K3b is a CD and DVD burning application for Linux systems optimized for KDE. K3b project provides a comfortable user interface to perform most CD/DVD burning tasks like creating an Audio CD from a set of audio files or copying a CD.

While the experienced user can take influence in all steps of the burning process the beginner may find comfort in the automatic settings and the reasonable K3b defaults which allow a quick start. The actual burning in K3b is done by the command line utilities cdrecord, cdrdao, and growisofs.

Here are some key features of "K3b":

· Creating data cds:

· Add files and folders to your data cd project via drag'n'drop.
· Remove files from your project, move files within your project.
· Create empty direcories within your project.
· Write data cds on-the-fly directly without an image file or with image file. It's also possible to just create the image file and write it to cd later.
· Rockridge and Joliet support.
· Rename files in your project.
· Let K3b rename all the mp3/ogg files you add to your project to a common format like "artist - title.mp3".
· For advanced users: support for nearly all the mkisofs options.
· Verifying the burned data.
· Support for multible El-Torito boot images.
· Multisession support

· Creating audio cds:

· Pluggable audio decoding. Plugins for WAV, MP3, FLAC, and Ogg Vorbis are included.
· CD-TEXT support. Will automagically be filled in from tags in audio files.
· Write audio cds on-the-fly without decoding audio files to wav before.
· Normalize volume levels before writing.
· Cut audio tracks at the beginning and the end.

· Creating Video CDs:

· VCD 1.1, 2.0, SVCD
· CD-i support (Version 4)

· Creating mixed-mode CDs:

· CD-Extra (CD-Plus, Enhanced Audio CD) support.
· All data and audio project features.

· Creating eMovix CDs

· CD Copy

· Copy single and multi session data CDs
· Copy Audio CDs
· Copy Enhanced Audio CDs (CD-Extra)
· Copy CD-Text
· Add CD-Text from cddb
· CD Cloning mode for perfect single session CD copies

· DVD burning:

· Support for DVD-R(W) and DVD+R(W)
· Creating data DVD projects
· Creating eMovix DVDs
· Formatting DVD-RWs and DVD+RWs

· CD Ripping:

· CDDB support via http, cddbp and local cddb directory.
· Sophisticated pattern system to automatically organize the ripped tracks in directories and name them according to album, title, artist, and track number.
· CD-TEXT reading. May be used instead of CDDB info.
· K3b stores CDDB info of the ripped tracks which will automatically be used as CD-TEXT when adding the ripped files to an audio project.
· Plugin system to allow encoding to virtually every audio format. Plugins to encode to Ogg Vorbis, Mp3, FLAC, and all formats supported by SoX included.

· DVD Ripping and DivX/XviD encoding
· Save/load projects.
· Blanking of CDR-Ws.
· Retrieving Table of contents and cdr information.
· Writing existing iso images to CD or DVD with optional verification of the written data.
· Writing cue/bin files created for CDRWIN
· DVD copy (no video transcoding yet)

· Enhanced CD device handling:

· Detection of max. writing and reading speed.
· Detection of Burnfree and Justlink support.
· Good media detection and optional automatic CD-RW and DVD-RW blanking

· KParts-Plugin ready.

What's New in This Release:

· Fix CD Copy device selection (Bug 151924)
· Fixed HAL mounting (thanks to Ken Milmore)
· Always wait for the drive to become ready before starting verification.