15-Minute Reviews :: StarBurn v9 (Quick)

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Hello all and welcome to another 15-Minute Review! Today’s application is StarBurn version 9 by Rocket Division Software – A CD and DVD toolkit along the lines of Nero and Roxy.

This is a quick review due to time constraints.

Software Description

As Giveaway of the Day states:

“StarBurn a powerful tool for grabbing, burning and mastering CD, DVD, Blu-Ray and HD-DVD media. StarBurn supports all types of optical storage media (including CD-R/RW, DVD-R/RW, DVD+R/RW, Dual layer DVD-R & DVD+R, BD-R/RE, HD-DVD-R/RW and DVD-RAM) as well as a wide variety of burning hardware.

With StarBurn you can perform grabbing, copying and burning operations as well as advanced DVD authoring and mastering. Additionally with the DVD Decryptor Wizard you can decode CSS DVD-Video discs into ISO images and burn them to DVD writable discs or share them with the StarPort DVD-ROM emulator and watch DVD video directly on your PC. This enables you to create copies of the protected DVDs with just a few mouse clicks.

StarBurn is easy to learn and to use. In addition to advanced DVD authoring and mastering features StarBurn offers a number of step-by-step wizards for novice users.”

Quick Pros

Interface is easy to get around and use
Many common CD and DVD functionality
Includes StarPort functionality to mount an ISO virtually
DVD Decrypter very quick comparatively

Quick Cons

DVD Decrypter would not permit me to change output location
Lacks full DVD authoring functionality (see notes)
ISO creation could have been more friendly
Could support more than just ISO formats

Expansion

With Nero being at the top for so long, the sprouting of many different low-cost and free alternatives continue to grow. StarBurn is another entry into a market needing a little mixing up.

The application is relatively easy to use. While the main window looks a lot like many other CD authoring applications, each of the functions work through a wizard-style interface for each. While some while messing around I did have some random issues, such as when I went to select where to save the DVD Decrypt ISO, it would allow me to bring up the directory selector, but the field would not update, nor would it let me manually change it via typing. All-in-all however, the interface was pretty easy going.

The application has most of the common functions found in typical CD/DVD toolkits, including burning data, audio and video discs; Creation and burning of ISO discs; Audio grabbing and compression; DVD decryption functionality; As well as StarPort, the virtual mounting functionality so that you can mount an ISO file instead of burning it for quick or frequent usage. While I didn’t have much time to touch on many of these features, the interface for each seems to be straightforward and easy to get using. Granted, in some cases there isn’t as many options as Nero, but there is enough for most people to be content with.

I did have a chance to try out the DVD Decrypter and I was happy with the speed of the process. It took around 10 minutes (Forgot to specifically time) and resulted in a functional ISO. There is no built-in ‘shrinking’ functionality, so you may still want to find another tool to reduce your backed-up movie collection to single-layer size. On this note, I will touch on the DVD authoring functionality stated with this application. While it is stated that the application does possess DVD authoring functionality, it is not really a full-featured functionality. After reading here further on the functionality, its ability is limited to splitting the DVD into two discs as well as organizing the order of precompiled VOB files; Which sadly you’ll have to leave to another application and like will want to complete the process elsewhere instead.

With that said, I did have a few other points to note. I do wish that the Build Image functionality was easier to use. With the uncomfortable system in place, you have no drag and drop functionality to reorganize the layout, and you have to use a bootable floppy disc image to create a bootable disc. As well, for burning images, I do wish it could burn other formats as well as just this format.

Quick Verdict

All in all, this is a pretty solid alternative to Nero and Roxy but does still needs a bit of tuning up in my opinion. For free, this is not a bad application, but keep in mind there is alternative free applications out there which cover most, if not all the functionality here which may suit your needs. As for paying $50 for this title; After reviewing their site I could not locate anything besides a free and the SDK version, so I can not tell the differences; However, as it is, $50 would be a lot to pay for this application concidering that there alternatives to burning ( DeepBurner – Free and CDBurnerXP ) as well as other applications to help with DVD backup.

Addition

After reading the comments on Giveaway, I see that according to Slava that the DVD Decrypt part is the functionality which makes this $50 over the free version. With that said, I do feel that $50 is too much for a DVD Decryption function when there are alternatives out there. The fact that the rest of the functions in this application is in the free version, which would make this application an great option in the market of free CD/DVD applications.

Posted by BladedThoth on Wednesday, October 03, 2007