Enable CD Overburn in Nero 5.5.10.x and 6

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Overburning Criteria

Method

Overburn Criteria

You need a recent model of CD or DVD writer which supports overburn, a recent version of Nero (preferably 5.5.10.x: the last update is 5.5.10.54, or version 6), a suitable CDR media and configure the overburn option in Nero Burning Rom (or Nero Express). You cannot use multi-session, you must use disc-at-once and finalise the CD.

The overburn option may be useful for a large audio or video file to avoid splitting it up. My preference is to split the file and avoid overburn. If you have an ISO (CD disc image) which appears to be larger than a normal CDR, you can just try to burn the image directly in Nero.

Nero 6 has better support for DVDs and the principles for overburning DVDs are similar to CDs. I would not recommend overburning DVDs. Some people have reported that the last sections of the DVD cannot be read even without overburn in some cases. If you have a DVD video which is greater than 4.38 GB (4,463 MB) split the file or use DVD Shrink to lower the encoding bitrate to fit the DVD - until DVD-9 (dual layer) burning becomes available.

Method

Overburning Test

Nero can try to determine how much overburning is possible in Nero CD Speed, Extra, Overburning Test (fig. 1). You can normally only overburn a little but some users have reported a lot more: it depends on the burner and media.

Fig. 1. Nero CD Speed, Overburning Test

Insert a blank CDR (or CDRW) into the ROM drive, choose the correct ROM in the drop-down list (if there's more than one ROM) and click Start. The Overburning test dialogue box appears; choose the Write Speed, Test capacity, RAW mode (optional) and click Start (fig. 2).

Fig. 2. Overburning test settings.

Wait for the test to finish and avoid doing anything else until it does. The results are shown (fig. 3). The yellow bar to the right of the green bar represents the overburning capacity. If you choose to add the results to the CD-R(W) list the maximum capacity will be remembered.

Fig. 3. Overburn result.

Overburning Settings

In Nero, go to File, Preferences, Expert features, tick the option Enable overburn 'disc-at-once' burning. In Nero Express, go to More, Configure, Preferences.

Set the number of minutes in the Maximum CD length box according to the overburn test (Fig. 4). Read the other warning messages. Click OK to return to Nero main window or Nero Express and proceed as for normal CD burning. In Nero 6 there is an additional setting for overburing DVDs.

Fig. 4. Enable overburn option in Preferences, Expert Features.

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Last updated 28 June 2004