Grab&Burn Editor's Review

Grab&Burn is an user friendly CD/DVD burning software featuring DVD Authoring and Mastering tools.

The first things I have seen after launching this application were the wizards that were asking me what I want to do next using the application. In fact the whole interface is structured around these user friendly wizards.

The interface is split between four sections that you can also find in the application's menu. These sections are: Wizards, Experts, Devices and Help.

I could find there Wizards for: burning, copying, erasing or grabbing discs. They are very easy to use and basically you can obtain what you want from this program really fast. The copying, erasing and the grabbing wizards are a common thing. You won't find major differences between these and other burning applications.

The burning wizard is working almost in the same way all burning software do. It has a better structure and this is giving the user a little bit more flexibility. You may choose between burning a complete compilation or writing it as a CD/DVD image file on your hard drive. The complete compilation might be a data CD/DVD or an audio CD. The nice thing is the fact that you may choose between ISO and MDS image file types when saving the image file. The MDS type is the Alcohol native format and you can do multivolume discs with it.

A special wizard is the DVD Splitting Wizard. You may use it in order to split your own *.vob DVD files. Using this tool you might burn a large file on multiple discs.

My favorite wizard is the File Searching wizard. You may use it in order to quickly find your CD/DVD images or your DVD files (*.vob) on your logical drives. It is working really fast and you won't lose any time using it. The best part is the fact that you can use it when you are working with the Burning Wizard.

The Experts area has also wizards. You can find there the DVD Authoring wizard and the DVD Mastering wizard. They aren't advanced tools such as dedicated authoring or mastering software but fair enough for a usual activity.

Pluses: User friendly interface, very easy to use and very well structured wizards. It is a fast application, so you won't have to wait for it even on slower machines and it is also a very stable application. I couldn't make it crash.

Drawbacks / flaws: A little bit slow while loading a wizard and it is doing that with high CPU load. It does not remember the last settings that you have used into the wizards.

In conclusion: A nice and powerful burning software application with advanced features: DVD Authoring and Mastering wizards. Very compact and it has another bright side: it is freeware.

version reviewed: 5.0.2