Nero is undoubtedly the most popular CD/DVD burning software  for Microsoft Windows platform. But Nero, being proprietary, is not available for free. This has left many users of Windows to purchase the solution for a very high price tag.

Though there are few other ‘free solutions’ available in the internet, they are not as good as ‘Nero’. I have eve seen guys purchasing similar applications (like Alcohol 120%) for doing some special tasks which Nero cannot perform.

Well, gone are those days. Now we have a free solution which is as good as Nero. This edition of techblog is about this solution – InfraRecorder!

As I said, it is a freeware available for Microsoft Windows platform using which you can burn your CD or DVD. It comes with a wide range of features using which you can burn the disc according to your wish and plan. Though the solution offers all these features, the developers successfully wrapped them properly and provided a very user friendly interface.

The interesting fact is that it is only a mere ‘freeware’ solution, but is also an open source program. The software is licensed under GPL v3 and is downloadable for free from the project’s website. (Developers can check out the source code of the application by downloading this zipped package)

Features of the solution

As mentioned before, this solution is a perfect alternative for the commercial CD/DVD burning softwares for Windows platform. Windows 2000/XP/Vista and Windows 7* (*tested by one of my friends) are supported.

The solution supports the following

• It allows you to write disc images (ISO and BIN/CUE) directly to disc
• You can erase re-writable discs
• You can create custom projects and write them to discs or save save them as images
• Supports creation of disc copies
• Extracts information about the current status of the disc (before recording)
• You can scan SCSI/IDE bus for devices
• The solution allows you to write lead-out information in order to prevent any addition of data in future
• Multi-session is supported
• You can even save audio and data tracks into the files formats you like (.wav, .wma, .ogg, .mp3 formats are supported). You can also save them as .iso files

How to:

Create a multi-session disc

• Click on ‘create a new DVD project’
• Select File –> Properties
• Choose the ISO tab
• Change the format to Mode 2 XA (multisession)
• Continue with your project by adding files and burn them

Continue with a multisession disc

• Go to Actions -> Import Session
• Choose the recorder that you wish to use
• Continue with your project by adding more files to the original project and burn them

Go ahead and give it a try!