One of the strange things about owning a Mac is the way you go about burning discs. If you want to burn an audio CD, open up iTunes. If you want to burn a data CD, that happens in the Finder. If you want to burn a picture CD, that happens in iPhoto. To burn a disc image go to Disk Utility. And to burn a DVD, either go to iDVD or else hope you have the exact right file structure necessary to simply burn all the VOB files as a data disc.
In other words, there are a handful of programs that all burn certain things, but not others, and while I’m a big fan (a la Linux) of having one program perform one task, I’m of the opinion that the fracturing of the burning applications is a bit of overkill and can be, for many people, a bit confusing.
But what’s the other option? For years it was Toast. Released by Adaptec and later by Roxio, Toast has been the gold standard of disc burning applications for Macs for many years, and likely will be for years to come. It’s just that good. It can do all the things I listed above, in addition to coming with a few utility programs that makes recording audio, editing audio, converting a wide variety of files into a wide variety of specialty discs, plus the added bonus of being able to burn HD-DVD and BluRay discs as well.
Of course, Toast currently runs with a hefty price tag of around one hundred dollars, so for many people it’s just out of reach.
What then? There are a number of free alternatives, such as LiquidCD and Burn, as well as a number of shareware utilities. One of those shareware programs I’ll be taking a look at today is called Disco, and is available as a free trial (you can burn up to seven discs with it), and costs $29.95 if you want to purchase a full license at a later point. Disco can be downloaded from this site.
Disco has a slick black interface that – while it doesn’t follow Apple’s HIG standards one bit – looks nice and works well. It uses very tiny windows, which at first seems a bit odd, until you realize that each window actually is a tiny view of a larger window, and the parts you don’t need slide out of the way to get you to where input is needed. (There’s really no good description for how the interface behaves, and the best thing to do is download it and see for yourself.)
Disco can burn quite a few formats, although – in my opinion – not quite enough to truly be considered a “complete” burning program. It burns data discs (both CD and DVD), as well as audio CDs. It can’t, however, used songs purchased from the iTunes Store to burn an audio disc. It can burn them to a data disc if you need to move the files to another computer, but attempting to burn them to an audio CD will result in unplayable tracks.
Adding files (either documents, folders or music) to a disc project is as simple as dragging them into Disco’s window. The files appear immediately, and if you wish to rearrange their order (in the case of an audio disc), simply drag and drop until your preferred order has been achieved. One feature (or lack of it), that shows Disco’s relative youth is in its inability to set the pregap length between tracks of an audio CD. What this means is that in throwing together a disc, the user has no control over how much blank space is between tracks. This can be a nuisance when burning a concert, where zero gap is preferred, and also when burning a wide variety of audio files, when more than a two second gap would be ideal. This is a feature that’s been standard in Toast (for many years), as well as when burning an audio disc in iTunes, and while I assume the feature will arrive at some point with Disco, it is disappointing that it isn’t there yet.
One feature that excites me about Disco, on the other hand, is how easily it deals with disc spanning. I’m not much of a person for backing up my files (as much as I know I should be!), and part of the problem is that it’s always such a pain to get all the blank discs together and figure out the best way to backup in the most efficient manner. With Disco, all I have to do is drag the files I want to backup into its window, and when Disco realizes the disc I have inserted is not enough, it automatically figures out how many similarly sized discs I’ll need. At this point, all I need to do is start the burning process. When Disco has filled and burned the first disc, it ejects it and requests the second disc. It goes through this process until all the files are backed up.
Now, this will never replace a true backup program like iBackup, which easily backs up a user’s preference files, email records and similar objects, but for backing up a bunch of files painlessly, Disco’s disc spanning abilities are quite wonderful.
Disco also supports multi-session burning, so if you have a CD-RW that you need to keep adding items to, Disco can do that.
The last feature I’d like to mention is what Disco calls Discography. Disco keeps track of every disc you ever burn, so that later if you need to recreate a burned disc, or need help remembering which disc you burned items to, Discography can tell you. I have not used this extensively, but when I first read about the feature, my reaction was “that makes a whole lot of sense.” I know that in my own disc burning history there have been quite a few times when I’ve grabbed a blank CD or DVD and saved a bunch of files to it, but then the disc got tossed in with a bunch of other blank discs, and even though the discs were labeled, I had no index of what was actually on each disc! With Disco, that’s no longer a problem.
So, there you have it. Disco isn’t quite ready – in my opinion – to replace a professional program like Toast (and in some ways isn’t quite up to par with Apple’s own burning applications), but I like the fact that it does everything in one place, is constantly adding features that Apple doesn’t have, and seems to have great plans for the future.
