K3b New Release Adds DVD Burning For Linux

K3b, which for many is the best GUI app for burning CDs in Linux, has now added DVD burning support. Users familiar with the Nero Burning Rom software will not be unfamiliar with how this open source software goes about backing up CDs and DVDs.

The new features listed in no particular order and by all means incomplete:

* DVD writing support with the DVD+RW-tools:
o DVD-R(W) support
o DVD+R(W) support
o DVD formatting
o DVD Copy (pure data dvd copy without any video transcoding YET)
* CD Cloning with cdrtools >= 2.01a17
* Device capabilities detection without cdrecord. This solves the long startup problem with ATAPI devices.
* Option to automatically erase CD-RWs and DVD-RWs without asking before writing.
* K3b is now divided into three libs and the main application: libk3bcore, libk3btools, and libk3bproject.
This makes creating KParts-plugins easy. Two examples can be found in the tests/kpartplugins dir.
* ISO9660 file sorting (mkisofs -sort)
* Id3lib support for better mp3 tag access (we had that in some very old version but back then K3b depended on it. Now it defaults to using KFileMetaInfo if Id3lib not available)
* Pluggable audio decoding. For now only the formerly supported formats are avalible as plugins (Wave, Mp3, and Ogg-Vorbis)
* Pluggable audio encoding and completely rewritten audio ripping.
Three encoding plugins are already available:
o Ogg-Vorbis
o A sox-plugin with allows to encode to all the formats supported by sox
o A plugin which allows specifying any commandline to encode the data. A typical usage example would be encoding with lame.
* Verification of written data (compares md5 sums of all written files).
* K3b now also compiles without aRts. In this case the audioplayer will be useless.
* Added CD-TEXT reading (used for Audio CD ripping)
* Much better TOC reading. K3b now displays multisession info and CD-TEXT.
* m3u Playlist creation for ripped audio files.
* A new cool welcomewindow so new users won't be bewildered by the big empty gray window when K3b starts.

K3b website: k3b.org