Burn – Simple but Advanced Burning for OS X
Burn is a free DVD & CD writing app for OS X. Having recently re-setup the UsedMac MacBook I thought I'd try out some free alternatives to regularly used commercial software. In this case we'd previously had Toast 8 installed but had rarely used it for anything that iTunes or Disk Utility couldn't do with the MacBook's SuperDrive.
So we've installed Burn having downloaded it from it's website on Sourceforge. When opening the App your presented with a compact dialog with 4 different writing options: Data, Audio, Video and Copy. Very straightforward given how au fait all of us are now with the creation of CD's and DVD's.
In the case of Data you can drag in or add files from Finder and give the CD a title, as well as chose what type of disc you would like to make:
Creating a Data CD: Here we've added some PDF's to Back up
Having added some files and chosen that I want it to work on both PC & Mac's I'm ready to burn:
Burn dialog: Choose your speed & finalising options
So as you can see the approach is pretty no frills. It's nice though to have a simple App that does what it says on the tin, especially as it is completely free to use. I know if I was in a rush to get some Documents or audio files onto a CD it would be quicker than trying to use Disk Utility.
Audio does exactly what you'd expect to. You can burn audio files such as MP3's, WAV's (large CD quality files) and AAC's (iTunes standard format). In this screenshot I've dragged some Apple Lossless files of Radiohead's new album 'King of Limbs' into Burn to see if it would recognise this recent Apple format. It did and imported them ready to write them as a normal Audio CD to play back in the car or your CD Player:
Creating an Audio CD: Apple Lossless files added to Burn
Then there's the Video tab, which again follows the same format and lets you burn video files as either a VCD, SVCD, DVD or a DivX CD. I'm not entirely sure if anyone has a need to make VCD's or SVCD's now but the option is there. DVD speaks for itself and the DivX option would allow you to potentially squeeze a film onto a 700MB CD that a DivX compatible player can play back.
Finally there is the Copy option. This will let you make an exact image of a DVD or CD, by dragging the icon of the mounted source disc into Burn in a neat drag and drop operation. It will then make an image of the disc on your Mac's hard drive to then be burnt to a blank disc. It can also burn an image file to disc, so if like below you have downloaded an ISO file (Image File) of Ubuntu you can drag it into the Copy option to burn it to a CD:
Make a disc from an Image: Burning an Ubuntu CD
So no bells whistles or flashy lights but a simple neat and reliable app to make discs with your SuperDrive on your Mac. In use its been as reliable as Toast so far for use so it's well worth a try if you want to save a few quid.
