Ashampoo Burning Studio 9

A Windows 7 compatible CD and DVD burning application, Ashampoo Burning Studio 9 is one of the most impressive and instantly powerful optical media applications available.

With a streamlined and light installation, a range of impressive animated DVD menus and photo gallery skins, and complete compatibility with HD video, Ashampoo Burning Studio 9 is a highly recommended utility for PC optical media fans. Users can control all aspects of the disc burning process, from drive speed and media type to encoding options and navigational systems.

While a range of burning applications are available with full Windows 7 support, few offer optimal performance and complete control for users. While Ashampoo Burning Studio 9 is limited by a few small copyright restrictions and media options, as a full-featured optical media burning application it's one of the best around. Almost all forms of optical media are supported - with the somewhat annoying exclusion of Blu-ray media - and users can easily change settings and writing options.

HD video is completely supported with Ashampoo Burning Studio 9 able to burn 1080p, 1080i, and 720p media to disc. While encoding times can occasionally be quite slow, particularly for HD and high quality video footage, burning is rapid and convenient, with a single DVD disc generally taking mere minutes to complete. Users can alter encoding quality and disc burn speed easily, and even set custom parameters and options.

A range of menu and navigation options are available for compilation video or picture DVDs. Users can set their own menu titles and background images, bringing life to otherwise dull DVD menus, or simply let Ashampoo Burning Studio 9 use their filenames as standard titles and disc names. For single-purpose DVDs, users can choose to have footage auto-play, eliminating the need for menus and navigational systems altogether.

While extremely efficient and very user-friendly, there are a few small issues which affect Ashampoo Burning Studio 9's performance as a complete media application. Blu-ray and HDDVD media aren't supported, which leaves HD video users stuck compressing their footage onto DVD media.

While ideal for most home and office users, the addition of Blu-ray compatibility would have moved Ashampoo Burning Studio 9 from a worthwhile burning application to one of the most valuable optical media applications for Windows XP, Vista, and 7.

Ashampoo Burning Studio: What We Liked

• Burning data, video, or audio to CDs and DVDs is very quick, even with encoding and menu creation.
• Users can easily control disc burning speed and playback options.
• HD video is supported, with Ashampoo Burning Studio 9 able to burn 1080p, 1080i, and 720p footage to DVD.

Ashampoo Burning Studio: What We Didn't Like

• A lack of Blu-ray media support stops Ashampoo Burning Studio 9 from being the ideal choice for media buffs.

Ashampoo Support

Support is available via the Ashampoo website. Users can access software knowledge base articles, basic FAQs and product guides, and troubleshooting documents. Email-based customer support is available, along with international phone contact information.

About Ashampoo

A Microsoft Certified Software Partner, Ashampoo GmbH is a German-based software developer and publisher. With a range of Windows utilities, media applications, and architecture programs available, their software is used by over 11 million people worldwide.

     

Ashampoo Burning Studio 9 is the the complete, compact and easy burning suite. Ashampoo Burning Studio 9 is a major update that improves almost every aspect of the program, adding many new features and capabilities in every part of the program. It also introduces a new Movie Editor for editing and combining your videos before burning them to DVD. The Movie Editor has functions for cutting, transitions, fades, subtitles, titles and more, plus a point-and-click DVD menu editor with animated themes for creating great-looking interfaces for your DVD movies.

The new version also packed with improvements, new features and fine tuning that make all Burning Studio's functions more powerful and even easier to use.

Anyone who has ever struggled with complicated disc burning software is always amazed when they try Ashampoo Burning Studio. This is how software should be: Instead of studying complicated manuals you just choose what you want to do and then follow the instructions displayed on the screen. For example, to make a DVD you select Create a Video DVD and the program guides you through the steps of adding clips, building menus and burning the disc.

This doesn't mean the program has been "dumbed down": Burning Studio is a complete and powerful disc burning suite that also satisfies advanced users with all the tweaking features you expect from less accessible programs. In addition to user interface fine-tuning there has been a large number of new features added, many of which were suggested by Burning Studio users.

New features in Burning Studio 9:

• New Movie Editor and Movie Player
• Play all videos, slideshows and movies in the new Movie Player
• New project type: Video Edit DVD with Movie Editor
• Create MP3 or WMA CDs from lists of tracks with multiple formats
• Preview images are now automatically exported to Cover Editor
• New options dialogs for video, audio, decoder, encoder and drive settings
• Selectable program skins for user interface
• Many user settings are saved and reloaded automatically
• Many new burners added to the database
• DVD projects are now saved with all slideshows and movies
• Automatic check for conflicts with other programs with user warning

The biggest new feature of Ashampoo Burning Studio 9 is the Movie Editor, which adds powerful video editing and DVD interface building capabilities to the program. This is not just a little clip trimmer - you won't need any other video editing software. Movie Editor has all the features you need to turn your clip collection and home videos into impressive finished movies. You also get a brand new Movie Player with a significantly improved video rendering engine and a modern graphical interface.
New features in Burning Studio 9

The Slideshow Editor makes it a snap to turn your photos into impressive DVD slideshows with animated graphical menus. You can also include video clips in your slideshows. Just select your photos, videos and background music tracks and burn. Here too, you can produce shows instantly by choosing ready-to-use themes or get creative and design your own. Burning Studio comes with a set of attractive themes and you can download more from the Ashampoo website.

The Cover Editor has everything you need for labeling your discs and producing cool covers for jewel cases, slim cases, DVD cases and Blu-ray cases. You can design your own or just enter a title and select one of the pre-designed themes for instant point-and-click results - it also imports track data from your discs automatically. The Cover Editor prints both on a wide range of predefined label formats and directly onto discs on printers that support this function.