#1 Free Burner

StarBurn SDK is an advanced and powerful CD/DVD/Blu-Ray/HD-DVD burning, grabbing and mastering software development kit for Microsoft Windows due to which you have all the modern grabbing, burning and media mastering capabilities at your disposal.

Key features:

• StarBurn SDK is redistributable as a Dynamic-Link Library (DLL), ActiveX (OCX) or static library (LIB) built-in into your application executable. We don't force our customers to use a single hard coded approach. A DLL is generally easier to maintain and updates to new StarBurn versions are trivial (only core StarBurn.dll should be replaced). An OCX is a slightly easier to program and a LIB is treated as more "secure".
• OSTA UDF compatible file system mastering (UDF 1.02, 1.50, 2.01, 2.5, 2.6). Files larger then 2 GB and with names up to 2048 characters long now could be stored on optical media. You don't need to use third-party tools to split your huge database backups or rename very long file names before burning them. These are things of the past with StarBurn SDK. UDF is also completely UNICODE compatible.
• ISO9660 file system mastering (including Joliet Unicode name extensions). The most compatible file system virtually every machine can read.
• So-called “bridge file system” (ISO9660/UDF for DVD-Video creation) mastering. StarBurn creates a bridge file system which is DVD-Video compatible. Such media could be read with both stand-alone DVD players and older Windows 95 and DOS boxes. And yes, our burning toolkit makes DVD-Video and DVD-Audio images that pass PHILIPS DVD-Video Verifier without mastering errors. This means DVD's created with the StarBurn SDK are playable in any stand-alone DVD player.
• Session import (appending already recorded CD/DVD/Blu-Ray/HD-DVD media). In this mode you can use the same media for sequential recording daily. New data would perfectly co-exist with previously recorded data. The only limitation you'd hit is physical media capacity. Ideal solution for custom backups!
• Audio content processing. StarBurn SDK can store audio tracks as WAV (uncompressed) and WMA (compressed Windows Media Audio) files. StarBurn is also capable of burning WAV and WMA/WMV/ASF/MP3/OGG files to create re-mastered Audio CDs. Please note StarBurn can handle compressed audio streams on-the-fly. This means it can burn an Audio CD
• All versions of Microsoft Windows supported, 'NT Native' and 'Kernel' versions of StarBurn SDK available. Now you can burn CD/DVD/Blu-Ray/HD-DVD during very early operating system boot stages when the Win32 environment is not loaded yet. This is the ideal method to back up an entire hard disk image reliably, without any write data in progress;
• Most popular development environments supported - Microsoft Visual C/C++, Microsoft VB.NET and C#, Java and JavaScript, Borland C++ Builder and Delphi. Our customers get both console and GUI sample source code. That allows you to choose whether to trace tiny console applications source code or to build your own application using our sophisticated GUI sample source code;
• A year of FREE support and updates provided. You can always use our public support forum where it's clearly visible how caring and helpful we are to our customers. You can also get support or your question answered via ICQ/MSN or our "LIVE HELP" system.
• Supports all MMC (Multi-Media Command Set) compatible CD/DVD/Blu-Ray/HD-DVD devices. StarBurn deals with devices in a "generic" mode meaning you don't need to get an updated version of our software to support a brand new burner - everything is quite simple;
• Supports CD-R/RW, DVD-R/RW, DVD+R/RW, BD-R/RE, HD-DVD-R/RW and DVD-RAM media, including high-capacity double layer DVD+R and dual layer DVD-R;
• Includes DVD-ROM emulator. StarBurn SDK is the only SDK with DVD-ROM emulation which allows you to master your data to any file on the hard disk, verify content and apply physical burning later, even on a different machine.
• DVD-Video main sequence (movie) extraction support due to which you can re-master the DVD and extract only the movie. Only the movie itself will be copied, but not the trailers and advertising from the original DVD;
• Audio content processing support. StarBurn can store audio tracks as WAV (uncompressed) and WMA (compressed Windows Media Audio) files. Now you can create extra copies of your audio CD collection and listen directly from your PC hard disk, load compressed audio into portable player or car audio or burn WAV and WMA files back to create re-mastered audio CDs. So if you have an old CD-player or car audio that can't play MP3/WMA compressed data with StarBurn you can create an ordinary audio CD from files stored on your hard disk;
• StarBurn can process audio streams on-the-fly. This means it can burn an audio CD from MP3/WMA files without de-compressing them and storing an intermediate copy on your hard disk. This is much faster than doing everything in two steps: first decoding and then actual burning;
• UDF (Universal Disc Format) file system support (UDF 1.02, 1.50 and 2.01) means that from now on files larger than 2 GB and with names up to 2048 characters long can be stored on optical media. You don't need to use any additional tools to split huge files or rename long file names before burning them;
• StarBurn supports ISO9660 file system, including Joliet Unicode extensions, which is the most compatible file system that can be read almost by any machine;
• Track-At-Once (TAO) and Disc-At-Once (DAO) (RAW) recording modes support. In TAO everything is handled by the drive itself, application just passes 2048 bytes/sector streams (data) or 2352 bytes/sector streams (audio). With DAO, an application creates a raw virtual CD image and writes with 2448 (DAO96) or 2368 (DAO16) bytes/sector streams. TAO is the most compatible mode which is preferred for data (the only mode to create multisession CDs) and DAO allows you to create gapless audio CD, add CD-Text and CD+G information and some additional features;
• Bridge file system (ISO9660/UDF for DVD-Video creation) support. StarBurn can create bridge file system which is DVD-Video compatible. This media can be read with both stand-alone DVD players and ancient Windows 95 and DOS machines, which makes the disk almost universal;
• El Torito (bootable CD/DVD/Blu-Ray/HD-DVD) creation support. Use CD/DVD/Blu-Ray/HD-DVD as a very big floppy boot disk for recovery purposes;
• Session import support (appending already created CD/DVD/Blu-Ray/HD-DVD media). In this mode the same media can be used for sequential recording, as the new data will perfectly co-exist with previously recorded data. The only limitation is your physical media capacity;
• DVD9 to 2 DVD-R(+R) conversion support. In this mode StarBurn backs up dual layer stamped DVD9 DVD-Video disc into a pair of two DVD single layer recordables, as a pair of two single layer recordable discs is cheaper than single double/dual layer recordable.