Burning CDs/DVDs in Linux with K3B

K3b is, without a doubt, one of the four or five most popular programs for Linux users (at least as far as graphic interfaces go), and easily the most popular disc burning application. Almost everybody needs to burn CDs or DVDs at some point, and most people are just not comfortable downloading a command line disc burning program and using the Terminal to interface with it. It's possible, but it sure isn't as... user-friendly.

Well, K3b is very user friendly. In fact, in addition to being the most popular disc burning application for Linux, it is probably the best disc burning program I've used, not just on Linux, but on any operating system. That isn't something I could have said a few months ago, but K3b recently released version 1.0, and with that, K3b took a huge leap forward as far as features.

Prior to version 1.0, K3b was a very adequate application, but was not - in my opinion - worthy of the mountains of praise heaped upon it. Sure, it had a nice-looking interface, and could do a lot of "stuff," but in all honesty, a lot of the features were pretty worthless for me. My disc-burning needs are fairly basic, so K3b's abilities - impressive though they were - didn't do much for me. To be an effective disc burning program (for my needs), an application needs to be able to do a few things: it should be able to burn a disc image to disc (both CD and DVD), burn audio files to an audio disc, burn regular files to a data disc (both CD and DVD), and... well... that's about it. Prior to version 1.0, K3b could do that, along with the following: mixed mode discs, Video CD and DVD, eMovix disc, copy CD or DVD, burn multi-session discs, and erase CD-RW and DVD-RW.

Now that version 1.0 has come out, K3b has a few new exciting features, features that bring K3b - again, in my opinion - to a level of disc management unmatched by other Linux programs. Interestingly enough, the new features have nothing to do with the actual burning of discs. No, the three new features K3b implemented have more to do with getting stuff FROM a disc than putting information ON a disc. K3b can now rip an audio CD to a variety of formats, as well as removing the MPEG file from a Video CD, and ripping a Video DVD to a Divx file.

As far as ease of use goes, K3b is quite simple. Start up the program, and you are faced with a basic interface showing the file structure of your computer, along with a large area of four or six buttons. Those buttons are standard disc burning operations, such as erase a disc, burn files to disc, create an audio CD or create a video DVD. There is also a button for more options. Clicking this brings up an extensive list (roughly twenty operations), of other features K3b has.

Creating a standard audio or data disc is very simple. Click on the button of your choice, and you are taken to a screen which - at the bottom - shows the amount of space you have available, based on the blank disc you have inserted (or if you have not inserted a disc, based on the type of disc you will be burning). At the top you have the same file tree, so that you can navigate - inside of K3b - to the spot where your files are. You can also drag the files from the desktop directly into the program window. When you have selected the files you wish to burn, simply click the burn button, change any settings you wish (such as the name of the disc and the burning speed), and start the process. K3b will keep you updated with a tiny floating progress window, and when the burning is done, K3b can alert you with a sound, eject the disc, neither or both.

Burning most types of discs will follow that same pattern. The only difference between burning an audio or data disc is that in order to burn to audio, K3b must first convert any files to the appropriate format for an audio CD (if they are not already correctly formatted). This adds a bit of time to the process, but is otherwise transparent to the user, other than a small, "converting to CDDA" comment in the progress report.

To this point, K3b has nearly identical features to other Linux burning programs, such as Gnomebaker or Brasero. Compared to those - especially to Brasero - K3b might not seem to be all that great a program, and I myself wouldn't recommend it over Brasero if a computer user favored the Gnome desktop over the KDE desktop. Since K3b is written for the KDE desktop, it requires a great deal of KDE libraries. If a user is in the Gnome desktop, it takes roughly 110 Megabytes of space to download all of those, compared to about eight or nine to use Brasero.

K3b, however, has more features and those features, for many people, will be the tipping point that encourages them to use K3b as their burning program, no matter what desktop environment they have chosen. As mentioned, K3b now has the ability to rip CDs to mp3 or other formats, as well as ripping a DVD title to a Divx file. Again, the process is quite simple. To rip an audio CD, simply insert a disc into your drive. When K3b reads it, the artist and title will show up in the program window. Clicking this will show a list of song titles. By default, all of them are checked. This check means that when the disc is ripped, that title will be converted. Should you only want to rip one song, uncheck all titles and select only those you wish to convert. To rip, simply click the "Start Ripping" button. A new window will pop up, again showing each song title. If you wish to change any of the titles or artists, that may be done now. This is also the step where you tell K3b which format you would like your songs converted to. Depending on which libraries you have installed, songs may be converted to any number of formats, including WAV, AIFF, Ogg, Mp3, and more. From this same window, you can determine the path where converted files are saved, and begin the process.

Ripping a DVD to a Divx file is nearly identical. Select which titles you wish to rip, click to begin the process, choose which exact format and bitrate you want the converted video to be in, and press to begin. The process takes long than converting an audio CD, of course, but it definitely a painless process from the user. The only thing that would make converting a DVD even simpler is some type of bitrate calculator. Many DVD conversion utilities allow the user to say whether the file should be a certain size or fit into a certain number of blank CD media, but K3b does not. I'm sure this is a feature often requested and it may appear in later versions of the program, but as of now, users are forced to figure this out on their own. It's not a painful procedure (there are any number of bitrate calculators available online), but including this tiny feature in K3b would be a nice touch.

All in all, I see little room for massive improvement in K3b. It is a very solid program, has not crashed on me in the year or two I've been using it, and has pretty much been able to handle whatever files or formats I've thrown at it. With the new features, of course, there are more opportunities for instability or bugs to show up, but in my testing, I have not seen any that I would consider deal breakers. Whether a Linux user favors KDE or Gnome, K3b is a great choice.