SimplyBurns Editor's Review

SimplyBurns is an Open Source application that can do several disc burning related tasks.

I have tested other burning tools around here, such as Quick Burn or CD Session Burner, but SimplyBurns has by far more features than these other tools. The first window that welcomes you, when you want to burn something with this application, is a panel that lets you choose the operating mode.

The panel that lets you to choose the operating mode, has multiple items, like Data - which is dedicated for data CD/DVD burnings, Audio - which burns Audio CDs, 1:1 Copy - which clones the discs, Rip Disk - which is an Audio CD ripper, and Burn Image - a module which can burn several types of disks or disk images. This panel also gives you the possibility to open an existing project.

This project-working mode is the thing that I like most about this application, besides the strong amount of features. This means that every project is and can be saved on your Macintosh HD as a document, which can be opened and edited anytime later. This thing has another great implication: you can create multiple projects at the same time, and work with them at the same time. In order to reopen the Starting Points panel, the one that welcomes you when you would start the application, you need to go to the application's menu, pick from the 'File' menu the option 'New' or hit the dedicated hot-key combination: 'Command (Apple)+N'.

The Data disc-burning mode gives you the possibility to pick the file system that would be used for your disc. There are available several file systems such as, HFS+, ISO9660+Joliet, ISO9660+Joliet and HFS+ (hybrid) and a file system dedicated for DVD-ROM, UDF+ISO9660. Using the HFS+ file system is restricted by the intended usage of the disc. Since Windows can't read HFS+ because it doesn't have drivers for this file system, maybe you shouldn't use this if you intend to use it under Windows too. The UNIX-like operating systems might recognize this file system, but this depends on the support that has been implemented by the producer.

The Audio disc support is a good one. It is restricted to Audio CD only, thus you won't be able to burn Audio DVDs. It gives you the possibility to burn the compilation as DAO (Disc At Once) or as TAO (Track At Once), depending on your needs. The TAO mode supports the multi-session mode.

The 1:1 Copy mode gives you the possibility to make exact copies of your discs. It rips a disc image from the original disc, and then the application asks you to supply a blank disc in order to burn a copy of that image.

The Rip Disc functionality allows you to pick and rip the tracks from an Audio CD. You can rip either the whole disc or just the tracks that you like.

The image-burning module supports DMG disk images as source. SimplyBurns also has the support for ISO and CUE/BIN as disc images. The file system from the copied disc is the same as the one from the image.

The producer promised multi-session support for the Data Disc burning mode. So far, only the HFS+ file system supports this mode, but I couldn't burn more than one session onto the DVD-RW that I used for the burning tests.

Pluses: it has support for many disc burning related activities, it can save the projects on the hard disk by treating them as documents, you can create and edit more than one project, the application has all kind of useful features.

Drawbacks / flaws: the multi-session support is not available for all the supported file systems, the only file system that actually supports multi-session writing mode, the HFS+, won't work every time.

In conclusion: SimplyBurns is simply amazing for a free tool. It can do things that many commercial applications can't. The only exception is the multi-session support, which is under active development. It will be fully included in the future versions of this program.

version reviewed: rev 221