, ensure that the "Write" option is checked off
first.
C. The "Write Speed" option lets you ARROW up and down to the
speed you would like to write at, e.g. 48X if your CD-RW can work
at this speed, but remember that cheaper quality disks may
require a slower writing speed to be successful, such as 12X or
24X speed. Similarly, some older CD-ROMs cannot extract at more
than 1X or 2X speed, particularly with audio tracks, despite what
their data reading speed may be said to be. The slower the
writing speed, the more likely you are to obtain an unblemished
copy. you'll just have to experiment with different qualities of
compact disks and different speeds to familiarise yourself with
your CD-ROMs, CPUs and different blank disk capabilities.
D. TABBING to the "Write Method" will let you ARROW to and select
from either "Track-at-Once" to get files or tracks burnt
separately with short gaps between them (the CD-RW laser turns
off for a couple of seconds between tracks), or "Disk-at-Once"
where you can get the burning done without the laser turning off
between tracks or "Disk-at-Once 96" for another format of disk-
at-once burning.
E. In the other options in here, you can sometimes elect to get
more than one copy burnt successively one after another with one
CD-RW drive, to get more than one copy burnt simultaneously using
more than one CD-RW recording drive (if you have more than one)
and you can get the Nero virus-checker to run on the files before
they are burnt to ensure that they are virus-free (if you own a
shop bought full version of the Nero 6 Ultra or Reloaded program
or Enterprise Edition--not the complimentary copy which comes
with some CD-RW drives). Having set these burning parameters,
most of them will hold as the defaults for future burning
sessions, unless you change them.
12. Lastly, press TAB to the"Burn" button and press ENTER to
start the burning to disk process.The program may say that it is
waiting for a CD but just ignore this if you have already
inserted a CD into the CD-RW drive.
13. When the copying/burning to CD has finished, Nero will tell
you that the burning process was successful--hopefully! You will
have an "OK" button to press ENTER on. During the burning you can
check the progress of burning if you like by using your
screenreader's read title Bar hot key to hear the percentage of
burning already completed (INSERT T with JAWS, CONTROL SHIFT T
with Window-Eyes and Numpad 7 with HAL) and you can also view
this in mouse mode but if you are burning audio files for the
finished product it is probably a good idea not to do this too
often in case you cause pops or clicks on the resultant sound
file. I would therefore advise that, when you are in the
learning/practising stage and still need to know and be assured
of what is going on, you use a rewritable CD-RW disk which can
be later erased and practised on again to save wasting CD-R
(write-once only) disks. You can then use your screenreader's
mouse mode and informational hot keys as much as you like until
you get the hang of things, e.g. JAWS users might want to press
INSERT S to circulate between reading highlighted text, no text
at all and all text and changes on screen, leaving things on
"All" to listen to the simulating and then burning as it goes
through the various steps. (Once your CD-RW disk is full, you
will have to erase it to be able to work with it again, so see
"Erasing the Contents of a Rewritable CD or DVD" below for how
to erase a rewritable disk.)
14. To finish with the current burning session and start another
or to exit Nero, TAB to "Done" and press ENTER, when your disk
will automatically be ejected by Nero. You can then start another
burning session by pressing CONTROL N or exit Nero by pressing
ALT F4 and answering "No" to the message you will receive about
saving changes to the ISO1 compilation.
Note 1: If, in step 8 above, you find it difficult to highlight
non-consecutive files, you could always copy the files you want
to an empty folder on your hard disk first and then copy them
from there to a CD after pressing CONTROL A to highlight them
all.
Note 2: At step 8 above, if you had of wanted to place individual
tracks within a folder on the CD which you wish to create at this
stage yourself, before pressing CONTROL V to paste the files into
the compilation, you could have created this folder at this stage
by pressing ALT E (for Edit) and then R (for Create Folder). The
default folder name will be "New", so type over this with a
folder name of your own liking, e.g. "workfiles", "memos", etc,
and press ENTRE to create the folder on the CD. If this empty
folder now has focus when you copy other sub-folders or files
into the Compilation window, then the sub-folder or files will
be copied inside this main folder which you have created. If you
want to create a second main folder on the CD (not a sub-folder),
just ARROW up to your volume label first and then create your
second main level folder in the same way as you created the first
main level folder with ALT E and then R. If you want to create
a sub-folder running from any of your main folders, put focus on
that main folder and go through the process again with ALT E and
then R.
6.6. Saving Compilations or Log Files
You can save your compilations to be able to use them again or
you can save a log file of the burning parameters you used when
doing a burn if you wish.
6.6.1. Saving Your Compilation Settings for Use in a Later
Burning Session
If you would like to save the above compilation for possible
future identical CD burning, with the same CD volume label, same
folder structure, same tracks/files, etc, you would:
1. After finishing burning your first copy at stage 14 in the
last section (i.e. after activating the "Done" button), you would
press CONTROL S (for Save) and type a filename into the editfield
which opens up (no extension). You will be overtyping Nero's
default compilation filename of such as "Audio1", so type
something you can identify like "Audio1b" or "Best Hits 1".
2. TAB forward to "Save as Type" and accept the default of ".nra"
as the standard Nero file extension for audio copying
compilations.
3. TAB to "Save" and press ENTER. The compilation template may
be saved to either the same folder that your original files were
copied from or to My Documents but you can change this to a
folder where only your saved .nra files are kept if you wish. So,
for example, if you decided to call this compilation template
"tutorials", its full filename would now be "tutorials.nra".
Note: Nero sometimes gives saved compilations a ".nri" instead
of a ".nra" extension. The type of extension allotted depends on
the kind of files or tracks you are dealing with in the
compilation, e.g. the "a" in .nra signifies an audio compilation
and the "i" in .nri indicates that this is an ISO (data)
compilation. There are several other possible compilation
extensions as well for yet other types of compilations.
6.6.2. Saving Nero's Finished Burning Compilation Messages for
Later Viewing
After your CD or DVD has finished burning, you can save the
finished burning information messages, burning parameter details
and information about the parts of your system which were used
in the burning process if you wish to view these later but you
are not very likely to want to do this unless you are having
burning difficulties and your screenreader cannot read the error
messages on screen very well. In the unlikely event that you
would need to do this, take the following action:
1. After your burn has completed or failed and you come onto the
standard list of things you can do after burning, e.g. "Save Log,
"Print Log, "Done", "Verify Written Data", and "Automatically
Shutdown the PC when Done", you can press ALT S to activate the
"Save Log" option.
2. In the editfield you come into, type a name for the file of
your own choice, e.g. neroinfo.
3. TAB to "Save" and press ENTER to save the file as a plain txt
text file for later viewing in your word-processor or Windows
Notepad.
4. If you now receive messages about accessing CDDB databases,
just press ESCAPE to clear these and then TAB to "Close" and
press ENTER.
5. To view the saved information file, search for it with the
Windows Find feature, as it can be saved in different places
depending on the version of Windows you are using, e.g. it may
be found at:
C:\My Documents\neroinfo.txt
or
c:\Documents and Settings\John Wilson\My Documents\neroinfo.txt
but, of course, your operating system registered name would
appear in the above path instead of mine.
6.7. Opening a Saved Compilation Template
To open one of the above .nra saved compilations for further CD
burning:
1. Press CONTROL O and then either:
A. In the filename textbox you land in, type the compilation
filename in and press ENTER, e.g. "audio1b" (no need for the
extension).
or
B. If the above does not work for you, type in the full path and
filename to the compilation template, e.g. C:\my
documents\audio1b.nra, and press ENTER.
Or
C. TAB once to "Files of Type" and:
i. ARROW to the type of file you are looking for, e.g. CD-ROM
(ISO)" (data files), "Audio CD compilation", etc. If you wish to
be able to view all Nero's file extension types, ARROW right up
to "All Nero Compilations and Images".
ii. SHIFT TAB back several times to the list of drives/folders.
ARROW up or down until you reach the drive, such as C:, where
your compilation templates are saved to. Then TAB to the list of
folders and press ENTER to open up the compilation ".nra" or
other file type files.
iii. Place focus on the one you want, TAB to "Open" and press
ENTER.
2. The compilation will load in and you press ENTER on an OK
button if it appears.
3. If you would like to burn another CD exactly the same as the
first one burnt with this compilation, you now just press ALT R
(for Recorder) and O (for Burn compilation) and the burn dialogue
will load in and take you through the usual last few steps of
burning.
Note: The word "ISO" is both an acronym for International
Standards Organisation and it is the Greek word for equal to or
the same as.
6.8. Extracting Audio Tracks to WAV Format Before Creating an
Audio CD
It is important with Nero to ensure that the format of audio
tracks is correct before creating an audio CD for playing on a
HI-FI system. They must be wave files in the .WAV format, in 44.1
KHz and 16-bit stereo. This is, of course, only necessary if you
are burning uncompressed tracks such as .cda music tracks via the
hard disk, not for on the fly direct CD-ROM to CD-RW burning or
for extracting and burning MP3 files. You can achieve this in the
following way.
1. If you have the Nero Burning-ROM manual compilation dialogue
open, close it by pressing ESCAPE. If you have the Nero
StartSmart interface open, close that by TABBING to the "Nero"
button, press ENTER and then press ESCAPE.
2. Insert your music CD into the CDRW or CD-ROM drawer and close
it. Keep the left SHIFT key depressed for about 20 seconds whilst
you do this to stop the Windows autoplay feature from launching
an audio player and starting to play your CD.
3. Press ALT X (for Extras) and then S (for Save Tracks).
4. You now enter the first of three dialogue boxes. This first
dialogue is where you just ARROW up or down to choose the CD
drive you wish to extract your tracks from and then TAB to and
press ENTER on "OK".
5. Next you come into a tracks selecting dialogue on a list of
all of the tracks on your CD in your CD drive. The tracks may
already be named for you if the Nero CDDB database already knows
about the disk you have decided to extract tracks from; otherwise
you may get a "Yes" or a "No" or a "Access Internet Database"
button to press ENTER on to get Nero to go onto the Nero titles
and CDDB database on the Internet and retrieve the album title,
artist's name, individual tracks' titles, etc, or you can elect,
instead, to name the album and tracks yourself manually by
TABBING to and pressing ENTER on "Create a New CD Entry". If you
neither want to go onto the Internet to the CDDB database nor
manually name the album and tracks at this stage, you can TAB to
"No" or "Cancel" and press ENTER to skip this naming stage.
Note: You can turn off the automatic opening of the above CD
database to show or allow completion of tracks and artist's
details if you wish by either pressing SPACEBAR on "Never Show
this Message Again" checkbox in the above CDDB database dialogue
or by going to File, Preferences, CONTROL TABBING to "Database"
and then pressing SPACEBAR on "Open the Database During Save
Track". Below this is where to check off "Open the Database
During CD Copy" if you would like to skip this step in direct CD
to CD copying as well.
6. The third dialogue box you come into, after the above Nero
title and CDDB database naming option or electing to skip that
step, is the main selecting and extracting dialogue, which has
several settings, options, radio buttons and dialogues you can
TAB through and check on, arrow to or press ENTER on to go into
(e.g. the "Settings" button, to change such as bit rate,
mono/stereo recording, etc, and you eventually press ENTER on a
"Go" button to get selected tracks converted. Ensure that you
have ARROWED to The "PCM Wav File" format for this exercise but
note that there are several different possible conversion
formats. Additionally, in this dialogue, before going to the "Go"
button, if you press SPACEBAR on the "Options" button, you will
obtain several more options which you can check on or off
depending on the quality and age of your CD drive and your
requirements and preferences, e.g. To enable jitter correction
(recommended), to remove the silent gaps between tracks, to
automatically create an M3U playlist of stored audio tracks (a
tracks tagging and listing ability), etc. You should also note
that the "Browse" button, if pressed, will permit you to navigate
to a different tracks saving folder if you wish, e.g. C:\music,
provided that you have created such a folder for this first.
Otherwise, the default saving folder will be C:\My Documents.
The above "Browse" dialogue should also allow you to BACKSPACE
out the current track name, such as track1, and type another more
appropriate track name in if you wish, before going to the "Save"
button and then the "Go" button. However, this browser/renaming
dialogue is not very reliable from a keyboard and screenreader
point of view, as sometimes it does not give you the track
renaming option, so you may have to use an alternative method of
renaming tracks to their correct names, e.g. after you have saved
the tracks to your saving folder, you may wish to use Windows
Explorer to go to them and then press the F2 key on each name in
turn and type in the correct track name with the .wav extension
or you may wish to press ENTER on each track to get such as
Windows Media Player to open up and start playing the track,
after which you should be able to press CONTROL S (for save) and
then resave the track to a new filename such as:
C:\music\Let It Be.wav
but you will then have to delete the original tracks so that you
do not get duplicate tracks with different names.
In fact, when creating compilation music CDs, if you are
selecting such as track 1 from several Cds, you will find that
Nero will try to over-write your original track 1 with the new
track one unless you rename the original track one to something
else first.
7. In the above tracks selection step you use traditional Windows
highlighting procedures in the tracks list to get the tracks you
want to extract selected, e.g. the SHIFT KEY with the ARROW up
and down keys to select consecutive tracks, the CONTROL key to
move to non-consecutive tracks and press SPACEBAR to select
tracks randomly and there is a "Select All" button if you want
to highlight all of the tracks on a disk for extracting. If you
named the tracks in the previous dialogue or the CDDB database
did this, then the track names will appear in the tracks list;
otherwise they will simply be numbered 1, 2, 3, etc, followed by
some information about the track such as its size in minutes and
seconds, its size in Mb, the type of file extension it has, and
so on. If you want to select a few tracks from more than one CD,
you would be advised to let the Nero CDDB provide a title for the
album and tracks, then extract the tracks you want from the first
CD to your hard disk, followed by doing the same with CD number
two, etc. Alternatively, and a little more messy, if you do not
have an Internet connection, you could extract the tracks from
CD one first, rename them manually and then extract more tracks
from CD two, etc, until you have them all extracted to different
names.
8. When you have made all of the tracks selections and options
changes you want, you press ENTER on "Go" (or use the shortcut
of ALT G) and after the extraction has finished (which may take
only a few seconds or a minute or two) you will return to the
"Go" button and can SHIFT TAB to "Close" to finish.
9. You are now ready to select these extracted wave tracks and
place them into a compilation using one of the procedures
outlined in both earlier and later sections, obviously by
navigating to the C:\My Documents folder or any other folder
you extracted the tracks to and placing them into the compilation
window.
Summary: The above requirement to convert .cda tracks to .wav
format before burning to another CD for HI-FI playing would seem
to be somewhat long-winded and complicated. However, once you
have set up the normal parameters and settings you require these
will hold for future conversions and if you do not elect to use
the Nero title and CDDB option, then the series of keystrokes for
future conversions can be simplified to:
Press ALT X, then S, then ENTER, then ESCAPE (to leave the CDDB
database dialogue if you have not disabled this), then select
your tracks individually or all tracks with ALT A and finish by
pressing ALT G.
Note 1: As is generally the case when working with track burning,
you should resist the temptation to keep using your screenreader
when tracks are being extracted to avoid getting clicks or jumps
in your extracted tracks.
Note 2: You can use this "Save Tracks" feature for data tracks
as well as for audio conversion, e.g. for if you wish to convert
different file standards to image files which could then be burnt
to a CD in such as Apple Mac and HAS and other none standard
formats. However, these are much less frequent formats and there
are restrictions in what you can do in practice. They will not
be described here as this tutorial is about data and audio
burning with IBM-compatible PCs, not for non-IBM compatible
computer formats.
6.9. Creating Audio Cds and DVDs
Many of the steps for burning audio tracks with Nero StartSmart
are the same as in the burning of data files. After pasting audio
tracks into the tracks list of the Audio 1 Browser/compilation
pane, you can then arrange them in the order you like and rename
them before burning them to CD.
If your original tracks are not already in a WAV format and you
are not burning on the fly, convert them to WAV files as directed
above in "Extracting Audio Tracks to WAV Format Before Creating
an Audio CD". This will also mean that any tracks you want to
burn from one CD-ROM to another CD will already have to be in the
wav format, in 44,100 Hz stereo if you are burning from another
CD or these will also have to be extracted and converted to wav
files as well and placed on your hard disk. After this what you
do is outlined below.
6.9.1. Creating an Audio Music Disk from Your CD-ROM Drive or
Hard Disk with Nero StartSmart
Note that the steps for burning a DDCD and a DVD are the same
as for burning a CD but the references to CD in the options and
selections change to references to DVD or DD CD.
To burn audio tracks using the Nero StartSmart feature:
1. Place a blank CD into the CD-RW burning drive drawer and shut
it. If you have Nero StartSmart set up to automatically run when
a CD is placed into the burning drive, it will launch itself for
you. If not, you should press ENTER on its icon on the Desktop
if you put one there or launch it from:
C:\Program Files\Nero\Nero StartSmart
2. Now, if you have not already opened the extra features of
StartSmart as directed in burning data files above (it will hold
as the default if you did), SHIFT TAB back and press ENTER on
the "Show/Hide Applications and Help" button to open up more of
the options and choices which the StartSmart interface offers.
3. You now have to TAB to "Choose Your Category" and select the
type of CD you would like to produce by ARROWING left or right
amongst the six options, i.e. Favourites, Data, Audio, Photo and
Video, Copy and Backup and Extras. For this example, leave focus
on "audio". the audio option is for burning tracks from a CD
containing such as .wav music tracks on a standard CD-ROm or in
a folder on your hard disk but not for data files only or video
files only. You are also unlikely to be able to burn mixed mode
and other joint compilation disks using keyboard procedures, as
all keyboard methods fail to effectively select files or tracks
in the second half of the compilation list, so stick to burning
data files to one disk and audio or video files to a different
disk.
4. Now, before starting the process, ensure that the Nero burning
program and not the Nero Express is selected by TABBING twice to
"Open With", where "Nero Burning-ROM" should be selected rather
than "Nero Express". You ARROW up or down to the one you want.
5. Now SHIFT TAB backwards to a "Make Audio CD" button and press
ENTER. Note that you could have ARROWED down from "Make Audio CD"
to several other types of audio burning options, such as "Make
MP3 Disk", "Make Audio and Data CD", etc, but remember that the
latter of these would not work using the keyboard.
6. Now you are at the browsing and compilation stage, in a blank
audio compilation window, and you must select tracks or files for
burning directly to CD, as described below.
7. You are now in the equivalent of the data burning files list
but this time it is the tracks list and it will be empty. You can
press your Screenreader's read line hot key to hear the tracks'
header columns spoken, such as where the track names will appear,
the title and duration of the tracks, etc, which will appear in
here after you select them and paste them into this list. TAB
once to move to a File browsing tree/list and you will now be in
a standard Windows browsing tree (similar to being in Windows
Explorer or My Computer) to be able to ARROW down and open disk
drives or folders in by pressing ENTER on them or right ARROWING
on them. This is the normal Windows-type tree structure with your
drives and folders on the left and the individual files within
each folder on the right or below, which you may have to press
the TAB key to move to. You can now open that CD of wav tracks
or hard disk folder of wav tracks and individually highlight
tracks for burning as required. For instance, if you have opened
a CD-ROM drive or a hard disk folder, just press CONTROL A to get
all tracks highlighted for burning or, if you want only tracks
1, 3 and 6 of a list of 10 tracks burning, ARROW to track 1, and
then hold down the CONTROL key, which will automatically
select/highlight this first track for you, then, keeping the
CONTROL key held down all of the time, ARROW down to track 3 and
press and release the SPACEbar, then ARROW to track 6 and again
press the SPACEBAR to select that as well. You should have had
the CONTROL key held down all of the time and you will now have
your three non-contiguous tracks highlighted for burning. Other
selecting and highlighting keystrokes will also work fine in here
as well, such as pressing CONTROL A to highlight all tracks on
a CD or in a hard disk folder.
8. Now that you have got your folder(s) or files highlighted,
just press CONTROL C to copy them to the Clipboard.
9. After selecting files and copying them to the Clipboard, you
press TAB once to move to the empty tracks listbox. To get your
selected tracks pasted into this listbox, just press CONTROL V.
They are now in place for burning to CD but you can make changes
to them before burning them if you like. For example, you can
change the position of the tracks and change there default
filenames of such as "no01.wav", "no02.wav", etc, to their
correct track titles. How to do this is covered in the next sub-
section. For now just burn a few tracks with their default names
to get a hang of things before getting into the added
complications of track naming and rearranging. If you have a
rewritable CD as well as right-once CDs, use this to practice on
so that you do not produce unwanted or spoiled CDs whilst
experimenting.
10. With all files now selected, you press ALT R (for Recorder)
followed by O (for Burn Compilation) and the burn dialogue will
load in for you to finish the process off. You can also use the
shortcut of CONTROL B to open this same burn dialogue.
11. In the burn dialogue box:
A. You will be on a "Determine Maximum Speed" checkbox to press
SPACEBAR on to ensure that Nero always burns at your CD-RWs
maximum speed if you would like to do this.
B. TABBING to the "Simulation" checkbox and ensuring that this
is turned on will make Nero test your CD and do a dummy run
before then actually burning the files to CD to ensure that the
copying will be successful and warn you if there are likely to
be any problems, so that you can abort the burning if you wish
and not waste a CD. If you want to do this simulating
successfully, ensure that the "Write" option is checked off
first.
C. Next TAB to "Finalise CD". If you have this checked on, you
will be closing the CD-r once and for all so that nothing else
can ever be burnt to it (this does not, of course, apply to a
rewritable CD-RW disk), so only finalise it after filling it. If
you want to add more tracks later, leave it unchecked for now.
Note , however, that whilst an unfinalised CD will play OK in
your computer, it will not play in such as a car stereo system
or home HI-FI system until it has been closed by finalising itd.
D. The "Write Speed" option lets you ARROW up and down to the
speed you would like to write at, e.g. 48X if your CD-RW can work
at this speed, but remember that cheaper quality disks may
require a slower writing speed to be successful, such as 12X or
24X speed. Similarly, some older CD-ROMs cannot extract at more
than 1X or 2X speed, particularly with audio tracks, despite what
their data reading speed may be said to be. The slower the
writing speed, the more likely you are to obtain an unblemished
copy. you'll just have to experiment with different qualities of
compact disks and different speeds to familiarise yourself with
your CD-ROMs, CPUs and different blank disk capabilities.
E. TABBING to the "Write Method" will let you ARROW to and select
from either "Track-at-Once" to get tracks burnt separately with
short gaps between them (the CD-RW laser turns off for a couple
of seconds between tracks), or "Disk-at-Once" where you can get
the burning done without the laser turning off between tracks or
"Disk-at-Once 96" for another format of disk-at-once burning.
F. In the other options in here, you can sometimes elect to get
more than one copy burnt successively one after another with one
CD-RW drive and to get more than one copy burnt simultaneously
using more than one CD-RW recording drive (if you have more than
one on your computer). Having set these burning parameters, most
of them will hold as the defaults for future burning sessions,
unless you change them.
G. Lastly, press TAB to the"Burn" button and press ENTER to start
the CD burning process.The program may say that it is waiting for
a CD but just ignore this if you have already inserted a CD into
the CD-RW drive.
12. When the copying/burning to CD has finished, Nero will tell
you that the burning process was successful--hopefully! You will
have an "OK" button to press ENTER on. During the burning you can
check the progress of burning if you like by using your
screenreader's read title Bar hot key to hear the percentage of
burning already completed (INSERT T with JAWS, CONTROL SHIFT T
with Window-Eyes and Numpad 7 with HAL) and you can also view
this in mouse mode but if you are burning audio files for the
finished product it is probably a good idea not to do this too
often in case you cause pops or clicks on the resultant sound
file. I would therefore advise that, when you are in the
learning/practising stage and still need to know and be assured
of what is going on, you use a rewritable CD-RW disk which can
be later erased and practised on again to save wasting CD-R
(write-once only) disks. You can then use your screenreader's
mouse mode and informational hot keys as much as you like until
you get the hang of things, e.g. JAWS users might want to press
INSERT S to circulate between reading highlighted text, no text
at all and all text and changes on screen, leaving things on
"All" to listen to the simulating and then burning as it goes
through the various steps. (Once your CD-RW disk is full, you
will have to erase it to be able to work with it again, so see
"Erasing the Contents of a Rewritable CD or DVD" below for how
to erase a rewritable disk.)
13. To finish with the current burning session and start another
or to exit Nero, TAB to "Done" and press ENTER, then start
another burning session by pressing CONTROL N or exit Nero by
pressing ALT F4 and answering "No" to the message you will
receive about saving changes to the Audio 1 compilation.
Tip: If you prefer, in the selecting of audio tracks list at
steps 8 and 9 above, you can also select tracks in the order you
want them adding to your compilation by going to each track in
turn and by pressing CONTROL 1 (on the main keyboard) when each
track you want to add to your audio compilation has focus. You
can also add tracks to your compilation in blocks with CONTROL
1 by firstly selecting a contiguous or non-contiguous block of
tracks and then pressing CONTROL 1.
6.9.2. Editing Audio Track Titles and Rearranging Track Positions
Prior to Burning
If you would like to change the order in which audio tracks will
be burnt to CD in or the names they will have when they are
burnt:
6.9.2.1. Rearranging Tracks' Burning Order
1. When you are at step 9 in the last section and have just
pasted your tracks into the empty tracks list, you will be able
to ARROW up and down the list of default track names, such as
"no01.wav", "no02.wav", etc.
2. With focus on any track, cut it to the Clipboard by pressing
CONTROL X. The track will disappear.
3. Now move your cursor to the track position which you want your
track to move into and press CONTROL V to paste it in there, when
the track your cursor is currently on and all tracks below it
will move down one place.
4. Continue to do this until you have all tracks where you want
them and then continue the burning process as described in the
last section.
6.9.2.2. Changing the Titles of Tracks before Burning Them
To rename tracks:
1. Again at step 9 in the last sub-section, after pasting your
tracks into the empty tracks list, ARROW to and put focus on a
track you wish to rename.
2. Now press ALT ENTER to open up the properties dialogue box for
that file (or select "Properties" from the Edit menu).
3. You come into a three property sheet dialogue, on the
appropriate sheet.
4. You will be on the track name editfield containing the default
title of your track, so simply overtype this with your preferred
track title, e.g. waterloo.wav (ensure that you maintain the
correct file extension).
5. Lastly, TAB to and press ENTER on "Apply" and then to "OK".
6. View the changed track name in your tracks list and do the
same for all other tracks before proceeding with the rest of the
burning process.
6.9.3. Creating an Audio CD by Selecting Tracks Prior to
Launching Nero
If you prefer to select your audio tracks prior to launching
Nero, do this by:
1. With the tracks already having been selected and copied to the
Clipboard before launching Nero, e.g. by using My computer or
Windows Explorer, and having then gone through steps 1 to 9 as
above in "Creating an Audio Music CD from Your CD-ROM Drive or
Hard Disk with Nero StartSmart", press CONTROL V to paste the
tracks into the empty tracks list in the audio 1 compilation
window. (If you are not sure of the procedure to follow when
using Windows Explorer to do this initial track selecting, see
Section 28 below for detailed instructions.)
2. You will get an "Adding Files" message and you may also
receive the prompt to go onto the Internet to the Nero title and
CDDB database for album and tracks titles. Either take the easy
way out and let Nero complete your album title and tracks names
for you or press ENTER on "No" to decline this offer.
3. Next you will receive an "Analysing File" message and you will
have to wait a minute or two for each track to be analyzed before
it can be manipulated or burnt to CD. This "analysing" is
equivalent to firstly getting the tracks converted to wave files
(if you have not already done this) and removes the prior need
to do this conversion.
4. When the tracks have been analyzed/converted to wav files, you
can TAB to and then ARROW up and down the available tracks,
either with the filenames you gave them (or obtained from the
CDDB or the track names which Nero gives to them in the absence
of their correct names, e.g. "Unknown 1", "Unknown 2", etc.
5. It is at this stage that you can now re-arrange the tracks
into your preferred order. ARROW to the track you wish to move
somewhere else and then press CONTROL X to cut it to the
Clipboard. Then ARROW to the place where you want it to be
inserted so that the track you have ARROWED to will then move
down one place and press CONTROL V to paste it in there. Continue
in this way until you have all tracks in your desired order. It
is sometimes necessary to move tracks up rather than down when
you are trying to move a track to the end of a list. If you
should like to have one of your tracks on the same compilation
CD more than once, just use CONTROL C (for copy) rather than
CONTROL X (for cut). If you want to rename the tracks, do so as
normal with ALT ENTER and overtype the default name with the
correct track title.
6. Lastly, to have the Nero burn dialogue load in again, complete
the usual last few steps and commence burning, press ALT R
followed by O. Be aware, however, that if a music CD is to be
played in a home HI-FI or car stereo system, it must be "closed"
or "finalised" after burning, so you should completely fill the
disk with audio tracks for maximum efficiency and then close it
after it is filled. This is in contrast to both data and audio
files which will still be accessible/playable on your computer
without the CD being closed. Once any type of write-only CD has
been closed no more tracks or data files can be copied to it.
Warning: It is not advisable to give in to the temptation to use
your screenreader during any type of audio CD burn. If you do,
you may get interference on your burnt CD, such as clicking. Only
experimentation will inform you if use of your screenreader will
cause this with your unique set-up and hardware and software.
More modern CD burners and burning software can often filter this
sort of thing out.
Note: If you wish to get data (including MP3 files) into a given
order rather than them simply burning to disk in alphabetic or
numeric order as will otherwise be the case, you can "fool" Nero
into doing this. You would have to do something like copy your
files to a folder on your hard disk and then, in such as Windows
Explorer, go to each file, press F2 and then type in a filename
which Nero will put in the order you like, e.g. if you want MP3
audio files to play in a given order, instead of in alphabetic
order, rename your files to such as "a_Let It Be,mp3", b_Abby
Road.mp3", "c_Sergeant Pepper.mp3", and so on. This will force
Nero to honour the first letter of each filename and ignore its
correct title after the _ which separates the alphabetic letter
from that track name and will still mean that you can find MP3
music tracks via their titles as well.
6.10. Viewing Tracks Information on a CD, DVD or Compilation
Information on an existing Compilation Template
You can view details about a given track on disk or contained in
a saved compilation.
6.10.1. Tracks'/Files' Information on a CD or DVD and Playing
Tracks
To view the tracks and information on a disk, such as track
length in minutes/seconds, in megabytes, the type of track, e.g.
audio, data, video, etc:
1. With the CD, DDCD or DVD in the drive's drawer, press CONTROL
I.
2. Now TAB and ARROW around the information. You will not only
be able to view track names, sizes, etc, but also the separate
copying sessions on the CD. The amount of CD space used and the
amount remaining will also be displayed. To view all of this
information or review some of it, you may have to go into your
screenreader's mouse/navigation mode.
3. For those who have a DVD or DVD-RW drive installed, there is
a "DVD + RW Options" button to press ENTER on and view and change
some options pertaining to DVD drives.
4. TAB to "OK" and press ENTER when finished.
6.10.2. Viewing and Changing Existing Compilations
To .view or make changes to an already created compilation:
1. Open the compilation with CONTROL O (as outlined above in
"Opening a Saved Compilation Template"), then take the following
actions.
2. Either press F7 or ALT F and then I (for Compilation
properties).
3. You will land on the "Info Page" and can view the compilation
details in Navigation/JAWS/mouse mode.
4. Using CONTROL TAB, you can move to three more property sheets
called "Audio CD", "CDA Options" and "Burn", where you can TAB
through and just view or make changes to the on-screen
compilation as desired.
5. When finished, TAB to "OK" and press ENTER to leave this
dialogue and save any changes or just press ESCAPE to leave
without saving changes.
Note: After opening the above compilation dialogue, you will be
able to TAB through two extra options called "Play" and "Edit".
If you press ENTER on the first of these, you will get Nero to
simply play any track which has focus in the compilation list of
tracks, if it is on your hard disk or on a CD currently in your
CD drive; pressing SPACEBAR will stop the playing. If you press
ENTER on "Edit" or press ALT E, you will launch the Nero Wave
Editor and can then play or modify the audio file or track with
the editor's editing features and special effects options, if you
are able to use these--they are not especially screenreader and
keystroke-friendly but you can do some things in the Nero editor.
6.11. Creating an Audio or Data CD/DVD When You Only Have One CD
or DVD Drive
You can still make data or Audio Cds and DVDs even if you only
have one drive--a CD-RW or DVD-RW drive. You have first to make
an image of the source CD you wish to copy on your hard disk,
i.e. copy it there first, and then burn the image from the hard
disk back to your CD-RW drive after replacing the source CD with
a blank CD. You may wish to do this to speed copying up if you
wish to make several CD copies of the same tracks or if your
source CD-ROM drive is old and too slow to keep up with the
required data flow to your CD-RW drive, e.g. you may have an old
8 speed CD-ROM and a 48X24X48 speed CD-RW drive.
To burn a CD in this image creation way you must first enable the
image recorder.
6.11.1. Turning the Image Recorder On
1. Launch the standard Nero Burning-ROM interface, not Nero
StartSmart or Nero Express and then press ESCAPE after Nero
launches to be able to access the menu bar.
2. then press CONTROL R to open the CD Recorder dialogue and
choose "Image Recorder - Virtual Device" from the list you are
in with the ARROW keys.
3. TAB to "OK" and press ENTER. You have now changed from the
usual record from CD-ROM or hard disk to CD-RW drive method of
burning to the image recorder whereby the burning will first be
done from the original source CD in your CD-RW drive to your hard
disk as an image and then be transferred from their back to your
CD-RW drive and onto a blank target CD. This will be retained as
your default way of burning until you change it back again, which
you will have to do before burning your image to your CD-RW
burning drive in the next sub-section.
6.11.2. Copying the Image of the Tracks or Files to the Hard Disk
After changing from the default CD-RW or DVD-RW burning drive
recorder to the image recorder as above, you create images from
CDs in your CD-RW drive and copy them to your hard disk for later
burning back to your CD/DVD burning drive by:
1. You can either continue straight after choosing the image
recorder above or you can exit Nero and then re-launch it later
and then continue as follows.
2. Press ESCAPE and then CONTROL N to open a new compilation
window. The dialogue you come into has several settings you can
TAB through and check on or off providing parameters and format
types for file or tracks burning but for this example just SHIFT
TAB backwards around three times to the normal list of burning
formats, e.g. CD-ROM (ISO) (for data files), Audio CD, mixed mode
CD, etc and ARROW down and leave focus on the one you want. For
this example, leave focus on "Audio CD". Then SHIFT TAB backwards
to the "New" button and press ENTER.
3. You are now in the same folders and file selecting dialogue
structure as described in earlier sections, on the files or
tracks list, which will be empty as usual, so TAB once and select
the drive the CD you want to extract an image from is currently
in, e.g. your D: or E: drive, and then select all files on that
CD with CONTROL A or individual files as normal and copy them to
the Clipboard with CONTROL C. Then TAB to the files/tracks list
and paste them in there with CONTROL V. If they are .cda tracks,
they will immediately start to be analysed, extracted and added
and will be converted to wav files if necessary, but you may be
asked for a name for the source CD and the default name Nero will
give is "Unknown". So just TAB to "OK" and press ENTER if you do
not wish to name the source CD or type a title into the editfield
first if you do wish to name it. Each file/track may take a while
to add and you may not receive a verbal indicator as to when this
has finished, so you may have to check your Status Line and/or
go into mouse mode to confirm this. So your files or tracks are
now selected and ready for adding to your compilation.
4. When the files or tracks analysing/adding is finished, Press
ALT R (for Recorder) and then O (for Burn Compilation). You will
come into a reduced options version of the burn dialogue box and
may wish to turn on or off the "Finalise CD" option, depending
on your requirements. Now TAB to "Burn" to start the copying of
the image to your hard disk process, but note that now, before
burning, another dialogue box comes up asking you to accept the
default image filename of "image.nrg" or change this to an image
filename of your own choice, which you are recommended to do.
However, before TABBING to and pressing ENTER on "Save" to save
the image to hard disk, you should observe the "Save In" option
to ensure that you know where the image will save to to later be
able to locate it. Ensure that It will save to a writable and not
a read-only disk/folder, e.g. to My Documents.
Note: In image burning the individual tracks are not copied to
your hard disk as separate files/tracks but rather the whole lot
is copied as one large image file with one filename.
5. After saving the image to hard disk, you press ENTER on an
"OK" button when told the process was successful and get the
standard "Save Log", "Print Log", "Done", etc, options offered
you, so make your choices and then press ENTER on "Done".
6. Now clear the screen with ALT F (for File) and then C (for
Close), then "N" for not to save the compilation.
6.11.3. Burning the Image of the Files or Tracks from the Hard
Disk to a CD-R/DVD-R or CD-RW/DVD-RW Disk
After copying your files or tracks to the hard disk as an image
file with a single filename, you then change back to the standard
CD burning drive recorder and burn them to a blank CD in your CD-
RW drive.
1. Now remove the source disk from the CD-RW drive and replace
it with the blank disk you wish to burn to. To have the image
file burnt from hard disk to the newly inserted CD-R/CD-RW or
DVD-R/DVD-RW disk, you now press ALT R (for Recorder) and press
ENTER on "Choose Recorder (or use the shortcut of CONTROL R)".
ARROW from the image recorder to your usual CD burning drive and
TAB to "OK" and press ENTER to reselect that drive.
2. Next press ALT R (for Recorder) and then B (for Burn Image).
Now type the image filename you gave your saved image above into
the editfield which opens up, e.g. "image.nrg" or any personal
filename which you may have given it, and TAB to "Open" and press
ENTER.
3. a limited option version of the standard burn dialogue opens
up and you can sometimes choose the "Number of Copies" to burn
and to "Use multiple Recorders". You then TAB to "Burn" and press
ENTER to commence the copying/burning from hard disk image to CD
or DVD. Ensure that the "Write" option is checked on before
burning.
4. After burning is complete, you are faced with the usual "OK"
button to press ENTER on and the same following final options,
so ARROW to and press ENTER on "Done" or use the shortcut of ALT
D.
Note 1: During many of the adding, analysing and burning steps
above you can usually use your screenreader's read Title Bar hot
key to ascertain the state of burning, etc, completed in
percentage terms.
Note 2: It is a good idea to ensure that you are selecting
sufficient tracks or files for image copying and burning to
completely fill a target CD, e.g. a whole shop-bought music CD,
as you cannot add more tracks later. If you try to add more
tracks to a CD-RW rewritable CD, Nero will advise you that it
must firstly erase the disk before burning a new image to it.
Note 3: Remember, if you only carried out the first two stages
of this process, i.e. turning the image recorder on and copying
the image to hard disk, you will have to use CONTROL R and re-
select your CD-RW drive to return to burning Cds without having
the copy go to the hard disk as an image if this is how you want
to work in future because the standard burning recorder is not
automatically reselected for you.
6.12. Copying/Cloning a Whole Audio, Video, Data or Mixed Mode
CD or DVD with Nero Burning-ROM
To obtain an exact copy of a CD in your CD-ROM drive, which must
be done on a blank write-only audio CD or rewritable CD, which
will then be closed and not usable to add later copying sessions:
1. Place your source CD with data, audio, video, etc, files on
it into the CD-ROM drive and put your blank CD-r or CD-RW disk
into the CD-RW burning drive.
2. Launch Nero Burning-ROM from your Desktop if you put a launch
icon there or from its installed place on your hard disk.
3. Press ALT R (for Recorder) and then C (for Copy Disk).
4. You will be on the "Determine Maximum Speed" option in the
"Burn" property sheet to press SPACEBAR on if you like. If you
know that the rest of the parameters in this burn sheet are
correct for the copying you want to do, you can just TAB to
"Copy" and press ENTER to finish the process. Otherwise, TAB
through the copying options to turn any on or off you want, e.g.
turn "Simulation" on and "Write" off if you would Like Nero to
check if the copying will be successful or fail before it goes
ahead an copies so that you can abort the copying if things will
fail, although this takes twice as long to finish the process as
not having this checked on. If you want more than one copy,
overtype the "1" in the copies editfield with how many you want
and if you have more than one CD burning drive you can burn with
simultaneously, check on "Use Multiple Recorders".
5. TAB to the "Copy" button and press ENTER to start the
copying/cloning process.
6. If you have not turned this feature off, you are likely to get
the message asking if you want to go online to the Internet and
retrieve album, track, artist, etc, details for the Cd you have
inserted into the CD drive, so press ENTER on "Yes" if you do or
TAB to and press ENTER on "No" if you do not.
7. A whole CD or DVD will take several minutes or possibly much
longer to copy, depending on the speed of your CD or DVD burning
drive, e.g. around 20 minutes to copy a 650 Mb source CD to your
target CD at 4 speed. You should be able to ascertain the
percentage of copying completed by viewing the Title Bar, e.g.
17% Writing to disk (Copy 1).
8. As usual, you will get a message that the process is complete
and you will have to press ENTER on an "OK" button, followed by
ARROWING down the standard options of "Save Log", "Print Log",
etc, so press ENTER on "Done" and both CDs or DVDs should be
ejected for you.
6.13. Creating a Folder on CD or DVD to Burn Data Files Into
The above examples of burning files from hard disk or another CD
(not on the fly) all place individual files onto the root
directory (first folder level) of a CD. However, if you would
like to organise your data files or MP3 tracks copying by putting
them into named folders and sub-folders, you can do this with
data files in a data compilation but it does not work with audio
files in an audio compilation. To create a folder on CD and then
burn data files into it:
1. Open a New Compilation window as normal and use one of the
previously explained Nero Burning-ROM or Nero StartSmart methods
of working.
2. When you get to the stage where you would normally highlight
files to be burnt to CD or DVD and you are on the empty files
list, press ALT e (for Edit) and then ARROW up to "Create Folder"
and press ENTER.
3. You will now be in an editfield with the default folder name
of "New". Just type over this with the folder name you would like
to create, e.g. myfiles, and press ENTER.
4. You should now be on the "myfiles" folder. So, as normal, use
the drives, folders, files browsing tree structure to select
files to add to your specified new folder. Just deal with them
as normal by copying them to the Clipboard and then Pasting them
into the empty files list wen your new myfiles folder has focus.
5. Lastly, press ALT R, then O, to burn the files to disk in the
normal way. The "myfiles" folder will have been created on the
CD and the selected files will be burnt into it.
6. You can create numerous folders in this way but if you want
them all to be at the same hierarchical level as your first-
created folder, you will have to put focus on the CD volume label
first and then create new folders. If you want to create a sub-
folder running from one of your already created folders, e.g. a
folder running off of your "myfiles" folder, ensure that that
folder has focus before pressing ALT E and then R and supplying
the sub-folder name.
7. If you no longer want one of your folders or sub-folders,
before you have copied files into it, you can press the DELETE
key whilst it has focus to erase it. If the folders are not in
the order you would like, you can put focus on one of them, press
CONTROL X to cut it to the Clipboard and then move to where you
want it and press CONTROL V to paste it in there.
6.14. Converting and Burning MP3 Files to HI-FI Audio Files
You can use Nero to extract (decompress) and copy compressed MP3
files in a similar way as you would burn .WAV or .CDA files,
using the New Compilation window. However, they do not have to
have their format changed to .wav first, as this will be done on
the fly as the burning takes place. The MP3 file must not be
damaged and must be the standard MPEG Layer 3 type, in stereo,
16-bit and have a sampling rate of 44.1 Khz. If you convert MP3s
with a lower specification than this, the resultant audio file
will have low volume and be of poor quality. To convert and burn
MP3 files to .CDA files (Hi-FI files):
1. Insert your blank CD-R/CD-RW or DVD-R-DVD-RW disk into your
CD or DVD burning drive.
2. Either using Nero Burning-ROM or Nero StartSmart, follow the
normal steps to create an audio CD or DVD, including opening a
New Compilation window, selecting the MP3 tracks from a CD in
your CD-ROm drive or from a folder on your hard disk, copying
them to the Clipboard, pasting them into the tracks list and then
burning them with ALT R and then O. For example, follow the steps
outlined above in "Burning Data or Audio Tracks with the Standard
Nero Burning-ROM Interface".
3. As the tracks burn onto your CD-R or CD-RW disk, they will
automatically be converted to regular HI-FI .cda music format.
4. As converting MP3 files to .CDA files can take a considerable
amount of time, depending on the speed of your CD-RW drive, you
may not want to wait around if burning a lot of tracks at a time.
Note 1: If you want to do things the other way around, i.e.
convert .cda or .wav files to compressed MP3 files, you can only
create up to 30 MP3 audio files from other audio tracks with
Nero. After this, you can only continue creating MP3 files if you
purchase the standard Nero MP3 ripping program or a special MP3
Pro ripper from the Nero Website. These MP3 rippers are covered
below in "Using Nero to Encode/Rip music Wav and CDA files to MP3
or MP3 Pro Files". You can also download a good range of free MP3
ripping programs from the Internet, e.g. CDEX, Freerip.mp3,
Winamp, etc.
Note 2: If you only wish to burn MP3 files to a CD and retain
their MP3 format, you would simply follow the same Nero Burning-
ROM or StartSmart process but select "Data"instead of "Audio"
when asked which kind of Cd you would like to compile.
Note 3: Alternatively, if you wish to clone a whole CD of MP3
music or other audio files from one CD to another, you can use
the "Copy Disk" feature in the Recorder menu. How to do this is
covered above in "Copying/Cloning a Whole Audio, Video, Data or
Mixed Mode CD or DVD with Nero Burning-ROM".
6.15. Audio Track Filtering and Property Details
If you wish to view or change some of the filters and details of
a track:
1. Either with your New Compilation window open with tracks
selected in it or after opening an existing saved compilation
with CONTROL O, take the following action.
2. In the compilation template containing the track, place focus
on the track in question and either press ALT ENTER or SHIFT F10
and ARROW up to "Properties" and press ENTER. You will fall in
the "Track Properties" property sheet, which is the first of
three property sheets. You can TAB through and view track title,
Artist name, etc. You can complete these editfields if empty or
alter any of them.
2. The next property sheet of interest is the "Filter" sheet, so
press CONTROL TAB until you reach it. What you can do hear
depends on the version of Nero you have, for example, you may
only be able to widen the effect of a stereo file with the right
and left ARROW keys if you just have the basic OEM version, but
if you have bought the "Ultra", the "Reloaded" or the "Enterprise
Edition" version of Nero, you will find other features here, such
as "Normalise", de-hiss, de-click, etc, to improve the sound of
a track with his, to remove crackle, etc, e.g. from a recording
taken from a vinyl record.
3. After making any changes, TAB to "OK" and press ENTER to save
them and have these filters applied.
6.16. How to Add More Data to a Partly Used Data CD or DVD
To add more files to a partly used disk it must not have been
"Finalised" (closed) when you last copied to it. When you re-use
a CD to add more data to it later, it is known as a multi-session
CD. You do this with a standard CD-R right-only or CD-RW
rewritable data CD (or the DVD equivalents) as follows:
1. Launch Nero Burning-ROM and continue as in 2 below or, if Nero
is already running and you need to open a new compilation, press
CONTROL N to obtain a New Compilation window.
2. ARROW through a list of three options and place the focus on
"Continue Multisession Disk" if it does not already have focus.
The other two choices are "No MultiSession" and "Start
MultiSession Disk". Remember, which ever of these three options
you choose, the next time you open this dialogue box that
selection will have been retained, so you may need to change it
for future burns, depending on what you want to do next.
3. SHIFT TAB backwards three or so times to the list of burning
formats and ensure that "CD-ROM (ISO)" has focus.
4. Next TAB forwards and observe the many different options which
now become available in this dialogue and ensure that "Add New
Files to Compilation" is checked on. You may also wish to get old
files on your CD replaced with new (updated/modified) copies, so
ensure that Replace Files in Compilation" is checked on and then,
in the list just below this, ARROW to the circumstances in which
you would like existing files to be replaced, e.g. just when the
files' dates or length has changed or to always replace files;
alternatively, check this off if you do not want old files
replacing but would like new copies also adding to the CD along
with the old copies. Then TAB to "New" and press ENTER.
Note: If you leave focus on "Start MultiSession Disk" or "No
MultiSession" one press of TAB will take you to the "New" button,
as the long list of options which you can turn on or off is not
relevant to those burning conditions.
5. TAB to "OK" and press ENTER.
You can now try an already outlined method of adding files to a
compilation or a new method, if you like. The first is what you
have already been practising in all earlier sections when
selecting files and tracks. The second method is where you select
files via the Nero Edit menu.
6.A. So firstly try the already explained method of selecting
files with the continuation of:
i. You will return to the usual "new" volume label or whatever
label you may have previously given to the inserted already
partly filled CD. You can press F2 as usual and change the CD
volume label at this stage if you wish.
ii. You can now, as usual, TAB through three more views, the
first being the current files list with your already burnt files
on your partly filled CD-R or CD-RW displayed in it. The second
and third are the already familiar drives and folders tree
structure and the files in each folder. So just select the new
files you want to burn to the CD or any updated files with the
same names as already burnt files to get old copies replaced or
get a new copy burnt to CD along with older copies, if you like.
iii. Then skip to step 8 below.
6.B. Or try an alternative files selecting procedure of:
I. Now press ALT E (for Edit) and then L (for Add Files) and
select the drives/folders/files you wish to be added to the
current partly filled CD from the drives/folders/files browsing
tree and lists.
ii. After all files have been selected, TAB to "Add" and press
ENTER or press ALT A.
iii. Then carry on from step 8 below.
8. Now press ALT R (for Recorder) and then O (for Burn
Compilation) and then TAB through the various options, checking
on or off the options you wish to apply to your burning session,
e.g. check "Simulation" on and "Write" off by pressing the
SPACEBAR on them if you would like to ensure that a burn to CD
will be successful before the program attempts to do it, change
the "Number of Copies" from 1 to however many you would like,
ARROW up and down the "Write Speed" levels and leave focus on the
one you want (as long as you know your CPU and other hardware can
cope with this speed). However, most of the default selections
will be OK for the majority of burning situations. Then TAB to
"Burn" and press ENTER to start the burning to disk process.
9. When the burning has finished, press ENTER on "OK" and the
steps are then the same as usual with options of "Save Log",
"Done", etc, so press ENTER on "Done".
Note: The above procedure does not work with audio burning. Nero
simply insists that it must erase what is presently on the CD
before burning new tracks to it.
6.17. Burning/Cloning Disks
Copying the whole contents of one CD to another can be done "on
the fly", meaning directly from one CD or DVD drive to another,
or by first copying to the hard disk and then burning this image
from the hard disk to a CD or DVD in your CD-RW/DVD-RW drive.
Which way is best for you depends on the type of CD-ROM/DVD-ROM
and CD-rw/DVD-rw drives you own and on whether you are cloning
audio (best via the hard disk) or data files (OK to do on the
fly), although you can successfully clone any type of
files/tracks by both means in many cases.
6.17.1. Burning/Cloning CDs and DVDs on the Fly
You can copy/burn directly from your read-only drive to your
rewritable drives with the Nero Burning-ROM standard interface
via the list with 12 burning options in it, after bringing up the
New Compilation window with CONTROL N, or you can do it from the
File Menu. Working with the New Compilation method has been
covered in similar situations in earlier sections, so I will use
the File Menu option in the standard Nero Burning-ROM program for
this example.
1. Place your source CD or DVD in your CD-ROM or DVD-ROM drive
and your target blank disk into your disk burning drive.
2. Press ALT R (for Recorder) and then C (for Copy CD).
3.A. You will be on the "Burn" property sheet, which is one of
four sheets in this dialogue. If you know that the parameters and
options in the other three property sheets in here are already
set up as you would like, you can now just stay in this burn
sheet and simply select how you wish to burn the disk. Then skip
to step 4 below.
3.B. If this is your first on the fly copying session and you
want to either view or change any of the settings in the other
three property sheets available to you now, you should CONTROL
TAB to the other sheets to make some of the other option
selections, in particular the "Copy Options" sheet before TABBING
to the copy button to commence burning. Ensure that the "On the
Fly" option is checked on and "Read Speed" is set to maximum if
your CD drives can cope with this. In the "Read Options" sheet,
if you do not get perfect copies of audio tracks, checking on
"Use Jitter Correction" may improve things.
4. Back in the "Burn" property sheet, now TAB or ARROW to
"Simulation" if you wish to have the procedure check before
copying takes place. If you are confident in the quality and make
of your CD or DVD disks and in your CD-ROM and CD-RW drives'
ability to burn without errors, you can half the burning time by
leaving "Simulation" checked off. Then TAB to "Write Speed" and
ARROW up or down to the speed you wish to have the CD written at.
The slower the speed you burn at, the less likely you will be to
fall fowl of a writing error and therefore waste a CD. Experiment
with several settings until you know how your own CD-ROM/CD-RW
or DVD-R/DVD-RW drives and CPU are able to perform together with
a given make of CD.
5. Lastly, TAB to "Copy" in any of these four property sheets and
press ENTER to commence the burning/copying directly from your
CD-ROM/DVD-ROM drive to your burning drive. This will take a few
minutes for a full disk of data or audio but not as long as other
methods of burning usually do.
Note: Many older CD-ROMs are not of sufficient quality to permit
reliable audio (not data) burning. Nero possesses a CD-ROM
diagnosis feature but this is a purely visual test, so of little
or no use to blind users.
6.17.2. Burning/Cloning CDs Via the Hard Disk
In most cases, you may prefer to clone one CD to another using
the to hard disk first method. There are many reasons for not
using the "on the fly" method, e.g. many older CD-ROMs cannot
extract audio (music) tracks fast enough to use the "on the fly"
option, some cannot recognise different sessions on a CD, some
will produce audio "jitter" which is a scratching or clicking
effect, etc.
1. The steps are identical as with "Burning/Cloning CDs and DVDs
on the Fly" in the last sub-section, except that you would ensure
that "Fast Copy (On the Fly)" in step 3.B. is turned off.
2. What Nero will do is copy an exact image of the disk in the
CD/DVD-ROM drive to the hard disk and then burn that image to the
CD/DVD-RW burning drive. It may eject your source CD after it has
copied the image but before it has burnt that image to the
burning drive.
3. Press ENTER on the "OK" button when burning is completed and
the usual options will appear, so press ALT D to activate the
"Done" button, when the copied/burnt CD will be ejected.
note 1: The disk cloning process when not using the on the fly
method will take at least twice as long as it does when you do
use on the fly.
Note 2: The above last stage (step 3) list of option buttons also
contains a "Automatically Shut Down the PC When Done" option. If
you check this on before pressing ALT D, the PC will turn itself
off after 30 seconds.
6.18. Basics of Burning Video Files with Nero
This tutorial, being for visually impaired people, does not go
into video burning in any great detail. The vast majority of VI
people (including myself) are able to benefit little from video
media. However, the process for burning video files is more or
less the same as for audio files. You just manually open a New
Compilation window in the Nero Burning-ROM main program by
pressing CONTROL N if it is not already open, TAB to the list of
12 types of CD burning you can select from, ARROW down to "Video-
CD" or "Super Video-CD", press ENTER on it and then browse to the
files on a CD in your CD-ROM or on your hard disk as normal. You
select them and then burn them as usual.
Similarly, if you are using the Nero StartSmart interface, you
would select "Photo and Video" from the "Choose your Category"
list of options, then TAB to "Make Video CD" or ARROW down to
"Make Super Video CD" and press ENTER on either of these, after
ensuring that Nero Burning-ROM is selected in the "Open With"
list underneath the last two option buttons.
The only difference in the dialogue you come into to browse and
select files from is that there is an extra list of five types
of video file formats to ARROW through and choose from, called
"CDI", "ext", Mpeg2", Segment" and "Svcd".
6.19. Erasing the Contents of a Rewritable CD or DVD
You can delete the contents of a rewritable disk by:
1. With the CD-RW CD or DVD in your disk Burning drive, press ALT
R (for Cd-Recorder) and then W (For Erase CD Rewritable).
2. You will come into a listbox with a list of your recordable
CD and DVD burning drives in it to ARROW to the appropriate drive
in.
3. Next you can check on "Use Multiple Recorders" if you wish to
erase several rewritable disks in several burners simultaneously,
if you have more than one installed on your PC.
4. TAB once again to a three choice listbox. You have choices in
here to ARROW through of: "Quick-Erase Rewritable Disk", "Full-
Erase Rewritable Disk" and "Unclose the Last Session". The former
of these quickly erases a disk, which means that the job will be
done rapidly, although there is not a complete thorough deleting,
rather files are renamed for over-writing--it would be possible
for someone to recover these files; if you choose the second
option you will get a complete physical erasure of the whole CD
which will take quite some time; and the latter option removes
the closing/finalising marker on an existing burning session on
the inserted CD-RW/DVD-RW rewritable disk so that you can burn
more files to that session.
5. TAB past the erasing speed list, leaving this on "Maximum",
and press ENTER on the "Erase" button.
6.20. Making Whole Hard Disk or Partition Back-Ups with Nero When
You Only Have One Hard Disk
You can back-up your whole hard disk (onto one or more write-only
or rewritable Cds or DVDs), and then restore it on masse if you
have an uncorrectable system crash, some forme of corruption,
etc. However, you will not be able to restore individual files
in this way. When you restore your system, Nero will over-write
everything on your hard disk or in a given partition. The back-up
is a cloning of your hard disk with or without compression taking
place. You must be aware that it is the whole hard disk or one
of the whole partitions on it, i.e. all of the sectors on that
hard disk or individual partition, which have to be backed up in
their entirety, not just the operating system and data on the
hard disk. So, if your hard disk is 40 Gb in size and has only
one partition on it, the whole 10 Gb will have to be backed up,
perhaps taking around 60 CDs without compression or maybe 30 with
compression, depending on the type of files on your hard disk.
This, of course, means that the bigger hard disks get, the more
impracticable this form of back up becomes, unless you are well
organised and split your hard drive into several smaller
partitions and only need to back-up one or two of them. You may
also want to purchase rewritable CD-RW disks for doing this on,
so that you can erase them and do further update back-ups to them
from time to time.
Note that at the time of writing (February/March 2004, using Nero
Version 6.3) the Nero hard disk back-up feature does not work
with Windows XP if the hard disk has been formatted using the
NTFS system. It only works for earlier operating systems or for
XP if standard 32 bit formatting was used. However, you can use
Nero HD back-up with NTFS formatted disks on Apple Mac computers.
To Create a back-up disk or disks:
1. With a Blank CD or DVD in the burning drive drawer, if the
Nero New Compilation is not already open, press CONTROL N and
then Press ALT R (for Recorder) and then ARROW down to "Burn Hard
Drive Backup" and press ENTER.
2. You will encounter important notes to read (in mouse mode) and
be told that you must have at least 10 per cent empty space on
your hard disk or partitions to be able to proceed. If your
disk/partitions do not have this amount of spare capacity, close
down this procedure and delete some files or an unimportant
program until you reach this requirement. Then return to this
stage and press ENTER on the "OK" button.
3. You will be on the select hard drive list showing all hard
disks on your computer, if you have more than one hard disk to
back-up, otherwise only your single hard drive will appear here.
ARROW to the drive you wish to Back-up.
4. Press TAB again and you will be on a list of all of the
partitions on the hard disk selected above, if you have more than
one partition, and the first option is to back-up all partitions
simultaneously; otherwise, if you only wish to back up a given
partition, ARROW to that one.
5. TAB on several times and ensure that "use Data Compression"
is checked on to reduce the number of Disks you will need to to
the job.
6. The next option lets you choose between backing up to CDs or
DVDs, ARROW to your choice. You will, of course, if you have a
DVD burner, require many fewer DVDs than you will need CDs.
7. TAB on to "OK" and press ENTER.
8. After a few seconds the standard "Burn" dialogue will load in
and offer you the usual options of simulation, speed to burn at,
etc, and you TAB to "Burn" and press ENTER to commence the
process. You will be prompted for additional CDs or DVDs as they
are filled and others are required. Each CD, for example, may
take perhaps 10 or 15 minutes to fill with compression turned on
and the percentage of burning already completed can be viewed in
the Title Bar.
9. After the backing up is complete, you are confronted with the
usual list of options to select from after a burn has finished,
e.g. "Save Log", "Done", etc, so press ALT D to finish.
10. The back-up disks you create will have many files on each of
them with most of them being .msg files. The other files of note
are such as "bk_01_02.dat" (signifying the first disk in the
back-up set), "nrestore.cfg" and "nrestore.exe". The nrestore.exe
file is what you would run from the DOS command line to reinstall
the back-up.
Note: It is only advisable to back-up with the Nero hard disk
back-up feature if you intend to restore to the same PC/hard
disk. Restoring to a different hard disk, of a different size,
with different partitions, sector starting points, different file
systems (FAT 16, FAT 32, etc), is likely to result in problems.
6.21. Restoring Hard Disk Back-Ups From CD or DVD
You can only restore a Nero hard disk back-up from pure DOS mode,
not from Windows or the MS DOS prompt in Windows. This means that
you will have to have a bootable CD-ROM or floppy disk containing
the standard bootable system files plus your CD-ROM or CD-RW
drive drivers, including your autoexec.bat, config.sys and
mscdex.exe files. For example, you can use a Windows 98 boot disk
as it should contain all of the essential files and drivers (see
the "Readme.TXT" file on the Win98 boot disk for more
information).
Obviously, unless you can see enough to use a monitor, you will
either require sighted help or a DOS screenreader to be able to
follow the procedure for a DOS restoration. You achieve this as
follows.
Note: If your computer has not crashed and you simply want to
over-write your hard disk with a fresh copy of what was
originally on it, you can skip step 1 and go straight to step 2.
1.A. With Windows 98 and later, place your system boot disk in
the A: drive, then switch your computer on and allow the system
files to copy over (which they will do automatically), then keep
pressing ENTER until all of the Cd drivers and the ramdrive have
been set up. Floppy disk activity will fail to take place when
you press ENTER as soon as all of the necessary files have been
copied over, so listen so that you can tell when this has been
achieved. If the generic CD-Rom drivers do not work, you will
have to use the DOS driver disk which came with your CD drive to
set your CD-ROM up.
1.B. If you are using Windows 95, you will have to install some
form of generic CD driver or, again, use the driver which came
with your CD drive, as a Windows 95 system boot disk does not
carry CD drivers.
2. Now you are at the DOS command prompt, you insert your first
back-up CD into the CD-ROM or CD-RW drive and change to that
drive, e.g. by typing "d:", and then type:
nrestore.exe
and press ENTER to start the process.
3. You now type the initial letter of the language you wish to
continue in, e.g. "e" for English.
4. With the ARROW keys or by pressing the drive letter of the
drive your back-up CD is in, e.g. D or E, (or whatever method
your DOS screenreader permits), select the source drive for your
back-up, i.e. the drive your back-up CD is in.
5. You are now asked to select the drive letter where your hard
disk is for over-writing, e.g. typically your C: drive, so either
ARROW to this and press ENTER or press the letter C to achieve
this. If this does not work, try pressing the number of the main
partition to back up to, e.g. "1", then press enter, if you only
have one hard disk partition on your PC, i.e. the C: drive.
6. The restoring will be under way and may take several minutes,
depending on the amount to be restored and you will be asked for
any second or third CD back-up disks if there is more than one
in the back-up series. There is a countdown of the percentage of
the restore that has been completed at any time at the bottom of
the screen.
7. After the restoration, you must reboot your PC.
Note: I have tried this Nero back-up and restore feature and it
worked OK on my computer. However, the first time I restored with
it (directly over the old data on the hard disk without
formatting it) the system was not entirely running correctly
afterwards, so I formatted my hard disk (format c:/s) and then
used the Nero restore again. This time it functioned fine
afterwards. It is best to ensure that no programs are running
during the back-up, as these might not be backed-up properly if
running or they may be restored at a slightly different address
on your hard disk than the one they originated at. For example,
as you may have no choice but to have your screenreader running
whilst backing-up, it is possible that any Start Menu or Desktop
shortcut you had to it will not work. Your screenreader may now
be at a different address but all you have to do is delete the
old shortcut to it and then make a new shortcut in the normal
way.
6.22. Backing UP and Restoring with Nero Backitup
A newer back-up facility than the above Nero hard disk back-up
feature which has appeared in Nero 6 is the "Backitup" utility.
With is you can back up whole hard disks to other hard disks (if
you have more than one on your PC) and you can back up
drives/partitions if you have your hard disk(s) split into more
than one drive/partition. You can also back up and restore
selected folders and files.
6.22.1. Backing up Folders to CD, DVD or to Other drives with
Nero Backitup
To back up individual folders with their sub-folders and files:
1. Launch Nero StartSmart, TAB to "Choose Your Category" and
right ARROW to the"Copy and Backup" button.
2. TAB once and then ARROW down to the "Backup Files" button and
press ENTER.
3. When the Backitup feature loads in, press CONTROL B to open
the Backup Wizard and then TAB to and press ENTER on "Next".
4. You will be on a "Select Files and Folders" option for
starting a new back-up or you can ARROW down to "Use Existing
Backup" to modify and back-up more to an existing already created
back-up file. For this example, leave focus on the former of
these and then TAB to and press ENTER on "Next".
5. You will come onto your Desktop in a Windows browsing tree to
select the drive the folders are on which you wish to back-up.
So ARROW down to "My Computer", right ARROW to open it and then
ARROW down to your c: drive or wherever you want to be and open
it up with the right ARROW. Keep ARROWING down and right until
you reach a folder which you would like to back-up with all of
its contents and leave focus on it. Then TAB to and press ENTER
on "Next".
6. You will come into a "Select Target" list of places you can
send your back-up file to, which will include any other
drives/partitions on your hard disk if you have more than one
partition and any CD or DVD burning drives as well. Leave focus
on the place you want the back-up file to be copied or burnt to.
7. TAB through and note that there is a "Filters" list where
"None" (for no filtering) is the default option but you can arrow
down to have certain files filtered out of your back-up file,
e.g. no image files, and there is a "Compress Files Before
Backup" checkbox which you should leave checked on to reduce the
size of your back-up file by half or less. Passwords can also be
set so that only you can restore and view the back-up file.Leave
"Verify Data" checked on to ensure that your back-up file is not
faulty. Then press ENTER on "Next".
8. The dialogue you now come into confirms the drive you will
back-up to, the folder(s) you are to back-up and their is a
filename editfield with the filename of "Default" entered, so
just overtype this with a filename of your own choice, e.g.
"mydocs". and press ENTER on "Next".
9. You now fall on the "Backup" button to press ENTER on to
commence the backing up to your chosen target source drive or
disk under your specified filename.
10. When the back-up is complete, you press ENTER on the "OK"
button. If you are backing up to CDs or DVDs and more than one
disk is required, you will be prompted to insert them as needed.
Note: If you have backed up to a CD or DVD, when the process has
finished, the drive drawer will automatically open so that you
can remove the completed disk. If you have asked Nero to verify
the integrity of your backup burn, however, do not remove the
disk at this point, as Nero now needs to close the drive drawer
again and do the verification check before opening the drawer for
the last time for you to remove the disk.
6.22.2. Backing Up Hard Disks to other Hard Disks or Partitions
to other Partitions with Nero Backitup
To back up whole drives/partitions to other hard disks or
CD/DVDs:
1. Launch Nero StartSmart, TAB to "Choose Your Category" and
right ARROW to the"Copy and Backup" button.
2. TAB once and then ARROW down to the "Backup Files" button and
press ENTER.
3. When the Backitup feature loads in, press CONTROL D to open
the Drive Backup Wizard and then TAB to and press ENTER on
"Next".
4. You now select any partition or complete hard disk for back-up
and the list you are in will have your whole current hard disk
highlighted. To move to and instead select any other drive or
partition on this hard disk, press right ARROW Or down ARROW.
When you are on the drive or partition you want to back-up, press
the SPACEBAR and a "Next" button will appear below for you to TAB
to and press ENTER on.
5. You will come into the "Target" dialogue to select where you
want your hard disk or partition back-up to be backed up to, e.g.
your CD-RW or DVD-RW burning drive. You have other choices by
TABBING through this dialogue, such as backing up to a DVD or a
CD in your DVD-RW drive, and you should leave data compression
turned on. Then press ENTER on "Next". At this stage you can use
your screenreader's mouse mode to view some facts on screen, such
as what the size of the resultant back-up file will be.
6. You will now be on the "Backup" button to press ENTER on to
commence the procedure. There will be a progress bar saying such
as "Burning on Disk 1", etc, and you will be prompted for extra
disks if they are needed. A percentage of back-up done will also
be available and the whole process could take quite some time,
possibly several hours.
6.22.3. Restoring Nero Backitup back-UPs
If you need to restore your whole drive, a given partition, a
folder, etc, because of hard disk failure or file/program
corruption, you can do this by:
1. Launch Nero StartSmart, TAB to "Choose Your Category" and
right ARROW to the"Copy and Backup" button.
2. TAB once and then ARROW down to the "Restore Backups" button
and press ENTER.
3. When the Backitup feature loads in, press CONTROL R to open
the Restore Wizard and then TAB to and press ENTER on "Next".
4. You come onto a two choice list on "Restore on Original Path"
and you can also ARROW down to "Restore on Selected Path". Leave
it on the former if you want your back-up file restoring to where
it came from originally. If you choose the latter, you will have
to provide a new path to restore it to in the editfield provided.
For this example, leave focus on the former option. Then press
ENTER on "Next".
5. You now get a list of different back-up files which you have
created, if you have created more than one, and you can ARROW to
the one you want, before pressing ENTER on "next".
6. The next stage provides you with a list of four options for
types of back-up, e.g. "Replace Local File with one Available in
the Backup if Local file is Older" and this is the recommended
type of restore but make your own choice in here. Then press
ENTER on "Next".
7. Finally, you reach the last button to press ENTER on called
"restore" to commence the restoring.
6.23. Viewing and Entering Album and Tracks Details from Your
Local Hard Disk Database (CDDB)
A compact disk database (CDDB) is a library of CD titles and
track titles for those CDs, plus several other optional CD facts.
In order for the Nero databases to be automatically accessed when
you burn, save, etc, you must set several preferences. However,
this is not essential, as you can always place entries into the
user or program databases manually later if you prefer (see
below). The CDDB database is only available in Nero Version 5X
and later. The preferences to set for automatic prompting for CD
title, artist, year of CD release, etc, are:
1. Press ALT F (for File), F (for Preferences) and then press
CONTROL TAB until you reach the "Database" property sheet.
2. There are two main database options you can TAB through in
here and have checked on or off, i.e. "Program Database Path" and
"User Database Path". If they are on, you will be asked for
details to update your databases each time you insert an
unregistered CD into your CD drive. If left unchecked, this will
not happen in respect of these two databases, although you may
still get such prompts in respect of the online Internet CDDB,
unless you elect to not receive such prompts in the dialogue
which comes up at such times. You can also still enter CD details
manually if you like (see the two headings immediately below).
3. The most likely of these two databases you might like to check
on is the "User Database Path". If you do this, you will be
given, on the next line, the path to the "Userdb" file, which is
the name Nero gives to the user database. If this path is not
correct, just backspace it out and type the correct path in.
4. TAB through the rest of the options and note that you can
change when the user database is automatically loaded in by
checking or unchecking the appropriate boxes.
5. When finished, TAB to "OK" and press ENTER.
6. Now, at the stage in creating a new compilation where you
normally select and then add tracks to your tracks list (just
before you give the "Burn Compilation" instruction, the
database(s) will load and ask for CD title, artist name, etc. If
these editfields are completed, these facts will be saved to your
user database.
Note: At step 5 above, if you do not have the Nero database on
your hard disk (and you will not if you are using a downloaded
copy of Nero or have not installed it from your CD-ROM
installation disk), you will be asked if you want to open a new
user database. Either install the Nero database in the path
indicated above or TAB to "Yes" when asked to create such a
database. You may firstly have
to create a folder in such as My Documents or wherever else you
might like it to be held before you can do this.
6.23.1. Creating Your Own CDDB Database
The program database sometimes (but not always) supplied on the
installation disk can be updated whenever you like from the
internet. You would therefore not want to place your own album
details in this, as, if updated again from the Internet, they
would be over-written and lost. You can therefore create your own
separate CDDB for your personal use by:
1. Ensure that the user database is checked on in Files,
Preferences as directed in the last section.
2. Press ALT D (for Database) and then C (for Create a New User
Database).
3. You then have to navigate to where you would like the database
creating, e.g.:
C:\Program Files\Ahead\Nero\
or
C:\My Database
or wherever you prefer.
4. Now TAB to "OK" and press ENTER. You will be told that Nero
is creating a new database and after a short while that it has
succeeded.
5. TAB to "Yes" to finish and have the new empty database made
your default database for use in future.
6. If you now go into the Database menu by pressing ALT D you
will now find that "Open User CD Database" and "Open User Title
Database" are enabled, whereas before they were disabled.
Pressing ENTER on either of these enables you to search for album
or title details in the "Search String" editfield you land in.
Of course, the database will be empty at this stage. You have to
complete the details of each CD you burn or simply want to label
into the database as you create it, either at this stage,
manually, or have the database completed automatically after you
type details in at the burn or save stage, as outlined in several
of the foregoing sections.
7. The user database holds CD details arranged by "Artist" or
"Title" and you can choose which to view CD album and tracks in.
there may be an "Add CD" button which, if you press ENTER on it,
will go to the CD inserted in your CD drive and automatically
take any information from that CD or let you register the CD on
the database and complete the details. You may also be able to
use an "edit" button to change any already entered information.
However, different versions of Nero and different databases may
have more, less or different options in here. There are two lists
you can TAB to, the first being a list of CD titles and the
second a list of the individual tracks on that CD. There are also
control tabs for each letter of the alphabet which, when you have
TABBED to one of them, you can ARROW right and left through to
seek CD information with that initial letter. The 27th tab will
hold information for CD titles or tracks which begin with a
figure rather than a letter. Your version of Nero may also
contain a "Sort By" control which you can ARROW up or down in to
get a given alphabetical list of tracks or artists.
6.23.2. Configuring the Program Database
Your Nero installation CD may contain (it is not always there)
a zipped file called "CDDB.ZIP" which contains a downloaded
version of the FREECDDB Internet database, which you can use and
also update from the Internet from time to time. Keep this
separate from your own personal user database "see the last sub-
section). If you want access to this vast library of CD details,
you will have to unzip this CDDB.ZIP file (which may be at
d:\freecddb\cddb.zip) and place it in a folder on your hard disk,
e.g.:
c:\Program Files\Ahead\Nero\CDDB
or
C:\My Documents
after first creating the "CDDB" sub-folder in Windows, as normal.
You then have to:
1. Press ALT D (for Database) and then I (for Import CDDB
Database).
2.B. If Nero advises you that it no longer supplies the database
on CD, you will be told you can download the latest version of
the database files from the Website at:
www.freedb.org
and you will be warned that the database is at least a 160 MB
download.
Note: If your Nero disk does not supply the freecddb database,
the one you will have to download, if you wish to do this, is
actually a different database with a slightly different name,
called "freedb".
2.B. If Nero does not tell you that it no longer supplies the
database or after you have download the freedb database from the
above URL, continue as follows. Navigate/browse to where the
unzipped CDDB database was copied and open the file.
3. TAB to "OK" and press ENTER.
4. Nero will tell you that it is creating and configuring the
database and this may take several hours.
5. As with the user database described in the previous sub-
section, you will now find that the second and third options in
the Database menu are now available to you.
6. At any time you can download an updated CDDB album database
from the Internet to over-write your old one from:
www.freedb.org
But be warned that this may take up to a day to download if you
do not have a broad band Internet connection. So you may prefer
to simply let Nero take you online every time you create an audio
CD to download just the album and tracks details for each CD as
you create it.
7. As with a user database, you can add to, edit, search through,
etc, CD and track details in the program database (see step 7 in
the last sub-section).
Note: The program CDDB database may require over 200 Mb of hard
disk space. If you have to download it because it is not on your
installation CD or want to download an update, the download and
new configuration will take several hours, if not a whole day.
It contains hundreds of thousands of audio CD albums.
6.24. Manually Entering and Viewing Text of CD Tracks and Artist
Details
If your CD-RW supports this, you can manually type CD tracks and
artists details onto a CD you are about to burn so that they can
then be read and displayed by CD-ROM drives and audio players
directly from the inserted CD. This is a different thing from
what you are doing in the above database sections. Your CD or CD-
RW drive must also support and be using the "Disk-at-Once"
writing method (press ALT R, R and view the CD-RW drive
information contained here, which will tell you if Disk-at-Once
is supported or not, amongst other things).
6.24.1. Entering Text before Burning a Disk
You can enter text to an audio CD to be contained on the disk
itself by:
1. If the New Compilation window is not on screen, press ALT N
(for New Compilation) to bring it up.
2. TAB forward four times to the types of CD you can create list
and You will be on the data copying (ISO) option, so ARROW down
to "Audio-CD.
3. Now press TAB until you get to "Write CD Text on CD" and
check this on if it is not already on.
4. TAB again to the "Title" editfield and then type the title you
want for the CD in here.
5. Press TAB once to "Artist" and enter the name of the group or
individual musician.
6. TAB again to "Copyright" and, if you created the music to be
placed on the CD you are burning yourself, put your copyright
details in here; otherwise, leave it blank.
7. Continue to TAB through the editfields, completing any
appropriate boxes. If you are unsure of what is required in a
field, just leave it blank or press SHIFT F1 to hear what it is
for, followed by ESCAPE to return to where you were. You may have
to use your screenreader's read line hot key to hear this
explanation or go into mouse mode to view it.
8. Eventually, TAB to "New" and press ENTER to open the Audio 1
compilation window to select and burn tracks as normal but this
time with the text being burnt to the beginning of the CD as
well.
9. If your CD-rw does not support the burning of CD text, you
will be informed of this and given the opportunity of continuing
the CD copying without the text. Obviously, there is no point in
you using the CD text facility again with your current burning
drive if this happens.
6.25. Viewing Sessions and Files with the Nero Multimounter
By default, Windows Explorer normally only allows you to view the
last session or track of a multi-session CD or DVD. You can use
the Nero multimounter, which is installed when the Nero program
is installed, to view and access all sessions and files recorded
on a multi-session CD. Oddly enough, though, this is all done not
through Nero itself but via the standard Windows Explorer utility
and you would then use Windows Explorer and not Nero itself to
view these tracks. What you do is:
1. Insert the disk you want to read different sessions or tracks
on into your CD-ROM, CD-RW or DVD drive.
2. Without Nero running, simply open Windows Explorer by pressing
Windows key and E or by any other means you prefer.
3. Go to the drive with your multi-session CD or DVD in it in the
normal Windows Explorer browsing way and leave focus on it.
4. Press F (for File), then R (for Properties and in the two page
dialogue which you come into, CONTROL TAB to the "Volumes" sheet.
5. TABBING and ARROWING down in the above sheet will reveal a
list of all sessions/tracks on the CD or DVD. ARROW to the track
you want to view and then TAB to "OK" and press ENTER. You have
to do this to view tracks other than the very last track on a CD
or DVD because Windows automatically accesses only the last track
on a CD and what you have now done is change this Windows default
way of viewing a disk to your own preference, so that it will now
be able to view other tracks than just the last one.
6. This means that Windows will now display the track you
selected in the last step under the drive of the CD-ROM, CD-RW
or DVD drive instead of the last track which is contained on the
disk.
6.26. What to do if Your CD or DVD Burning Drive is Not
Automatically Recognised by Nero
It is unlikely that Nero will fail to recognise your CD-RW drive
but if it does you can try to remedy this via the "AutoDetect CD-
ROM" feature, as follows:
1. With Nero running, press ALT X (for Extras) and then A (for
AutoDetect CD/DVD-ROM).
2. TAB through the options and Arrow to the type of CD-RW or DVD-
RW drive you have, e.g. SCSI or IDE.
3. TAB to "Identify" and press ENTER. If this doesn't work, you
will have to contact the burning drive supplier or Ahead support
for assistance. You can also go to the Ahead Website and download
such as the most up-to-date "CD-ROM.CFG" file, which contains the
CD-RWs which Nero can recognise, to copy over your current one.
There site is at:
www.nero.com
Please note that from Nero 6.0 the Nero makers have been claiming
that their latest auto-detect technology incorporated in the Nero
program should automatically detect and be able to use any CD-
RW/DVD-RW drive made since 1997 by any manufacturer. Therefore,
it is logical and likely that at some point in future Nero will
no longer provide the above means of identifying drives which are
not automatically detected by Nero as this should no longer be
an issue.
6.27. Viewing and Customising Nero Preferences
To view or make changes to customise some of Nero's main
functions and preferences, you might like to:
1. Press ESCAPE to close the Nero Burning-ROM or StartSmart
window and then press ALT F (for File), followed by F (for
Preferences).
2. You will come into a nine property sheet multi-dialogue box.
Some of the main features in here are:
A. The "General" sheet: The first few controls are to do with
Nero's various coloured level indicator markers. These are visual
markers and you will probably not be able to see them, so, as
they are not essential, you will more than likely want to leave
these alone--particularly as it is possible that, if you make
your screenreader read the markers line or Status Bar during a
burn, you may cause the copying to be corrupted. The "Start with
File Browser" and "Start with New Compilation" should be left
checked on.
B. The "Cache" sheet: Note that the default caching location is
c:\windows\temp. This can be changed by BACKSPACING and typing
another path in but is probably best left where it is. The
"Minimum Disk Space Reserved" option allows you to type in a
smaller or larger hard disk cache in megabytes. Increasing this
may speed up your burning and should make a problem-free burn
more likely but takes up more space on your hard disk. If you
press ENTER on the "Test All Drive Speeds" button you will
discover the copying speeds of all of your drives and be able to
allocate the cache on the hard disk to the burning drive which
is the fastest, if you have more than one. The size of the cache
only affects data burning.
C. The "Language" sheet: This permits you to change the language
which Nero is displayed in and also the "Choose Font" option
permits you to change the type, colour and size of the font it
uses on screen.
D. The "Sounds" sheet: This is where, if your screenreader does
not automatically read out some of the messages you get on
screen, you can get Nero to provide you with specific musical
sounds to indicate what has happened, e.g. Checking all three of
the controls in here will provide a trumpet sound to let you know
that your burn was successful, a boo sound to let you know if it
was unsuccessful and a dingdong sound to tell you to place a CD
in the CD drawer. I would recommend that you check all three of
these on.
E. The "Expert Features" sheet: Here is where you can enable
"over-burning" of CD disks but this is not always recommended--
see the warnings and conditions which Nero provides in this
property sheet. The concept of over-burning does not mean that
this has to be enabled for Nero to be able to copy to larger than
74 minute/650 Mb disks--it can do this anyway. It means that you
are trying to get Nero to squeeze more burning space out of any
size disk you are using, e.g. trying to get two or three more
minutes space out of a standard 74 or 80 minute disk. However,it
must be said that with the most up-to-date versions of Nero and
modern CD burning drives, this overburning feature is on by
default because most modern CD burners can work in this way
without any problems--just think twice about this if you have an
older CD burner, say, one which burns at 8 speed or less or is
an unknown make. If Nero detects that you have too much data to
burn to a given CD, it will bring up a dialogue advising you of
this and giving you the option of over-burning or cancelling the
burn. If you do elect to over-burn, it is quite possible that the
resultant CD will not play in such as a HI-FI CD player. Related
to this is also the fact that many CDs will not quite permit the
complete filling of the whole 74 or 80 minutes space (or, more
likely, the burning software or CD drive) will not quite achieve
this, e.g. you may find that you cannot burn 79.50 minutes of
data or audio to an 80 minute CD without allowing over-burning,
so if this occurs, you may wish to reduce the size of your file
to be burnt to slightly under 79.30 minutes and try again rather
than overburning.
F. The "Database" sheet: This lets you activate automatic loading
of one or both of two CD details databases (see "Viewing and
Entering Album and Tracks Details from Your Local Hard Disk
Database (CDDB)" Above). If you want to not only be able to
receive CD information from the online CDDB but also to be able
to contribute to the database by submitting CD details to it
yourself, you will have to check on "Submit Emial Address" and
complete the two editfields which open up below this with your
e-mail address, e.g. jwjw@xxxxxxxxxx and the SMTP server
address, e.g. mail.onetel.com (but please do not enter my details
as just given--I only put them there as an explanatory example).
If you fall in love with the idea of information databases, you
can check on several instances of automatically opening the
database when you perform given actions, e.g. for when you save
tracks.
G. The "Ultra Buffer" sheet: The size of the buffer you have in
RAM memory can determine the reliability of your burns. Mine was
set at 20 Mb but if you have plenty of RAM, you could set it to,
say, 80 Nb as I have now don on my computer but you should not
exceed 40 per cent of your total memory or 80 Mb. My RAM is 256
MB. Otherwise, if you are unsure, leave it on its current setting
or on "Auto". If you find that you are getting buffer underruns
at higher copying speeds, increasing the buffer level may
overcome this problem. Having said this, in the last couple of
years, with modern Cd drives and burning software, buffer
underruns are increasingly unlikely, because the technology now
incorporates "burn proofing".
H. The "File Browser" sheet: In here you might like to check on
"Always Show Files and tracks on CDs" but experiment to make up
your own mind about how you would like to view things.
I. The "Misc" sheet: You are not likely to want to change
anything in here.
Note: To be able to view all of the details and changes in the
above property sheets you may have to go into navigation or mouse
mode.
6.28. An Alternative Method of Selecting Files or Whole Folders
for Burning with Windows Explorer
Another interesting way you can burn files to a Cd, DD CD or DVD
with Nero is by first selecting individual files or whole
directories/folders of files with Windows Explorer or My Computer
using normal Windows highlighting/selecting methods and then
copying these to the Clipboard. After this you launch Nero and
then burn them using the standard Nero Burning-ROM interface. You
would do this by:
1. Launch Windows Explorer as usual by pressing WINDOWS LOGO KEY
AND E.
2. Highlight the individual files or the whole folder of such
files you wish to burn on your hard disk or on a CD using
standard selecting methods, e.g. by holding the SHIFT key down
as you ARROW past the consecutive files or folders you want to
burn or hold down the CONTROL key and press SPACEBAR on the non-
consecutive files or folders you would like to burn. If you want
to use this method to burn the whole of the contents of a disk
in your D: drive to a blank disk in your E: drive, in a similar
way to cloning/copying a whole disk, just press CONTROL A at this
stage to select everything on the disk.
3. Next copy your selections to the Clipboard by pressing CONTROL
C.
4. Now launch Nero Burning-ROM as normal and, using the Nero
Burning-ROM New Compilation window, go through the usual steps
up to pressing ENTER on the "New" button.
5. After pressing ENTER on the "New" button in Nero Burning-ROM
do not do anything more, i.e. do not press any ARROW or any other
keys, otherwise things may not work properly.
6. What you must do immediately now is press CONTROL V to paste
the files or folders with their contents into the compilation
window. Your screenreader may echo that this is taking place.
7. If you are burning audio tracks, you will now be able to ARROW
up and down the list of tracks and can use standard cut, copy and
paste shortcuts to move tracks to different positions in your
audio compilation or get some of them duplicated if you like.
However, this re-arranging of files is not possible if you are
burning data files or MP3 files.
8. If you ARROW to the very top of your folders or files list,
you will come onto the "New" editfield. This is, in fact, the CD
or DVD title or what is known as the volume label. If you want
to change this to something more meaningful, when it has focus,
just press the F2 key to open up the editfield and then type your
new CD title in, e.g. Music Disk 1, and press ENTER.
9. You now burn the files or folders as usual by pressing ALT R
(for Recorder) and then O (for Burn Compilation) and check that
the burning settings are what you want before pressing ENTER on
the "Burn" button.
6.29. Creating a CD from a .ISO File
If you receive an image file with a .ISO or some other similar
file extension, you can copy it to CD by:
1. Launch Nero StartSmart.
2. TAB to "Choose Your Category" and then right ARROW to "Copy
and Backup".
3. TAB once and ARROW down to "Burn Image to Disk".
4. TAB once to "Open With" and ARROW to "Nero Burning-ROM".
5. SHIFT TAB back once and press ENTRE on the "Burn Image to
Disk" button.
6. In the Open dialogue which appears, either type into the
editfield you are in the precise path and filename of your .ISO
file or SHIFT TAB back to "Look In" and navigate to the .ISO file
in question and press ENTER.
7. Press ENTER on "Burn" to commence the burning to CD.
6.30. Using Nero to Encode/Rip music Wav and CDA files to MP3 or
MP3 Pro Files
Nero can rip and encode other formats of audio files to standard
MP3 format or to the special MP3 Pro format. The MP3 Pro format
compresses files to around half the size of standard MP3 files
but without loosing any sound quality. However, Nero will only
let you rip to MP3 or MP3 Pro thirty times before you have to go
online and purchase the MP3 converter to be able to get continued
ripping ability.
You use Nero's MP3 encoder by:
1. Launch the Nero Burning-ROM program.
2. Press ALT X (for Extras) and then E (for Encode Files).
3. The Encode dialogue opens and you are on the files listbox
which will be empty. So, to get some audio files added to this
files list, TAB to "Add" and press ENTER or press ALT A.
4. The Add Files dialogue opens and you have a typical Windows-
style drives/folders/files browsing structure. SHIFT TAB back
twice to the drives and folders list and place focus on the CD-
ROM or any other drive you have the tracks on which you wish to
encode and convert to MP3 or MP3 Pro format. Then TAB to the
files list and select your individual tracks as usual.
5. After selecting tracks, TAB to Open and press ENTER or press
ALT O. You will return to the first dialogue you were in, on the
"Add" button, so that you can add more files from other source
CDs or other folders on your hard disk, etc, if you wish.
6. You now return to the first dialogue and have several more
options made available to you in this dialogue, so TAB through
them to observe what they are. For instance, if you decide you
now no longer want one of your selected and added tracks, there
is a "Remove" button to erase it. You should TAB to the
"Properties for Multiple Selection Output File format" list and
then ARROW up to the MP Pro option )also known as MP4) and you
will get a message box giving you information and can press
SPACEBAR on "Never Show This Message Again" to disable this"
followed by ENTER on "OK".
7. TAB on once more to a "Settings" button and press ENTER. In
here you can check "Enable MP3 Pro" on to produce an MP3 Pro file
or leave it off if you just want a standard MP3 file.
8. TAB again and either leave focus on "Constant Bit Rate" or
ARROW to "Variable Bit Rate" but the latter is probably
recommended for music files. TABBING through the other lists in
here lets you select qualities of file to produce as against the
time it will take to encode them and the size of the resultant
files, e.g. a fast setting at lowest quality will give you a
quickly encoded file of small size but it may not be very good
quality whereas selecting highest and highest quality will take
longer to encode and will produce a larger but much better
sounding music track.
8. After making your quality choices, TAB to "OK" and press
ENTER, when you will return to the first dialogue again.
9. To start the encoding and ripping to MP3, either TAB to and
press ENTER on "Go" or just press ALT G. You will get a progress
and activity message and will have to wait a few seconds per
track before you return to the files list to signify that the
ripping has finished.
10. To finish, TAB to "Close" and press ENTER. The MP3 files will
normally have been sent to your My documents folder if you did
not specify that they should go elsewhere.
6.31. The ON-Board Nero Virus-Checker
The independently purchased full Ultra or Enterprise versions of
Nero 6 (not the OEM copy you get along with your CD or DVD
burning drive) comes with its own virus-checker. When enabled,
this anti-virus feature will scan all files and tracks you burn
to disk to ensure that they are virus-free.
6.31.1. Burning Disks Using the Virus-Checker
1. The steps you go through are identical to those explained in
previous sections for running either Nero Burning-ROM or Nero
StartSmart, including selecting folders and files, etc, right
up to the burning step.
2. After all data or audio folders, files and/or tracks have been
selected, as usual, press ALT R (for Recorder) and then O (for
Burn Compilation.
3. TAB through and make any burning setting changes you like and,
just before you get to the "Burn" button, you will encounter the
"Do a Virus Check before Burning" option. Press SPACEBAR to check
this on.
4. Then TAB to "Burn" and press ENTER.
5. There will be a short delay before the actual burning to CD
or DVD starts, whilst the virus-checker checks the files you are
to burn for viruses first.
6. If a virus is detected, you will be warned about this and,
hopefully, you will be given a selection of things to do with it,
such as quarantine it, delete it, etc. Having said this, because
I do not cultivate viruses on my computer, I have not been able
to check exactly what options it will present you with but just
about all virus-checkers will advise you of the presence of the
virus and allow you to delete the file containing it or have the
virus-checker repair the file and remove the virus.
6.31.2. Updating the Virus-Checker from the Internet
As I am sure you are aware, an anti-virus scanner is only as good
as it is up to date. You will therefore wish to update the virus-
checker's virus data files regularly, at least once a week I
would suggest.
To update the virus-checker:
1. Open up an internet connection as usual.
2. Press ALT H (for Help) and then D (for Update Anti-Virus
Scanner). If you have not already opened up an Internet
connection as above, you should be asked if you want to do so at
this stage.
3. You will go onto an FTP (file transfer protocol) site and the
most up-to-date version of the scanner's data files will be
downloaded automatically and automatically installed to the
correct place in your Nero program.
4. The download with a 56K modem may take five to 10 minutes and
you will have a "Download in Progress" message on screen,
together with information about the percentage of the update file
which has already been downloaded and the time already taken. You
will have to go into mouse mode to view these facts.
6. The name of the Website you are downloading from is:
av.nero.com
and the message you receive to advise you that the download is
complete is "the Nero anti virus plugin is now up to date" and
you just press ENTER on an "OK" button to finish.
7. You can now use the virus-checker as outlined in the last sub-
section without doing anything else, as it has been fully
installed and updated automatically.
Note: Remember, after completing your above download, you are not
likely to be taken offline from the Internet by Nero, so if you
have a dial-up connection and will be running up a bill, come
offline manually as usual.
6.32. The Nero Help System
Nero has a quite good help system which is fairly typical of
Windows style help. It features the below main components.
However, if you downloaded your copy of Nero from the
www.nero.com site, it will not come with the Nero help manual and
you will have to go back onto the Nero site to download this. It
is about a 7 Mb download and you must ensure that you download
the exact version of the help file which corresponds to the
version of Nero you are using, e.g. if you have Nero 6.3.2, you
must download the help file specific to that version number. If
you have bought Nero on CD, the help file may install to your
hard disk automatically or you may find that you have to
physically install it yourself from the CD. It is usually called
"Nero.hlp".
6.32.1. Context Sensitive Help
When you are on a menu option or in a dialogue box, pressing
SHIFT F1 or Just F1 will often provide context sensitive help but
not always. Similarly, pressing F1 in a given window will advise
you of what that window or browser does. If all of the help text
is not automatically read to you, you can view it in your
screenreader's mouse simulation mode. Pressing ESCAPE will close
help and return you to wherever you were before you pressed F1.
6.32.2. Help topics
You can open the full online (on your hard disk) Nero manual by
pressing ALT H (for Help( and then C (for Contents). Pressing F1
will also get you to this stage. The "books" you can ARROW down
mostly have sub-books or topics in them, so pressing right ARROW
will open this tree structure up. Pressing ENTER on one of these
topics will then open the text and it should be read to you. If
it is not, pressing F6 will take you to the help text and read
it or you may have to ARROW down or use your screenreader's
continuous read hot key to read it,, viz. Numpad + with HAL,
CONTROL SHIFT R with Window-Eyes and INSERT down ARROW with JAWS.
To view the next screen of text press the PAGE DOWN key and use
PAGE UP to move back a screen. At the bottom of each topic of
help text, you will usually be able to TAB to a "Previous" and
"Next" button to press ENTER on to jump back to the last help
topic within the current subject or jump to the next topic. To
return to the book/topics tree structure and ARROW up or down the
other books, press F6 again. You press ALT F4 to leave the help
feature.
6.32.3. Index Help
Nero also has the typical Windows-type of index searchable help.
To get into the help Index, you press F1 or ALT H and then C,
then you press CONTROL TAB to move to the index editfield, where
you type the word or words you wish to find. Then TAB once to the
list of possible topics found, ARROW up and down them and press
ENTER on any one to have it opened and displayed. Again, you
press F6 to move to the text pane and read it. You also press ALT
F4 to leave this type of help.
6.32.4. Readable files on the Nero installation CD
There are several .txt (Notepad) and .doc (Ms Word) files on the
Nero CD plus an Acrobat reader and several .pdf files. These can
particularly be found in:
D:\nero\manuals\eng\
but there are several others elsewhere. Use Windows Find to
discover where on the CD the .txt, .doc, .pdf and html files can
be found. Remember that, depending on whether you purchased Nero
separately from your CD burner, what version it is and if you
bought it as part of your CD burning drive purchase, these files
and places to find them may be different and the maker may change
things at any time in future.
6.33. Automatic and Manual Updating of the Nero Program via the
Nero Website
You can get yyour sub-version of Nero 6 updated (usually at no
charge) to the most up-to-date version by mmeans of the Nero
StartSmart interface as follows:
1. Launch Nero StartSmart as usual.
2. Press ENTER on the "Nero Product Centre" button, which you are
likely to already be on, otherwise TAB to it and press ENTER. If
there is an attempt to take you online automatically, you can
accept this and get the most up-to-date version of Nero
downloaded automatically or, if you want to change how this
works, you can press the ESCAPE key to stop the automatic
download.
3. Then use your TAB key to move through several options which
you can change to suit your personal preferences, e.g. you may
wish to leave everything on automatic and have frequent checks
for new downloads if you have a broadband Internet connection or
turn automatic downloading off and do this manually, say, once
a month if you have a pay-as-you-go dial-up Internet connection.
4. If you wish to do this Nero update checking and downloading
manually, TAB to "Check Now" and press SPACEBAR to have the Nero
site checked for any newer versions and get them downloaded for
you. You may already have to have gone online firstly for this
to work.
6.34. Nero Features Not Covered in this Manual
Some capabilities which Nero has but which have not been
demonstrated in this tutorial, either because they are less
likely to be usable by visually impaired people or because they
are not available with the version you receive with your CD or
DVD burner or because they are likely to be minority features for
visually impaired people or because they cannot be accessed via
the keyboard and screenreaders are:
1. HFS CDs (Apple Mac formatting.
2. Hybrid CDs (Apple Mac and IBM clone formats mixed).
3. UDF CDs (for very large file sizes to go onto more than one
Cd or DVD). Nero can burn UDF formats but does not have full
support for them.
4. CD-ROM boot disks. You can make one of these on a floppy disk
from within Windows.
5. Mixed mode disks. There appears to be no way of creating a
mixed mode CD by use of the keyboard. You can only do this if you
are able to see sufficiently to use drag and drop with a physical
mouse. In this case, the hard copy and online manuals instruct
you on how to do this in sighted terms.
6. A number of more exotic and less frequently used hybrid CD and
DVD formats with mixed file systems.
6.35. Nero Burning-ROM Shortcut Keys
Nero Features the below main shortcut keystrokes for keyboard
users.
Press ALT AND ENTER: To obtain a readout of the properties of any
particular file, program, drive letter, etc, which currently has
focus.
Press ALT F4: To shut Nero down or close online help.
Press ESCAPE: To leave the compilation window, e.g. the ISO or
other New Compilation window, and obtain access to the menu bar.
Press SHIFT F1 (or F1): To obtain context-sensitive help in many
situations.
Press F5: To refresh the screen if the view seems to be
irregular.
Press CONTROL A: To select all of the files or tracks in a
particular folder.
Press CONTROL E: To eject a CD from the drawer.
Press CONTROL F: To search files in the current active
compilation by such as title, artist, etc.
Press CONTROL F4: To close one of the open compilation windows
if you have more than one open and do not need it.
Press CONTROL I: To reveal information about the CD currently
inserted in the CD drive.
Press CONTROL N: To open a New Compilation window.
Press CONTROL O: To open an already created and saved compilation
template file.
Press CONTROL P: To send what is on the screen to your printer.
Press CONTROL R: To open the CD Recorder dialogue box to choose
between burning from CD-ROM to CD-RW and burning from CD-RW to
an image and then back to the CD-RW drive.
Press CONTROL S: To save a new compilation template or resave an
amended template over the old one.
Press F12: To open the Save As dialogue box.
Press F7: To view the properties of the compilation currently
open.
Press CONTROL D: To add selected files to the current
compilation.
Press CONTROL 1: To add the file which currently has focus or a
block of selected files to the compilation.
The standard Windows editing commands of cut, copy, paste and
undo are also available, with CONTROL X, CONTROL C, CONTROL V and
CONTROL Z respectively.
********
>SECTION 7
NERO INCD CD-RW and DVD-RW DISK FORMATTER VERSION 4
7.1. What Does INCD Do?
The Nero INCD utility is a separate program from the main Nero
Burning-ROM software. Its purpose is to permit you to format a
range of rewritable disks, such as CD-RW, DVD-RW, DVD+RW and CD-
MRW disks, in a similar way to formatting a floppy disk, in order
to be able to use it like a formatted floppy disk. Thereafter,
you can then copy onto the formatted CD with any Windows program
that can write to a drive letter. You can make
folders/directories on the CD or DVD and you can delete files and
folders from Windows or from within a Windows virtual DOS window
as you would normally do on a floppy disk or on your hard disk.
The difference with a formatted CD from a floppy disk, for
example, is that you get almost 400 times more space on a 74
minute CD than you would on a 1.44 Mb floppy disk, although you
do not get the full 650 Mb of space which you would have on a 74
minute disk if you simply burnt to it with Nero Burning-ROM. This
is because the formatting itself takes up some of the room on the
CD. You should find that you have at least 534 Mb of usable disk
space on a formatted 74 minute CD-RW disk.
You cannot format and use write-only CD-r or DVD-R disks with
INCD.
7.2. Installing INCD
INCD has to be installed separately from the main Nero Burning-
ROM program. Depending on the version/build of Nero you have, it
may be found on the Nero installation disk in the path:
d:\incd\setup.exe
so just use the Windows Run facility to install it by:
1.A. If you have the CD version of Nero:
with the installation CD in the CD drawer, press Windows Logo key
and R.
Type into the editfield:
d:\incd\setup
and press ENTER, assuming, of course, that your CD-ROM is on the
D: drive.
1.B. If you have the downloaded exe file copy of INCD:
Go to the exe file with Windows Explorer or My Computer and press
ENTER on it.
2. The Welcome screen loads in and you are on a "Continue" or a
"Next" button, so press ENTER.
3. You may or may not have to TAB to "Install INCD" and press
ENTER.
4. The license agreement appears and you have to TAB to "I do not
Accept the Terms of the Preceding Licence Agreement" and then
ARROW up to "I Accept all Terms of the Preceding Licence
Agreement" and then TAB to "Next" and press ENTER to proceed.
5. Complete the personal details of name, company name (type
"None" if necessary) and TAB to "Next" and press ENTER. Your main
Nero Burning-ROM Serial No will automatically be inserted in the
appropriate editfield, if you have one, otherwise you will not
be able to install INCD.
6. After a few seconds you will be on a "Reboot" button, so press
ENTER to finish.
7.3. System Requirements
For INCD to work you will need:
1. A Pentium 90 or higher--probably a Pentium 166 or better if
using a screenreader.
2. 32 Mb of RAM.
3. 5 Mb of spare hard disk space.
4. Windows 98 or Windows 95B OSR2 or later. It also works on NT4,
Windows 2000 and XP.
5. A supported CD-RW and/or DVD-RW and/or CD-MRW drive.
Warning: According to the INCD literature, you cannot reliably
use INCD if you have the Adaptec ASPI drivers installed on your
hard disk but I found that it worked OK on my system even though
I have these installed. If you encounter problems, uninstall
these ASPI drivers if you like but note that you may then have
audio-related software on your PC which will not work without the
ASPI drivers, such as CDEX, Easy CD Creator, elements of the
GoldWave audio editing program, and the like. You will just have
to experiment to see how things work for you and may have to
uninstall and re-install the ASPI drivers as and when required.
The ASPI drivers could be installed anywhere on your computer,
either in the Windows folder or any other folder, so search for
them with the Windows Fine feature, using a search string such
as "aspi*.*. These drivers are automatically installed if you
have Windows Media Player 7 or later on your computer.
7.4. Launching INCD
INCD resides in your System Tray and should automatically launch
every time you boot your PC and run in the background. Therefore,
as soon as you insert a rewritable CD into the CD-RW drive, INCD
will detect this and bring up the INCD Wizard. This takes you
through the steps to use in INCD, as outlined below in sub-
section 7.8, et seq.
The INCD program installs itself at:
c:\Program Files\Ahead\INCD\INCD.exe
and it automatically launches itself and places an icon in your
System Tray every time you boot your
computer. Consequently, as you cannot access all of the features
of INCD other than by the System Tray, your screenreader will
have to be able to allow you to go to and use the System Tray,
e.g. with JFW press INSERT F11 or with Window-Eyes press INSERT
TAB to be taken into the System Tray. Unfortunately, with
versions of HAL up to 4.5 the System Tray is not accessible but
if you have Version 5 you can use SHIFT Numpad SLASH.
When you have entered the System Tray and either pressed ENTER
on or right clicked on "INCD", you get several possible options
to press ENTER on to activate them. These are:
1. The "About" button.
2. The "Help" button.
3. The "Options" button.
You may also have available to you one or more of the below three
extra options:
4. The "Format a CD" button.
5. The "Delete a CD" button.
6. The "Eject" button.
After launching INCD from the System Tray, deal with its features
by:
Note: In most of the below descriptions of dialogue boxes and
property sheets, you can TAB through several information and
selection controls but you are likely to discover more details
if you go into navigation or mouse mode to have a look around--
you may also have to do some cursor routing to be able to move
in mouse mode.
7.5. Version Information
By pressing ENTER on the "About" button you are told the version
of INCD you are running and several other details pertinent to
the software and manufacturer.
7.6. INCD Online Help Manual
By pressing ENTER on the "Help" button, you can then ARROW
through and open any help topic to learn more about INCD. This
is a standard Windows-type help structure which you open sub-help
books in by right ARROWING on them and open the help text by
pressing ENTER on the topic, followed by pressing F6 to the help
text and then reading it by ARROWING down it or using your
screenreader's continuous read hot key. Pressing F6 after reading
the text takes you back to the topics list to move to and open
other topics in the same way.
7.7. INCD Options
Pressing ENTER on the INCD "Options" button will give you a
single sheet dialogue box in which you can TAB through several
checkboxes to turn on or off. For example, you will find that
things are set up to have INCD launched automatically when a
rewritable disk is inserted into your CD-RW, DVD-RW or CD-MRW
drive and you can check this off if you like so that you would
have to launch INCD manually to use it in future. The language
INCD is set up to use is also displayed in here and you can even
hide the INCD System Tray icon if you like. Other than the first-
mentioned checkbox in here, you are not likely to want to change
anything else but if you do, you just then press ENTER on
"Apply".
7.8. CD-RW, DVD-RW and CD-MRW Formatting with INCD
To format a rewritable disk:
1. Place your rewritable disk in the appropriate disk bay and
shut it. Then:
A. INCD should automatically detect the presence of a rewritable
CD and launch the INCD Wizard for you. You now press ENTER on the
"Next" button.
B. If the CD is not automatically detected, launch Windows
Explorer and use the drives/folders structure to go to the disk
burning drive holding your disk and open up a Context Menu by
pressing SHIFT F10. Then ARROW to "INCD Format" and press ENTER.
2. When the formatting dialogue opens up, the burning drive you
highlighted above will automatically be selected.
3. You should land on the "Label" editfield, where you can type
over the default "INCD" volume label with a name of your own
liking for the CD about to be formatted, which should not exceed
11 characters as is the case with labelling a floppy disk.
4. TAB through and note some of the other options in here,
including the "Options" button, which opens up the same options
dialogue as that mentioned earlier in this section.
5. Now TAB to "Format Disk" and there are two options in here.
You have to choose the type of format by ARROWING to it:
A. The "Format" option is a full, in-depth format for previously
unformatted CDs and may take between 10 and 40 minutes for CD-
RWs, just a few minutes to 120 minutes for DVD-RWs and only a few
minutes for CD-MRWs, depending on the drive. With the "format"
option the program will go through the formatting process twice.
B. The second is called "Quick Format", which is normally good
enough for reformatting already formatted CDs to erase all of the
current data on them and will be completed much more quickly.
6. After making your formatting type choice above, TAB to "Start"
and press ENTER to start the formatting procedure. You will be
advised that all data on the disk will be lost and you can press
ENTER to go ahead. The Title Bar will advise you that formatting
of the disk in the drive in question is taking place.
7. When the formatting has finished, you will be told that the
formatting is complete and you will have to press ENTER on an
"OK" button to close INCD. Unlike with other types of Nero burns,
the CD drawer does not automatically open after the format has
finished.
8. Lastly, TAB to "Close" and press ENTER.
Note: Once a CD has been formatted with INCD, if you inserted
into the CD drawer, INCD should automatically detect it and bring
up a screen advising you that the CD you just inserted is an INCD
disk, together with some details about it. You just press ENTER
on the "ok" button to close this message box. If this does not
happen, it should not matter, as you should still be able to
access the formatted rewritable disk via Windows Explorer or My
Computer and copy to it via the Explorer "Send To" command in the
File menu.
7.9. Uses for INCD Formatted Disks
Large capacity formatted CDs and DVDs can be used for:
* Archiving large numbers of data files in many
directories/folders, thus removing the need for hundreds of
floppy disks.
* Acting as a place to back-up parts of your computer's hard
disk.
* Circulating large files around friends or work colleagues which
would not fit on floppy disks.
7.10. How to Copy Data to a Formatted CD-RW or DVD-RW Disk
You can read and write files directly to a formatted rewritable
disk with any Windows software which can read and write to a
drive letter, e.g. from Word, WordPerfect, Windows Explorer, from
virtual DOS via a window with the copy command, with any Windows
95/98/ME program which as a "Send To" command on its File Menu,
etc.
The data CD will be usable in all CD-RW and DVD-RW drives and in
any multi-read CD-ROM drive that has the Nero INCD software on
that computer. However, it will not be accessible from pure DOS
without Windows running, only from DOS through a Windows window.
7.10.1. Example 1--copying via a Windows DOS Window
to copy a file to your formatted CD-RW or DVD-RW disk from
Windows Virtual DOS:
1. Open up your DOS window as usual, e.g. via Program Files,
MSDOS.
2. to copy a file called "memo1.doc" from your My Documents
folder to a CD-RW or DVD-RW disk inserted into the burning drive,
in the Dos Window, type:
copy c:\my documents\memo1.doc D:\
(Assuming, of course, that your disk burning drive is on the D:
drive)
3. The file will be copied to the formatted disk.
7.10.2. Example 2--copying via Windows Explorer
to copy a file to your formatted CD-RW or DVD-RW disk from
Windows Explorer:
1. Launch Explorer as usual with Windows key and E.
2. Navigate to My documents as usual.
3. place focus on the "memo1.doc" file.
4. Press ALT F (for File) and ARROW to "Send To" and press ENTER.
5. Now ARROW to "Disk D" or whichever drive your CD-RW or DVD-RW
burner is on.
6. Press ENTER to effect the send command and finish. the
memo1.doc file will now have been copied to your formatted CD-RW
or DVD-RW disk.
Note: The above simply copies files to the root of the CD-RW or
DVD-RW disk. If you like, using Windows Explorer in the usual
way, you can create a standard folder on the disk first and then
copy your files into that.
7.11. How to Eject a Disk
To eject a disk after formatting or after copying to it, simply
press the eject button on the front of your disk drive panel. If
this does not work, you will have to go a more circuitous rout
about this as follows:
1. launch Windows Explorer as usual with Windows key and E and
use the drives/folders structure to go to the disk burning drive
holding your disk.
2. Then open up a Context Menu by pressing SHIFT F10.
3. Now ARROW to "Eject" and press ENTER.
7.12. How to Erase Data on a Formatted CD or DVD
You can use the Nero "Quick Format" facility to delete all of the
folders and files on a CD as explained above. Alternatively, you
can erase files and folders on a formatted CD in the same way as
you would do this on a floppy disk or hard disk, e.g. with
Windows Explorer, with a delete file option on a context menu,
from Windows DOS with the DEL command, etc.
7.13. How to erase both data and formatting on a CD or DVD
You can delete both data and formatting from a Cd with the main
Nero Burning-ROM software via the "CD-Recorder" menu:
1. Launch the main Nero Burning-ROM program.
2. With the CD-RW CD or DVD in your disk Burning drive, press ALT
R (for Cd-Recorder) and then W (For Erase CD/DVD Rewritable).
3. You will come into a listbox with a list of your recordable
CD and DVD burning drives in it to ARROW to the appropriate drive
in.
4. Next you can check on "Use Multiple Recorders" if you wish to
erase several rewritable disks in several burners simultaneously.
5. TAB once again to a two choice listbox. You have choices in
here to ARROW through of: "Quick-Erase Rewritable Disk", "Full-
Erase Rewritable Disk" and "Unclose the Last Session". The former
of these quickly erases a disk, which means that the job will be
done quickly, although there is not a complete thorough deleting,
rather files are renamed for over-writing--it would be possible
for someone to recover these files; if you choose the second
option you will get a complete physical erasure of the whole CD
which will take quite some time; and the latter option removes
the closing/finalising marker on an existing burning session on
the inserted CD-RW/DVD-RW disk so that you can burn more files
to that session (but is not appropriate to formatted disks).
5. TAB past the erasing speed, leaving this on "Maximum" and
press ENTER on the "Erase" button.
6. After the erasure you will no longer be able to write to the
CD as if it was a floppy disk but you can now use it in the same
way as any other write-only CD again--something you would not
have been able to do whilst it was formatted.
Note: You can also erase a disk via Windows Explorer by selecting
the drive it is in, opening the Context Menu with SHIFT F10 and
then pressing ENTER on "INCD Erase".
7.14. INCD Updates and Supported CD-RW and DVD-RW Drives
For information on which CD-RW and DVD-RW drives INCD supports,
go to:
www.nero.com
or
www.ahead.de
You can also download the latest version of INCD from here, which
might support your CD-RW drive, if your current version does not.
Please note that from Nero 6.0 the Nero makers have been claiming
that their latest auto-detect technology incorporated in the Nero
program should automatically detect and be able to use any CD-
RW/DVD-RW drive made since 1997 by any manufacturer.
********
>APPENDIX 1
AHEAD SUPPORT FOR NERO
For support, enquiries or technical problems you can contact the
makers of Nero and INCD called Ahead. They are at:
E-mail: techsupport@xxxxxxxx
or
E-mail: support@xxxxxxxx
Fax: ++49 724 8911888
Website: www.nero.com
or
Website: www.ahead.de
Note: The Ahead support e-mail facility only elicits an automatic
response from a computer, not from a person. It tells you to go
to their Website and look up answers to your problem/question
there. If you cannot find what you want, there is said to be an
e-mail link on the Website which you can use to send an e-mail
which will reach a member of staff.
Other e-mail contact points are:
sales@xxxxxxxx
suggestions@xxxxxxxx
********
>APPENDIX 2
LIST OF NERO SHORTCUT KEYSTROKES
Nero Burning-ROM
Press ALT AND ENTER: To obtain a readout of the properties of any
particular file, program, drive letter, etc, which currently has
focus.
Press ALT F4: To shut Nero down.
Press ESCAPE: To leave the compilation window, e.g. the ISO or
Nero Wizard window, and obtain access to the menu bar. ESCAPE
also closes Nero online Help Topics.
Press F1: To obtain context-sensitive help in many situations.
Press F5: To refresh the screen if the view seems to be
irregular.
Press CONTROL A: To select all of the files or tracks in a
particular folder.
Press CONTROL E: To eject a CD from the drawer.
Press CONTROL F: To search files in the current active
compilation by such as title, artist, etc.
Press CONTROL F4: To close one of the open compilation windows
if you have more than one open and do not need it.
Press CONTROL I: To reveal information about the CD currently
inserted in the CD drive.
Press CONTROL N: To open a new ISO or Nero Wizard compilation
window.
Press CONTROL O: To open an already created and saved compilation
template file.
Press CONTROL P: To send what is on the screen to your printer.
Press CONTROL R: To open the CD Recorder dialogue box to choose
between burning from CD-ROM to CD-RW and burning from CD-RW to
an image on your hard disk and then back to the CD-RW drive.
Press CONTROL S: To save a compilation template or resave an
amended template.
Press F12: To open the Save As dialogue box.
Press F7: To view the properties of the compilation currently
open.
Press CONTROL D: To add selected files to the current
compilation.
Press CONTROL 1: To add the file which currently has focus or a
block of selected files to the compilation.
The standard Windows editing commands of cut, copy, paste and
undo are also available, with CONTROL X, CONTROL C, CONTROL V and
CONTROL Z respectively.
End of tutorial.
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