Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Freeware
StarBurn: Free disc burning, audio ripping utility
by Brad Linder Apr 30th 2008
There are plenty of free CD/DVD burners for Windows, and to be honest we haven't often been tempted to look beyond CDBurnerXP and InfraRecorder, which both seem to handle pretty much any tasks you can throw at them. But while reading an article about BurnOn over at Life Rocks 2.0, we noticed a link in the comments to StarBurn. And while we might check out BurnOn later, we were kind of blown away by StarBurn.
The application can handle all of your basic tasks like burning data, audio, and video discs. It supports a wide variety of formats including CD, DVD, Blu-Ray, and HD-DVD. And it has some nifty features like the ability to either rip audio CDs or compress audio already on your computer to MP3, WMA, or OGG formats.
One StarBurn feature that you don't often see bundled with disc burning utilities is a virtual drive mounting application. In other words, you can use StarBurn to create a disc image or ISO file, and then mount that file as a virtual disc so you can see how it performs without actually burning the file to a disc and sticking it in a drive. This can come in handy if you want to see check an image before burning it, or if you want to mount an image you've created or downloaded on a system that doesn't have a working optical drive.
StarBurn is free unless you want the network version, which offers network burning features and costs a whopping $495. The full functionality is included in the free version, but you can only use the network features during a 30 day free trial period.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Monkey said 10:11PM on 4-30-2008
"One StarBurn feature that you don't often see bundled with disc burning utilities is a virtual drive mounting application."
And you don't see it in StarBurn either:
"Or use a software DVD player to watch DVD-Video from an ISO image mounted with any CD/DVD emulator (we suggest you use Rocket Division Software StarPort or Alcohol 120% from Alcohol Software). "
This is just sloppy reporting.
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Monkey said 9:59PM on 4-30-2008
Note that the second quote is taken from the features list for StarBurn, found here:
http://www.rocketdivision.com/starburn.html
and that StarPort is a completely separate application, although from the same source as StarBurn.
Brad Linder said 10:11PM on 4-30-2008
Before writing about the features that an application does or doesn't have, you might want to try the application first. Under the StarPort drives section, you can click "add virtual DVD" to load an ISO which will then be accessible both in StarBurn and other Windows applications. We tested this with a disc image for Puppy Linux we already had on our desktop.
Monkey said 10:57PM on 4-30-2008
StarPort is the virtual drive software. An option is given to install it in the StarBurn installer. Choose not to install it, and you have no virtual drives.
Andrew said 7:38AM on 5-01-2008
Then choose to install it? Doesn't sound that hard to me. The functionality comes with the advertised program. You just chose not to install it.
Duffin said 8:37AM on 5-01-2008
Only thing I would warn others about is when you've installing it asks to make its software website your homepage, so you have to uncheck that. Then it asks to be your default search provider, whatever that means, so uncheck that too. It's a little strange hat a software company that only has three products wants you to go to their website ever time you open your web browser.
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Aseem Kishore said 11:26AM on 5-01-2008
So this is basically like ImgBurn and MagicISO combined into one program? That would be useful!
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Bert Flood said 12:02PM on 5-01-2008
Doe's this program do cross-fading/no gap, very useful if you are putting live show recordings back together.
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Noel said 12:47AM on 5-18-2008
Thanks for the great recommendation. I liked it so much that I talked about it @
http://neowster.com/2008/05/18/application-recommendation-starburn/
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