Finding The Best DVD Burning Software For Mac OS X That Is Free

Finding The Best DVD Burning Software For Mac OS X That Is Free
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DVD Burning Software Should be Free!

You can’t go wrong with good quality, free software – and it’s fair to say that in this day and age, DVD burning software for Mac OS X should be free. Of course, you can’t burn a DVD without a DVD writer, so make sure your Mac is suitably equipped! The lowest spec drive will allow burning in DVD-R format, to suitable discs.

There are many shareware apps out there – but almost all of these include a trial period that locks off certain features until you upgrade before a certain time limit is reached.

Steering clear of shareware and looking for freeware and even open source apps is the best option, and there are several to choose from, including the most popular DVD burning option for Mac OS X.

Native DVD Burning Software for Mac OS X

Before you go off looking at the applications suggested below, however, why not consider the native DVD burning options included with Mac OS X?

While options such as Toast might set you back $80 or so, the native options combined with those listed below are free. Assessing and understanding your requirements as well as the software options is the key here.

For instance, if your Mac came with iLife included, you already have the facility to burn a home-made movie to DVD in iMovie. Similarly, you can use Finder to drag and drop files from your Mac to a writable DVD. The great thing about this is that once the burn process has completed, you can read the discs on both a Mac and a PC.

It SimplyBurns!

Providing the functionality to burn CDs and DVDs in Mac OS X 10.4 and later, SimplyBurns is feature-packed DVD burning software that allows various burn modes, disc ripping, RW (re-writable) disc deletion and burning of different image types (the common .dmg, .iso, cue/bin formats).

Available from simplyburns.berlios.de, SimplyBurns is an open source option with a friendly user interface. Note that despite compatibility with OS X 10.6, SimplyBurns is only compatible with Finder 10.5. Some context menu functionality will be missing if running under SnowLeopard.

BurnX Mac OS X DVD Burning Software

Ideal for those of you who don’t have too much experience burning discs, BurnX Free provides an easy to use user interface that makes it really easy to sort out which files to burn.

Simply drag and drop files to a main window before setting any specific disc options – this app is compatible with DVD and CD, and you can also use it to erase rewritable discs if your disc drive has RW functionality.

Available for PowerPC Macs running OS X 10.2.3 or later, you can download BurnX free from www.hernansoft.com.

Burn Your DVDs

Burn - best DVD burning software for Mac OS X that is free?

No list would be complete without reference to Burn, the popular open source alternative to the other free DVD burning software for Mac OS X detailed above.

A fully-featured app, Burn will allow you to create data discs, CD audio Discs, CD or DVD video discs as well as copying and writing disc images in the common .dmg, .iso, cue/bin formats.

You can download a copy of Burn from burn-osx.sourceforge.net – the current version runs on Mac OS X 10.3 or higher, and is compatible with PowerPC and Intel Macs. A G3 version is also available, for older Macs with suitable disc drives.

(All images in article originate with corresponding product websites)