7 Most Popular Free CD/DVD Burning Programs

Contributed by James – While physical media such as CDs and DVDs has largely been replaced by thumb drives and external hard drives, there are still times when a good-old-fashioned disc comes in handy. For instance, maybe you want to share your vacation pictures with Grandma Lucy, or perhaps you’d like to make a video presentation for your parents’ 25th wedding anniversary. If so, you’ll need a good CD/DVD burning program to produce your disc.

Here’s a rundown of 7 popular programs that can make this task easier.

1. ImgBurn (Free, Window) ImgBurn has several different ‘modes’ which allow you to perform a number of tasks. You can read, build, write and verify a CD as well as use the Discovery mode, which helps you create a perfectly seamless CD. What’s more, ImgBurn supports a variety of image file formats so that most people can use the software.

2. CDBurnerXP Pro 4 (Free, Windows 2000/XP/2003/Vista) This program is excellent for creating music CDs, in either audio or data (MP3, AAC, etc.) format. It has a good, user-friendly interface, and it allows you to create audio CDs from many file formats, including WAV, WMA, MP3, and OGG. CDBurnerXP also includes an integrated audio player, which is convenient for playing your music before or after burning the disc.

3. Burn (Free, Mac OS X) Burn, arguably the most famous CD and DVD burning software for Mac that’s free, allows you to burn virtually any type of CD or DVD. It can burn data discs, audio CDs, and video CDs or DVD discs. Burn can also copy or write disk images such as those in the .dmg, and .iso formats. A bonus feature provides the ability to personalize your DVD video’s interactive menus and themes.

4. InfraRecorder (Free, Windows) This free, open-source burning application covers almost all of your CD and DVD needs. It supports the burning of disc images, creating video DVDs, copying discs, and quickly making audio CDs. It can even erase discs! InfraRecorder is very light and quick, and it’s extremely portable, which means you can take it with you on your thumb drive wherever you go.

5. Explore&Burn (Free, Windows) Explore&Burn is a great program for users that want ease and simplicity. Extremely lightweight, Explore&Burn is a no-frills program that allows you to burn files by simply right-clicking on the files you want to burn and selecting from the drop-down menu. Explore&Burn is capable of creating video and data discs without trouble and can also create a multi-session CD. What’s more, it comes in a variety of languages so you’ll always find the software easy to understand.

6. FinalBurner (Free, Windows) FinalBurner is among the best of the free burning programs out there. It gives you the ability to create audio, video, and data discs. It can burn DVD+R/RW, CD-R/RW, DVD-R/RW, and DVD DL discs. It can also extract songs from audio CDs and save them as .wav, .mp3, . mid, .acc, .wma, .mp4, and many other formats. FinalBurner also supports burning an ISO image of a disc.

7. StarBurn Free (Free, Windows) This program from RocketDivision supports a large variety of hardware including DVD, CD, Blu-Ray, and HD-DVD players. StarBurn includes step-by-step wizards for extracting, copying, and burning discs. The interface is extremely easy to use. Key features include extracting individual tracks from DVDs, saving backups of DVD/CD/Blu-Ray/HD-DVD discs in 1:1 mode, and ripping soundtracks from audio CDs.

As you can see, there are plenty of programs out there to simplify the task of producing CDs and DVDs. Perhaps one of those listed above will suit your needs.

By day James is a writer who works at a leading UK based supplier of ink cartridges where he covers the latest developments in hardware and new product releases like the HP 901XL.