StarBurn 15.7

StarBurn is a tiny software tool that offers you multiple wizards to burn different kinds of CDs, DVDs and Blu-ray discs, among other tasks. Through those wizards, you can create data, audio and video discs, ISO image files from your discs or filesystem, burn ISO image files to blank discs, mount an ISO image file as a virtual disc, convert audio files among formats, and more.

The program's main window is a sort of visual menu with shortcuts to all the offered tools. All of them, in turn, are designed to work as wizards, allowing you to perform their corresponding tasks through several steps each. Most of the wizards start by allowing you to select the burning device and the rest of steps vary depending on the type of task each one executes. For example, to create a data disc you can select the burning device, then the filesystem type to use among ISO9660, ISO 9660 + Joliet extensions and UDF, then you can optionally provide a boot image and a set other parameters to create a bootable disc, and finally you are redirected to a window where you can select and add the source files to be included on your disc. The Audio Builder Wizard, on the other hand, allows you to select the source audio files, the burning mode (among Track-at-Once, Session-at-Once and Disc-at-Once) and the burning speed.

The program also includes some extra functionality like basic CD/DVD authoring capabilities, mounting/unmounting remote iSCSI devices, fast/full erasing of re-writable discs, audio files conversion among WMA, WAV, MP3 and Ogg formats, and audio extraction to convert your audio-CD tracks into MP3 files. The program can also send an automatic report to the support department of StarBurn Software, but this features requires having an e-mail client correctly installed and configured in your PC.

Despite all those features, there are also a couple of disadvantages to mention about this program. Firstly, it and its features are not self-descriptive enough, which turns it inappropriate for some users. For example, a beginner will probably ignore what filesystem type to choose for his/her disc, a step that is obligatory in most of the provided disc-burning wizards. Secondly, the only format supported for both reading and writing disc image files is ISO, although it's the most widely used one.

In general terms, I would recommend StarBurn to intermediate-advanced users who don't require working with image files in formats other than ISO. The program is compatible with all modern Windows versions, including the server editions. Besides, it is available to anybody at a very affordable price tag.