CD/DVD Burning Software in Ubuntu Guy Van Sanden

riting CD’s and DVD’s on Ubuntu Movie DVD’s. It integrates into the desktop Linux is one of the few things that environment to make it intuitive to copy Wremained tedious. Until 2008, discs or write data to disc right from the when Brasero replaced GnomeBaker as file manager or other applications. the default CD/DVD burning application for the Ubuntu desktop. Overview Brasero can be used to write all kinds Brasero can be started from the Applica- of discs like AudioCD’s, Data discs and tions menu on top to start the entire application. This will present you with the main window that has an overview off all tasks Bra- sero can handle. When burning any type of disc, Bra- sero will show its progress in the notification area (next to the clock) as well as a progress dialog (which can be hidden by clicking on the disc icon in the notification area). Writing an AudioCD Writing an AudioCD from different file formats is very easy in Brasero. Just select Audio Project from the main Brasero screen. To add files, you can just select the + sign to get a selection window. You can select audio files like MP3 and Wav to write to the CD. They will be shown in the above Figure 1. Starting Brasero from the menu window as Audio tracks. When you are done, just click on the Burn button in the lower right corner and wait for the writing process to finish. Figure 2. Brasero icon in the notification Creating a Data Disc area By selecting Data project from the main screen, you can create any Data disc (CD- Rom or DVD). By clicking on the plus sign on top, you can select any files or directories you may want to add to the project. You can also drag and drop file you wish to add from the file manager, this can be from the local hard drive as well as USB Figure 3. Brasero’s progress window or Network drives.

www.linuxidentity.com 27 CD/DVD Burning | Linux Starter Kit

resulting files are first written to your harddrive before starting the burn process (which should have few to no interruptions). Though writing a simple Video DVD is not difficult this way, Bra- sero can’t handle more complex situations where you want to add menus and subtitles. There are other programs that are better suited for this task. Copying discs Brasero can copy most common types of discs, with some excep- tions related to Video DVD’s. The latter type can have some prob- Figure 4. The main Brasero window lems such as the CSS encryption When you are that cannot legally be circum- done, just hit burn on vented in many parts of the world the bottom right cor- (particularly in the US) and most ner again. commercial DVD’s are larger than the DVD-R’s you buy. So copying Creating these requires special software a Video DVD like k9copy to reduce the size Creating Video DVD’s and often DeCSS (a CSS circum- that play in DVD-play- vention library) to break the en- ers used to be quite cryption (again illegal in many difficult as they re- countries). quire a data structure To start copying a disc, just that is very specific. insert it into your drive and select With Brasero, Disc Copy from the main Brasero you can write a lot of screen. Keep in mind that if you Movie formats (like have a single drive in your system, Divx) straight to DVD you can’t do a direct copy (since and Brasero will take the writer is holding the source Figure 5. Setting Video options in Brasero care of the heavy disc). In this case selecting copy lifting and split out will transparently store an image the video and audio of the disc on your hard drive from streams to the cor- which the disc will be written. rect formats. When the image has been cre- When you se- ated, Brasero will ask for an empty lect Burn, Brasero disc to write the image to. will pop up a dialog Figure 6. Brasero asking for an empty disc to where you can con- Using disc images write to trol the conversion Most types of discs can be stored with options such as on your harddrive as so called ISO the screen ratio (wi- files. These are files that contain descreen or letter- all the structures and data on a box, US or European disc. When you write an ISO file to encoding). a blank disc, the end result is iden- You will notice tical to the original disc. that Brasero can take You can create such images in a long time to con- Brasero by selecting an image file vert the Video before instead of your CD/DVD writer at it actually starts writ- the burn dialog. ing to disc. Encoding Writing an image to disc can is a long process and be started from the main interface Figure 7. Dialog when inserting a blank disc for that reason the with the Burn Image option.

28 linux identity starter Actions from Writing stored images the file manager to disc (Nautilus) If you right-click on a stored Most actions in the main .iso file, you will have the op- Brasero screen are also tion to write it directly to a available throughout the blank disc. desktop and file manager (Nautilus). Using them Archiving directories from there can be a lot or files to disc more intuitive. The file manager includes a very powerful option when Figure 8. Nautilus showing a blank disc Writing a data disc you right-click on files or di- When you insert a blank rectories. With the Send-to disc into the drive, you will command you can send files see a dialog appear to ask to a network share, over an you what action you want Instant Message connection, to perform on it. Bluetooth or via Mail. Send-to This will open a file offers you the option to put manager window that your files into an archive (zip looks like a regular folder, or tar.gz file) on-the-fly on any yet has a bar on top to al- of these. Figure 9. Writing an iso image to disc low you to write the disc. You can go ahead and Writing from simply drop files from any- Rhythmbox Music where (including network Player or Internet locations) here. Because Brasero is part of the Ubuntu Desktop, other Copy a disc applications can call it to If you have inserted any write data to disc. The Rhyth- kind of disc, it will appear mbox Music Player offers the on your desktop (below option to write AudioCDs from the Applications menu). stored playlists. It will let Bra- Right clicking on it will sero handle the encoding and show some actions you actual writing part of this op- can perform with Brase- eration. ro such as Copy disc and Blank disc (on a rewrit- Conclusion Figure 10. Showing the Nautilus Send-to dialog able medium). Brasero was a much needed component of the GNOME/ Ubuntu desktop when it was introduced on Ubuntu 2 years ago and it has grown a lot since that time. With it’s integration into the desktop and other applications and it’s ease of use it succeeded in making CD/DVD burning available to all users, regardless of skill level. There are some areas of improvement left (such as DVD menus), but Brasero does what it was designed for very well. References

http://projects.gnome.org/ brasero/ Figure 11. Rhythmbox showing the Create AudioCD menu