Date: Sun, 19 Oct 2003 10:27:31 +1000
From: Mac Calder (linuxuser@phreaker.net)
To: LUV (luv@luv.asn.au)
Subject: Re: burning CDs...

Colin Charles wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Faced with an interesting problem today. My box that has a CD Recorder
> is now running Fedora Test Core 2 (new Red Hat), and a friend wanted to
> burn a bunch of MP3s to an audio CD.
>
> My friend fiddled with gtoaster (the RH default), and it's not user
> friendly at all. Friend wasn't impressed as his Nero gets things done
> so easily! (on Windows).
>
> It's ok. I combined mpg321 and cdrecord via the command-line and got it
> working. But its not a pretty solution, even though I've been doing it
> regularly for quite a while...
>
> Is there a *nice* GUI CD Recording tool out there, that can compete with
> the likes of Nero?

Here is a feature table I have from the August Linux Format magazine.

	Arson	CDBakeOven	K3b	SimpleCDR-X	webCDWriter	XCdRoast
Version	0.97	2.0beta2	0.9pre1	1.3pre2	2.51	0.98alpha4
Platform	KDE2/3	KDE3.1	KDE 3.1	GTK+ 1.2	Java/Swing	GTK+ 1.2
El Torrito	yes	yes	yes	no	yes	yes
HSF	no	yes	no	no	yes	no
Multi-session	no	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes
Mixed Mode	no	no	yes	no	yes	no
CD-Text	no	write	write	no	no	yes
ID3	yes	yes	N/A	MP3	N/A	N/A
Audio Norm.	yes	no	yes	yes	no	no
VCD Write	yes	no	yes	no	no	no

GUI Notes;
X-CD-Roast: not very intuitive (7/10 for ease of use)
Arson: Drag and drop (7/10 for ease of use)
CD Bake Oven: Plugs into Konqueror, Drag and Drop (7/10 for ease of use)
K3b: Much like nero, smooth GUI, (9/10 for ease of use)
SimpleCDR-X: Shocking! (5/10 for ease of use)
WebCDwriter: Web-based - different (8/10 for ease of use)

I have personally used K3b and loved it....
I have played with some of the others, some are good, some not so good.

Mac Calder
> Thanks.
>
> P/S: Nautilus with its pop-up burning dialog thing is impressive. Very
> WinXP-ish, that my friend was impressed too =)
> Me, cdrecord from a console is the best thing since sliced bread -
> quick, effective, and just "convenient"
>

http://eclipt.uni-klu.ac.at/eroaster.php
ECLiPt Roaster is a GNOME frontend to cdrecord and mkisofs.

http://www.abo.fi/~jmunsin/gcombust/
gcombust is a GTK+ graphical front-end for mkisofs, mkhybrid, cdda2wav, cdrecord, and cdlabelgen.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/gnomebaker
GnomeBaker is a GNOME front-end to cdrtools (cdrecord, readcd, cdda2wav and mkisofs) or cdrkit. Requires gstreamer for audio processing, libgnomeui, gtk2, libglade. So far, supports these features:

• Create audio cds from existing wavs, mp3, flac, and oggs.
• Import M3u and plays audio playlists.
• Create data CDs.
• Blank rewritable disks.
• Copy data CDs.
• Copy audio CDs.
• Burn existing CD ISO images.
• Can burn via SCSI and ATAPI on Linux kernels 2.4 and 2.6. Basically if cdrecord works, then GnomeBaker will work.
• Drag and drop to create data CDs (including DnD to and from Nautilus).
• Integrate with gconf for storage of application settings.
• Burn DVDs.
• Supports multisession burning.
• Blank/Format DVDs.
• Burn Cue/Bin files.
• Burn data CDs on the fly.

Code is C. GNU GPL.

http://graveman.tuxfamily.org/
Graveman is a gtk2 front-end for cdrecord, mkisofs, readcd, sox, flac, dvd+rw-format, dvd+rw-tools and cdrdao. Requires gtk2. Features:

• burn audio cd (from wav, ogg, mp3, flac, m3u and pts)
• burn data cd and dvd
• duplicate cd
• do copy on the fly
• clean rewritable cd and dvd
• burn multissessions cd

Code is C. GNU GPL.

http://www.gnome.org/projects/brasero/
Brasero is a gtk2 front-end for cdrtools or cdkit. Requires gtk2, gnome-vfs, nautilus-cd-burner, gstreamer, GNOME Hal, libxml2, growisofs. Features:

Data CD/DVD:

• supports editing of discs' contents (remove/move/rename files inside directories)
• can burn data CD/DVD on the fly
• automatic filtering for unwanted files (hidden files, broken/recursive symlinks, files not conforming to Joliet standard, ...)
• supports multisession
• supports Joliet extension
• can write the image to the hard drive

Audio CD:

• write CD-TEXT information (automatically found thanks to gstreamer)
• supports the edition of CD-TEXT information
• can burn audio CD on the fly
• can use all audio files handled by Gstreamer local installation (ogg, flac, mp3, ...)
• can search for audio files inside dropped folders
• can insert a pause
• can split a track

CD/DVD copy:

• can copy a CD/DVD to the hard drive
• can copy DVD and CD on the fly
• supports single-session data DVD
• supports any kind of CD
• can copy encrypted Video DVDs (needs libdvdcss)

Others:

• erase CD/DVD
• can save/load projects
• can burn CD/DVD images and cue files
• song, image and video previewer
• device detection thanks to HAL
• file change notification (requires kernel > 2.6.13)
• supports Drag and Drop / Cut'n'Paste from nautilus (and others apps)
• can use files on a network as long as the protocol is handled by gnome-vfs
• can search for files thanks to beagle (search is based on keywords or on file type)
• can display a playlist and its contents (note that playlists are automatically searched through beagle)
• all disc IO is done asynchronously to prevent the application from blocking
• Brasero default backend is provided by cdrtools/cdrkit but libburn can be used as an alternative

Code is C. GNU GPL.

See also: http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Hardware/dvd.html, as the space of CDR- and DVD-related utilities on Linux is increasingly merging.