Designed as a comprehensive utility to create, copy, and burn all kinds of optical discs, BurnAware Premium offers you a wealth of tools to produce data, audio, and video CDs, DVDs, and even Blu-ray discs. Besides, the program comes with full support for ISO files and a set of extra utilities to erase, copy, and verify discs, create boot discs, as well as to recover data from damaged ones.
Unlike the free version of the program, BurnAware Premium edition can extract files and entire folders from ISO image files without burning it to disc first, make exact copies of entire discs, rip the files of an audio CD in various formats, and recover data from discs that have suffered some damage and have become unreadable. The only difference between the Premium and the superior Pro edition is the option to burn an ISO image to multiple drives at a time and the permission to use this program for commercial purposes.
The program’s initial window is actually the program’s main menu. Here you’ll find all the options available organized in four sections – Data, Multimedia, Disc Images, and Utilities. In the Data section, you’ll find tools to create data discs and boot discs, and to span data into various discs. A fourth option – which might well be in the Utilities section instead – is the Copy Disc tool, which actually can also be used with other types of discs. The Multimedia section is devoted to audio and video discs, including standard audio CDs with uncompressed files, MP3 discs, DVD and Blu-ray video discs, and an audio CD ripping tool, which in fact could also be included in the Utilities submenu. As for Disc Images, BurnAware Premium offers you tools to burn ISO files to disc, turn a CD into an ISO image, create a new ISO file, produce a boot ISO image, and unpack an ISO file.
The Utilities section will allow you to display technical information about your discs, erase rewritable discs, verify their integrity, and – as mentioned above – recover data from discs that, for whatever reason, as become unreadable due to internal or external damage.
All tools open in a new window that follows a somehow minimalist pattern, a design that matches the program’s straightforward approach to the extensive functionality it offers. Therefore, do not expect to find a plethora of editing options or the possibility of authoring your video discs, let alone to add effects to your video or to modify the audio files in any way before burning them to disc. This does not detract from the overall usefulness of the program, which is beyond doubt.
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