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Nero AG (known as Ahead Software AG until 2005) is a German
computer software Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. At the lowest programming level, executable code consists ...
company that is especially well known for its CD/
DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any kin ...
/ BD burning suite, ''
Nero Burning ROM Nero Burning ROM, commonly called Nero, is an optical disc authoring program from Nero AG. The software is part of the Nero Multimedia Suite but is also available as a stand-alone product. It is used for burning and copying optical discs such as ...
''. The company's main product is Nero 2019, a piece of software that comprises burning, file conversion, media management, and video editing functions and was updated on an annual basis, though new releases have not occurred for several years.


History

Richard Lesser founded the company as ''Ahead Software GmbH'' in 1995. The company changed its name (and legal form) to ''Ahead Software AG'' in 2001 and again to Nero AG in 2005. The Nero Group includes foreign
subsidiaries A subsidiary, subsidiary company or daughter company is a company owned or controlled by another company, which is called the parent company or holding company. Two or more subsidiaries that either belong to the same parent company or having a sam ...
in
Glendale, California Glendale is a city in the San Fernando Valley and Verdugo Mountains regions of Los Angeles County, California, United States. At the 2020 U.S. Census the population was 196,543, up from 191,719 at the 2010 census, making it the fourth-larges ...
, United States (''Nero Inc.'', founded in 2001), in
Yokohama is the second-largest city in Japan by population and the most populous municipality of Japan. It is the capital city and the most populous city in Kanagawa Prefecture, with a 2020 population of 3.8 million. It lies on Tokyo Bay, south of ...
, Japan (''Nero K.K.'', founded in 2004), and
Hangzhou Hangzhou ( or , ; , , Standard Mandarin pronunciation: ), also romanized as Hangchow, is the capital and most populous city of Zhejiang, China. It is located in the northwestern part of the province, sitting at the head of Hangzhou Bay, whic ...
, China (''Nero Ltd.'', founded in 2007). The USA and Japan operations are sales offices, while the Chinese subsidiary operates exclusively to provide internal development services for the company. In May 2007, it was announced that the Luxembourg-based firm ''Agrippina International SàrL'' owned more than 25% of Nero AG shares. In 2009, the company established two additional subsidiaries in Germany: ''Nero Development and Services GmbH'' and ''Nero EMEA Sales GmbH''. In 2014, the company moved the operations and headquarters of Nero AG, as well as of the two group companies ''Nero Development and Services GmbH'' and ''Nero EMEA Sales GmbH'', to
Karlsruhe Karlsruhe ( , , ; South Franconian: ''Kallsruh'') is the third-largest city of the German state (''Land'') of Baden-Württemberg after its capital of Stuttgart and Mannheim, and the 22nd-largest city in the nation, with 308,436 inhabitants ...
.


Products

From its beginnings selling a single software application for burning, the company says it has become a "leader in digital media technologies" that now sells a wide range of products. Nero sells its products directly as well as via hardware manufacturers that bundle them on PCs, hard disks, camcorders and other devices. Other companies also use Nero multimedia
codec A codec is a device or computer program that encodes or decodes a data stream or signal. ''Codec'' is a portmanteau of coder/decoder. In electronic communications, an endec is a device that acts as both an encoder and a decoder on a signal or ...
s, SDKs and programming interfaces. In 2008, Nero expanded its product range for the first time beyond the well-known burning software. With ''Nero Move it'', users were able to transfer photos, videos, and music from one device to another or to online communities like
YouTube YouTube is a global online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by Google, and is the second most vis ...
, Myspace, and the company's own multimedia community My Nero. With the Nero 9 multimedia suite, they could create, rip, burn, edit, save, and upload their music, video, and photo files. In June 2009, the company launched its Nero BackitUp & Burn product, which saved, burned, and restored data and helped protect users' digital content. The company extended the product with additional functions in the years following its launch and gave the user navigation around the various program elements a more unified look and feel. As a product,
Nero Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus ( ; born Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus; 15 December AD 37 – 9 June AD 68), was the fifth Roman emperor and final emperor of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, reigning from AD 54 unt ...
evolved from a pure burning program ( ''Nero Burning ROM'') to a multimedia software package. The software includes programs: * for burning and
packet writing Packet writing (or incremental packet writing, IPW) is an optical disc recording technology used to allow write-once and rewritable CD and DVD media to be used in a similar manner to a floppy disk from within the operating system. Details P ...
( ''Nero Burning ROM'') * for ripping and converting multimedia content (''Nero Recode'') * for displaying, managing, and streaming photos and multimedia content (''Nero MediaHome'') and * for creating, editing, and
transcoding Transcoding is the direct digital-to-digital conversion of one encoding to another, such as for video data files, audio files (e.g., MP3, WAV), or character encoding (e.g., UTF-8, ISO/IEC 8859). This is usually done in cases where a target devic ...
video content and for burning video content to video discs with menus (''Nero Video'') Along with ''Nero'', Nero AG also developed SecurDiscs process, as well as the
MPEG-4 MPEG-4 is a group of international standards for the compression of digital audio and visual data, multimedia systems, and file storage formats. It was originally introduced in late 1998 as a group of audio and video coding formats and related te ...
compression technique
Nero Digital Nero Digital is a brand name applied to a suite of MPEG-4-compatible video and audio compression codecs developed by Nero AG of Germany and Ateme of France. The audio codecs are integrated into the ''Nero Digital Audio+'' audio encoding tool for ...
together with Ateme corporation. The backup solution ''Nero BackItUp'', which was initially included in the Nero suite of programs, was spun off in 2012 and is now available together with cloud-based storage as a subscription model. Android, iOS and Windows Phone apps are available for Nero BackItUp. Along with BackItUp, Nero provides additional applications for mobile devices. These include NeroKwik for managing photo files, Nero AirBurn for burning files wirelessly, Nero MediaHome Receiver for streaming media from a PC to mobile devices, and Nero MediaHome WiFi Sync for wireless data synchronization. Since the release of Version 11, Nero Cover Designer (for creating covers), Nero WaveEditor (for editing music files) and Nero SoundTrax (for mixing and digitalizing music tracks) are no longer included in the suite but can be downloaded free of charge from the company's website. Some of the products in the suite can also be downloaded separately. These include Nero Burning ROM and Nero Video. Nero has also launched a number of free mobile Nero Suite companions apps for iOS and Android like Nero AirBurn, Nero Streaming Player. The latest app is Nero KnowHow app a digital learning guide for users, available for iOS, Windows 10 and Android.


References


External links


Nero AG official website

Nero AG´s My Nero Community

Nero AI
-Second Fire of Nero AG {{DEFAULTSORT:Nero Ag Software companies of Germany Companies established in 1995 Companies based in Baden-Württemberg Companies based in Karlsruhe German brands