Freeware DVD Burners
November 27, 2004 12:57 PM Subscribe
Are there any decent freeware/shareware DVD burning programs for win XP or should I bite the bullet and buy Nero?
Decent? Yeah.
I've used Deep Burner before, and it is decent. However, Nero is much better than anything else out there.
DeepBurner has a free version and a pro version. I wouldn't spend money on their pro version. The free version has some things unavailable (if I remember correctly, Disc to Disc burning was one of them).
It doesn't cost anything, unless you screw up a few CDs, but the coaster cost is fairly minimal. You might as well give it a shot.
InterVideo (who makes WinDVD) has a promotional offer for a free version of their DiscMaster 2, although there is a registration process, and I don't know if its just a trial version or what. No recommendation there.
posted by stovenator at 1:43 PM on November 27, 2004
I've used Deep Burner before, and it is decent. However, Nero is much better than anything else out there.
DeepBurner has a free version and a pro version. I wouldn't spend money on their pro version. The free version has some things unavailable (if I remember correctly, Disc to Disc burning was one of them).
It doesn't cost anything, unless you screw up a few CDs, but the coaster cost is fairly minimal. You might as well give it a shot.
InterVideo (who makes WinDVD) has a promotional offer for a free version of their DiscMaster 2, although there is a registration process, and I don't know if its just a trial version or what. No recommendation there.
posted by stovenator at 1:43 PM on November 27, 2004
On second look, it appears you're trying to burn DVDs, not CDs.
I use DVD Decrypter, DVDShrink, and IMGTool to make backups of my DVDs. They work very very well, allowing you to remaster a disc, and burn DVDs that work in my finicky DVD player every time.
posted by stovenator at 1:53 PM on November 27, 2004
I use DVD Decrypter, DVDShrink, and IMGTool to make backups of my DVDs. They work very very well, allowing you to remaster a disc, and burn DVDs that work in my finicky DVD player every time.
posted by stovenator at 1:53 PM on November 27, 2004
Can't say anything about the alternatives, as I bought Nero a LOONG time ago, and it's great. I will note that they've been quietly adding to their core package and it now does just about anything you'd want to do with a CD/DVD/-/+/R/RW drive - burn things to discs, rip things to discs, convert things to other things to burn to discs, etc...
posted by Caviar at 2:44 PM on November 27, 2004
posted by Caviar at 2:44 PM on November 27, 2004
Piggyback question: does DVDSHrink do a better job of compression than the built in "recode" function of Nero? My usual backup process is DVD Decrypter for an unprotected mage of the whole disc, mount with Daemon tools, then burn with Nero using the above mentioned functionality to fit a DVD-9 on a recordable DVD. Would it be worth putting DVDShrink in the mix?
posted by PinkStainlessTail at 3:03 PM on November 27, 2004
posted by PinkStainlessTail at 3:03 PM on November 27, 2004
Well, if by good you mean works every time, ProDVD does that for me in linux.
There's a cygwin windows version available here.
If by good you mean it has lots of bells and whistles and flashy GUI stuff, well, then it'll suck for you. :-D
I think burnatonce GUI-fies a hacked up capital-F Free cdrecord to include some of the DVD support in the above utility. I know it works fine with CDs.
posted by shepd at 3:29 PM on November 27, 2004
There's a cygwin windows version available here.
If by good you mean it has lots of bells and whistles and flashy GUI stuff, well, then it'll suck for you. :-D
I think burnatonce GUI-fies a hacked up capital-F Free cdrecord to include some of the DVD support in the above utility. I know it works fine with CDs.
posted by shepd at 3:29 PM on November 27, 2004
Another vote for Nero. Money is money of course, but Nero is money well spent, and I do believe their license includes perpetual upgrades for free.
I haven't used Nero's MPEG2 encoder to shrink down DVDs, but I have used in in conjunction with DVDShrink for well over a year now and had excellent results every time.
posted by scarabic at 4:05 PM on November 27, 2004
I haven't used Nero's MPEG2 encoder to shrink down DVDs, but I have used in in conjunction with DVDShrink for well over a year now and had excellent results every time.
posted by scarabic at 4:05 PM on November 27, 2004
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There's also a free version of DeepBurner available.
I've never either of these so I can't vouch for their quality.
posted by mrgavins at 1:23 PM on November 27, 2004