K3B

Discuss K3B

After using many applications to burn CDs/DVDs it can get annoying real fast when programs offer limited features and functionality. K3b is essentially multiple tools in one program. Of course you can burn Cds and DVDs, ISO, and data CDs but it can also clone CDs, uses eMovix to create bootable multimedia CDs. To match its excellent features K3b also has an intuitive interface consisting of four panels on startup which include Audio CD Project, Data CD Project, Data DVD Project, and Copy CD. After clicking one of the options the screen divides into two panels one where you browse your hard disk and drag files from and another to drop files into.

K3B offers a decent collection of projects including Mixed Mode CD, Video CD, Video DVD, eMovix CD, and eMovix DVD. To add to a project later you can save the project in a proprietary format. Also if you like seeing text on your CD player while the CD is playing or creating CD-TEXT audio CDs, K3B has support and configuration options for CDDB. You may set preferences for a finished CD such as a sound playing or the CD tray ejecting.

To install K3B on my Fedora 8 system I used

yum install k3b

To install K3B on a Ubuntu system

apt-get k3b

After installing K3b open the program and you'll immediately see the large icons near the bottom of the window. These icons include all of your C/DVD burning project needs.

Now that we've selected a project type, I've selected audio CD, we are given the two panels above and CD contents below in which we need to drag files into.

Across the bottom of this window we can see the used time on the left side and on the right side we can see time used compared to time remaining. On data CDs it is based off of size available.

 Discuss K3B

When you've finished dragging and dropping your files into your Current Project window, press the Burn button in the top left corner of the Current Project window. This will bring up the project burn settings. Here you can customize writing, image, file system and miscellaneous settings.

As you can see below the Tools option on the main menu bar gives us direct access to Copy CD, Copy DVD, Erase CD-RW, Format DVD RW, Burn CD Image, Burn DVD ISO, Rip Audio CD, Rip Video DVD, and Rip Video CD all from that one menu.

If we click on Settings on the main menu and then on Configure K3B, this will bring up the K3B settings window. Here we have an opportunity to fine tune K3B. Categories in the K3B settings window include Miscellaneous, Devices, Programs, CDDB, Notifications, Plugins, Themes, and Advanced settings.

Discuss K3B