Dragon Burn 4.1

NewTech Infosystems

Regular price $40

Reviewed by Tom Roberts

Backing up your computer information is an important part of our digital world. Floppy disks and Zip drives are a thing of the past. It looks like Flash drives are the future. For now CD and DVD discs are the preferred method of archiving data.

Making personalized Audio, Video, and Picture discs is also a significant activity these days.I have been using Dragon Burn for about a year. It was recommended on a web site and I bought a copy from NTI. At the time they had a special going, only $10.00 to download it. This is my kind of program, it does one thing, and does it well.

Dragon Burn will create, Data, Audio, Video, and Picture CD's and DVD's. It is compatible with CD-RW discs. The program also has a label printing function. However I haven't found this feature to be practical for my needs.

The Help menu is especially good, better than most programs.

System Requirements:
Macintosh OS X 10.1.5 or later
128 MB of RAM
20 MB Free disk space for installation
NTI supported CD or DVD recorder.

I will run through the process for creating a Data CD. Burning other types of discs is quite similar and is well documented.

• Start the application. When you first begin, the Dragon Burn window appears. If the Dragon Burn window is not currently on the screen, choose New Layout from the File menu.
• Click the Data CD/DVD icon to open the "Data CD/DVD" window. A new, "Untitled" layout window appears. Change Untitled to something more descriptive by double clicking on it and typing a new name. Specify the file format. Since I share discs with friends who have Windows computers. I use the Hybrid (HFS+/Joliet) file format. Joliet works with Windows 95 and later. If you are going to give the disc to someone with an older Mac or Windows computer, than you will want to use another file format. Help has a good explanation of the different formats available.
• Set the layout filter as desired. The Filter will allow the Layout to select only the designated filetypes to be burned. .doc, .txt, .pdf, etc. The filter works with file extensions.
• Add files and folders to your new layout. There are two ways to choose your files and folders in the Data layout.
• Drag and drop the files and folders from the Finder into the Data layout. The files and folders that you have selected appear as a scrolling list in the new layout window, or, Click Add File(s)/Folder(s) button to select files and folders from the Open dialog box.
• The buttons along the bottom of the scrolling window will allow you to create a new folder, add folders and files via the Open dialog, remove folders and files from the Layout window.
• To determine the total amount of data that can be put on a disc. It is recommended that you subtract 1% from the advertised capacity of the disc. The discs I have are rated at 700 MB. 1% of 700 = 7 MB. Therefore 693 MB is the maximum I should try to burn on a disc. In any event Dragon Burn will tell you if you have exceeded the allowable capacity.
• When you are finished creating the Layout, click the big red Burn Disc button. If you have not put a blank disc in the burner, Dragon Burn will prompt you to do so now. I use the default settings and have been pleased with the results. Click either Burn Disc or Burn Session. Burn Disc is a one shot deal. You can not add any additional data to the disc. Burn Session is a bit like partitioning a hard drive. You can add additional data to the disc at a later time. Each session (partition) shows up in the Finder with its own disc icon.

Now is the time to make a label for your disc if you need one. When you are finished, you can save your Layout for use again. I have made audio discs for use in the car. If a disc should be damaged, It will be easy to make a new one from the saved Layout.

Dragon Burn works with iTunes.

• You can quickly burn an audio CD from a saved iTunes playlist. Dragon Burn will import all the tracks in your playlist directly into a new Audio CD layout.
• Open iTunes: Make a play list, iTunes will keep track of the minutes accumulated. My discs are rated at 80 minutes and the 1% rule applies here also.
• Export the playlist from iTunes in either Plain Text, Unicode Text or XML format.
• Open Dragon Burn: Choose the Import iTunes Playlist from the Dragon Burn File Menu. Navigate to the desired (exported text document) playlist in the Open dialog.
• Select the desired playlist and click the Open button.
• Dragon Burn will open a new Audio CD layout with all of the tracks on the playlist that are in one of the supported audio formats (AAC, AIFF, CD-DA, MP3, SD2 and WAV). Any tracks in your playlist that are not in one of these formats will not be in the resulting layout.

I have tried using Apples approach to burning discs. Unfortunately they have more than one method, which are poorly documented and have resulted in general frustration for me. With Dragon Burn I get consistent results and only need to learn one way of doing it. Unlike Apple, Dragon Burn has a good manual and very good on line help. I haven't used any other disc burning applications, such as Toast, and so can not make any comparisons.

I am pleased with Dragon Burn and can recommend it without reservation. I will continue using it as the primary application to make the discs I need.

The retail price from NTI as of October 13, 2005:
Dragon Burn 4.1 for Mac OS X 10.1.5+ $40.00
Dragon Burn 1.0.2 for Mac OS 9.0.4+ $19.95
At the present time they are offering 50% off on all of their software. Check their web site.

Reviewed by Paul Dyer

First of all, I want to thank SMUG for giving me the opportunity to test this product. I used my iBook (G3) which runs OSX 10.2, and OS9.2.2 Classic, and an inexpensive external TDK burner 4X connected via Firewire.

Just reading the product description on the box got me very interested in this product. It was fairly easy to install, and it had easy to follow instructions. On the box it says that Dragon Burn requires OSX, but there was a bonus folder on the installer disk that allowed me to install a OS9 version as well. That was a pleasant surprise. The OS9 version doesn't do quite as much as the OSX version, but it was close enough.

Since I have not had a lot of prior experience with disk burning, I found it helpful to educate myself about the different types of CD and DVD disks that are available, what there are used for, and what different formats are involved in the burning process. That information was invaluable to the process of using this burning program (and I would assume any burning program).

I have been taking digital pictures since 1998, and they are stored on my computer's hard drive. I have always been afraid that something bad might happen to my hard drive that would cause me to lose my pictures. Therefore, my first motivation was to make a back up of my pictures on a CD, and hopefully have a way to display these on my TV through a DVD player. The Dragon Burner program has a default layout for making a picture CD. .JPEG pictures must be used. Since all my pictures are .jpg, and are all filed chronologically, I was set to go. I used a CD-R (700 MB) in my burner drive. The picture CD layout prompted me to drag (or navigate) what I wanted to the layout window. So, I dragged all my folders, years 1998 through 2005, into the layout. I noticed that I was a little over my 700 MB limit on the CD, so I deleted my 2005 folder from the layout. Then I didn't exceed the 700 MB limit. I clicked the "Burn" button and the burning process began. I expected this to take a while, but the whole burn process took less than 5 minutes.

Next I tested my new picture CD in my computer's internal CD drive. All the pictures were there. However, the file names had been cropped shorter (I'll try to investigate why later). I ran the pictures through my favorite slide show on my computer, and they all displayed as normal. I also tried this new disk in my old PowerBook 3400 with the same results. Next, I played this disk on my DVD player, and it ran a automatic slide show of all the pictures!! I could accelerate the pictures forward, back the pictures up, and skip folders with the remote control. It was really cool. I only wish I had a "map" to skip around on the disk to different years. Other than that, it worked beautifully. The best part was I did this all on the first try!

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