Raiden's Realm: Tutorial: Using K3b

Tutorial: Using K3b (Page 1 of 1)

Written by Steve Lake
Posted on: Jan 26, 2009 at 01:38pm
Section: Tutorials
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This simple tutorial goes through all the basics of using K3b on Linux. K3b is one of the best graphical burning programs on Linux, and also one of the best know in the Linux community. However, it's existence is somewhat of a mystery among new users. Hence this tutorial is here to both introduce this excellent program, and familiarize you with everything you need to know to begin using it. It won't cover every nut and bolt the program has, because there's a lot of them, but it will cover the most important. So, without further adieu, on to the program.

Getting Started

When the program first loads, you're given a basic interface screen that contains three windows: Folder tree, file tree, and project information. In the project information window, there are six basic types of disk you can make. They are: new audio cd, new data cd, new data dvd, copy cd, burn cd image, and burn dvd iso image.

However, these are not the only actions you can choose from. If you click on the “further actions” button, it will give you a list of 18 different actions you can do. This list includes the six default actions, plus twelve more should you need them.

Create Audio/Data CD/DVD

Say for example you want to create an audio cd to play in your stereo, you would click on “Create Audio CD Project”. As more and more systems start supporting digital audio cd's such as MP3 cd's and the like, this section will become less relevant. However, it is still relevant now for a wide number of devices.

To get started, click on “Create Audio CD Project”. One thing you might notice at this point is that tabs have appeared in the the project information window. These will always appear when you have more than one window open. The project information window will always stay open and can't be closed, so don't worry about possibly making a mistake and closing it. The only windows you can close down here are the project windows.

Now, in the audiocd window, you'll notice that there are not a lot of buttons to do things, and most of the ones there are grayed out. This is because you have nothing in this window or in your project. To get started, click on the folder view pane (top left) and navigate to where your files are located. When you reach the appropriate folder, any audio files available in there should appear on the right.

Simply highlight each song you want to include in your project, then drag it into the project window below. When you do this, you will notice that the window changes to show the individual file(s) and five basic details about them. You will also notice that the green progress bar at the bottom moves. This tells you how much of the total available space on your cd is available.

While you're doing this, you have the option of sampling each song to see what it is, getting information about it over the internet, and testing what the finished product will be like. Once you have everything the way you want it, simply click “burn” in the upper left hand side of the window.

This will open the burn dialog. In here is a long list of possible options you can work with. In the first tab you have a choice between creating a cd image, simulating the burn, only creating an image (ie, create a cd image, but don't burn it to disk) and removing the image once the program is done with it's jobs. Under normal burning conditions, this is checked by default. Under normal circumstances, you should only need to use the default settings here. If you need more than one copy, you can select that here as well.

When you're ready, click burn. It will take over and do everything else for you. If you have selected to do multiple copies (only applicable if burning a cd, but not when only simulating or creating an image) then you will only be needed when the program needs you to change cd's. When all burning is completed, simply click close. It will take you back to the original project, but won't close it so you can go back and make changes, save it, or do other things if you want.

Burning data cd's and dvd's works approximately the same, except that you are creating an actual file system rather than audio tracks. So instead of track info in the project information window, you will see file and folder information.

Copy CD

To copy a cd, if you only have one cd or dvd drive, simply plop the cd into the drive, click “copy cd” in the project information window, then click “start”. If you have two, you will be asked which drive is your source, and which is your destination. If you don't want to directly copy the cd to a new disk, then uncheck “remove image” and check “only create image”.

When you do that, click on the image tab and select where you want to store the image file. Under the options tab, there are two options on the left for you to consider. The first is “copy mode”. Normal copy reads the disk as is and copies the files just the same as if you were dragging them from one window to another. This *does not* copy non user facing file system items such as boot sectors and the like.

The second option, “clone mode” *does* copy those non user facing file items, on top of the standard files and folders. This is good for copying disks that have boot sectors or special hidden slices or features in the disk that are only visible to the computer, and not the user.

The second option in this window, “Writing mode” may be ignored. Unless you already know exactly what you want to do, and are comfortable doing advanced file copying and/or writing, do not touch this option. Misuse can potentially do bad things to your computer, and/or your burner.

Burn CD/DVD Image

Burning a disk image (be it cd or dvd iso) is in many ways simpler than actually creating a disk from scratch. To do this, click on either “burn cd image” or “burn dvd iso image”. This will bring up a dialog for selecting the image you want to burn. For the most part, both windows are the same for both types of image burning, so I'll cover things in general between the two of them instead of separately.

The first thing you'll do at the top is to select your disk image. A disk image, sometimes known as an iso file, or a cd or dvd image file, is a file that contains a virtual image of the contents of a cd or dvd inside it. It is in some ways comparable to a zip file in many respect, except that it also contains file system information as well.

Once you select the image you want to burn, you can click simulate to only simulate the burn, or you can simply leave it unchecked and click start to burn it. When it's done, just click close and you're done.

Further Actions

The “further actions” section is an interesting collection of the six areas we already covered and twelve more that may or may not be useful to you. The first of these is “continue multisession project”. A multisession project is a disk that has either been burned more than once, or has been left open after either the first burn, or any burn after it.

Usually a multisession disk is created when a data cd or dvd project is created and burned, but either not closed, or not filled. If there is still room on the disk, you can add more files to it by adding more sessions. This is only advisable to do if you really need to, as not all systems can properly read multisession disks.

New Video CD and New Video DVD allow you to create your own CD's or DVD's by copying the appropriate kind of files you need to disk and burning them. This *will not* build DVD's and Video CD's for you. It's more or less a ready to go formatting option for building already created video cd's and dvd's. To build actual video cd's and dvd's, you'll need a separate program. Once they're created, you can then copy the results onto disk and burn it using these options.

The eMovix options are newer features I'm not yet familiar with. So I can't say exactly what they do, but they're likely a new movie disk format for you to work with. So for now, ignore this section.

The copy cd and dvd options work as explained above, so no need to go over those. Erase CD-RW and format DVD-RW are two options that allow you to format a rewritable cd and dvd for reuse. Burn cd and dvd image have already been discussed above, so I'm skipping that as well.

The last section, which contains options for “ripping” audio and video cd's as well as DVD's, does exactly as advertised. Just click on option, slip your disk in, follow the prompts, and you're done.

Conclusion

Well, that's it for this tutorial. I obviously haven't covered everything that this amazing program can do, but I have covered enough for you to get started using K3b and enjoying the fun world of cd/dvd ripping, burning and production in Linux!

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