Looking For Free CD DVD Burner Software

Looking for a free software alternative that will cater to most of your CD , DVD burning needs.

There are 2 alternatives to use

First you could use CD Burner XP

CD Burner XP will:

• Burns discs - Data and Music
• Creates boot discs 
• Converts iso's 

It is suitable for Windows XP , Vista , 7 and Windows 8

And remember it is Free , I have been using it for a while now and highly recommend it

More information and the download are available at CD Burner XP

The second chioce is InfraRecorder

"InfraRecorder is a free CD/DVD burning solution for Microsoft Windows.

It offers a wide range of powerful features; all through an easy to use application interface and Windows Explorer integration.

Features

Create custom data, audio and mixed-mode projects and record them to physical discs as well as disc images.

Supports recording to dual-layer DVDs.

Blank (erase) rewritable discs using four different methods.

Record disc images (ISO and BIN/CUE).

Fixate discs (write lead-out information to prevent further data from being added to the disc).

Scan the SCSI/IDE bus for devices and collect information about their capabilities.

Create disc copies, on the fly and using a temporary disc image.

Import session data from multi-session discs and add more sessions to them.

Display disc information.

Save audio and data tracks to files (.wav, .wma, .ogg, .mp3 and .iso)."

Need To Play A Video / DVD - Try VLC

if you are looking to play a video from the internet or a dvd then try VLC.

This is cross platform software  ( you can use it on Windows or Apple) 

VLC Features Include

"Simple, Powerful and Fast 

Plays everything, Files, Discs (DVD, CD, VCD, Blu-Ray), Webcams and Streams 

Plays most codecs with no codec packs needed:

MPEG-2, H.264, DivX, MPEG-4, WebM, WMV player 

Completely Free, No Spyware, Ads or User Tracking 

Works on most platforms: Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, Unix... 

Media Converter and Streamer"

Check out the website for the full list.

Radio Spots For the 27th March

Backing Up

The 3 copy rule – you don’t have a copy of 1 unless you have 3 copies 

• 1 on your computer
• 1 on external media 
• 1 in the cloud 

Remember the perils of not backing up ( hard drives die at the rate of 8% a year after 3 years )

Online backup options can include :

• Dropbox
• Carbonite
• CrashPlan

If backing up to DVDs , CDs be aware that factors can affect the life expectancy of the disc with some home made DVDs only lasting between 2 - 4 years 

Factors that affect disc life expectancy of DVDs and CDs include the following:

• type
• manufacturing quality
• condition of the disc before recording
• quality of the disc recording
• handling and maintenance
• environmental conditions

Remember - Organise your files for easy backup and restore , documents belong with documents , music with music and photos with photos and files do not live on the desktop.

Emails

Ever made a mistake sending that email – well there are a couple of options that can get you out of trouble 

If you use Gmail you can recall a message after a few seconds with their “ undo send “ setting 

In Outlook you can establish a rule to delay sending any emails 

Apple Warranties

The warranty has just changed to be in line with Australian law which requires that sellers offer a warranty for a reasonable period from date of delivery until the failure becomes apparent – this has been interpreted as 2 years for computers

You need to contact the “seller “ of the product rather than the manufacturer.

SMH Story On Apple Warranty

Tips Of The Week

1. Save your Office documents in case of a power or computer problem - Applies to both Windows and Apple computers  Click here for more details
2. How do you know a genuine Paypal email - emails from Paypal will always address you by your first and last name and will have no Western Union references

App Of The Week

The Paper Toss App - play toss the piece of paper into the office bin 

For more information click here ; Paper Toss App

Burn Movies To DVD - Alternative to iDVD

If you are looking for an alternative to iDVD for burning movies to DVD try Burn from Sourceforge

There are limitations with iDVD when it comes to burning large file sizes ( 700MB) but Burn handles them with ease.

Burn handles , data , audio and video burning to disc

Having tried Burn I can recommend it.

 To quote from their website."

Keep your files safe and share them.

Burn your files to a disc so you can access them later on. Choose different filesystems so you can share your files with people with different operating systems.

Change advanced settings like, file permissions, the disc icon, file dates and more on the fly in Burns inspector.

Let the music be with you.

Create standard Audio-CD discs with ease. Just drop your audio files in Burns audio list. Want more music on your disc, Burn can create MP3 discs. More and more players support these discs. Higher quality, no problem, Burn can create DVD-Audio discs, which can contain more and higher quality files.

Burn offers advanced options like CD-Text and mp3 tag editing to personalize your disc.

Share your movies.

Made your own movies and want to share them with family and friends? No problem. Burn can create a wide range of video discs. From VideoCD to DVD-Video discs. And DivX discs to fit more of your videos on a disc.

To personalize your DVD-Video disc, burn can create interactive menus. Choose a theme in Burn or create your own.

1 + 1 makes 2.

Allready have discs you like to reproduce. Don't worry, Burn can help you. Burn can copy discs or use disk images to recreate your discs. With one drive Burn still will be able to copy a disc, by temporary saving the disc.

Converting.

Forget worrying about conversion. Burn will take your video and audio files and turns them in the right format.

In the preferences you can set the options for quality and size.

Playing DVDs On A Computer - Beware Of Regions

Many people play DVDs on their computer but DVDs all have region codes.

Region codes are encoded onto DVD Discs as well as DVD Players. If the region of the Disc and Player does not match, the DVD Disc will not play

The Regions Are:

• REGION 0 : Worldwide

• REGION 1 : Canada and USA

• REGION 2 : Europe, UK, Japan, Middle East, South Africa

• REGION 3 : South East Asia

• REGION 4 : Australia, South America

• REGION 5 : Africa, Russia, Rest of Asia

• REGION 6 : China

So to watch DVD's from other regions you need a multi-region DVD player which most on the market are.

However with a computer this is not the case as on both Windows and Apple computers they are locked to the region so if you play say Region 1 on a Region 4 drive , then swap from Region 1 to 4 and back again then after a designated number of plays you will be stuck with a particular region.

So what do you do?

On both Windows and Apple computers use VLC for playing DVDs which will play whatever region the DVD is.

VLC can be downloaded for both Windows and Apple computers.

DVD Drive's And Region Changes

Do you play commercial DVDs on your desktop computer or laptop?

Do you pay attention to the message that appears if you swap DVDs that come from different Regions ?

Here in Australia we have Region 4 DVDs but many people have DVDs from Europe (Region 2) and the United States ( Region 1.

Most computer DVD drives will allow only 4 changes to the Region before locking the drive to that Region.

You will then be stuck with say Region 2 to play your DVDs on that drive.

What can you do?

Well formatting the hard drive and reloading Windows will make no difference.

You can Google the problem and see if there is software that will enable you to "Flash " your DVD drive so that it can play all Regions with no change reminder.

You could try installing VLC which may play the DVDs 

The last fix is to install a new DVD player in your computer.

An expensive solution to not reading the warnings.