14 DAY TRIAL // If you were to ask a bunch of people what they'd like to use for disc burning, I think the answer would be almost unanimous: Nero. And they have good reasons to say this, as the application is overrated only when it comes to the price. German technology has always been among the best on the market and they succeeded into making a strong point among softwares as well.
But competition has been lurking for a long time and now the user has accessible choices from a financial point of view. They may not be Nero, but they do the job you need. Ashampoo Burning Studio, also created by a German company is a tough competitor which offers all the user needs, does a great job, and with the marketing and frequent price cuts it can't be anything but appealing.
Well, here comes another serious player: 3nity. Though the name suggests it, it is not as holly as you'd want it to be because, besides the regular burning and erasing tasks it can also rip Audio CDs and DVD Videos with no remorse.
The looks are not quite 'plain and simple', but there is nothing extraordinary about them either as flames and discs on the background are usually seen in most CD/DVD burners. The interface integrates all the options and there's absolutely no setting that takes more than a second or two to pinpoint.
The application will automatically detect all the installed burning drives, be they internal or external. The first step is choosing the unit you are going to use for burning your discs. The list of options running down in the right hand side allows selecting the type of job. 3nity is perfectly capable of creating a Data CD or DVD, Audio CDs, DVD Video discs or burning directly from an image file (BIN, CUE or ISO).
The Options menu in the lower part of the main application window lets you backup your data on the hard drive. The alternative are creating an ISO image from the contents of the CD/DVD disc, ripping and Audio CD and making an 1:1 copy of a DVD Video. Unfortunately, there is no support for Blu-ray or HD-DVDs, but I am sure that these options are going to be implemented soon.
The last option available in the application is disc erasing that comes complete with the two regular alternatives: Quick Erase and Full Erase of the inserted disc.
Adding your files to disc is an extremely easy operation due to Add Folders and Add Files buttons. But if you really want to make things easier on you, simply drag and drop the files/folders from the file manager into 3nity's window. The size bar at the bottom of the window will indicate how much space the files occupy on disc. The wizard like screen makes burning your data a cinch, and you will quickly move to burn page where you can set the maximum speed for the data writing process.
For all the other burning operations, the job does not get more difficult either and you get to make only brief settings regarding the recorder used, the file system used (ISO or UDF), setting the speed or labeling the disc. The same easy to use wizard is at your disposal so there's no sweat handling it.
Audio CDs can be created from all popular file formats. 3nity has no problems with WAV, MP3, WMA or OGG. More than this, you can burn the files in the exact order you want and if uncertain of a specific song, play it in the built-in audio player. It is a minimal tool that will only play and stop the tracks. The lower part of the screen makes available the total time of all the added files.
Copying the contents of a CD/DVD as an ISO on your hard disk requires minimum effort from the user. The only setting available here is defining where the output result should be saved on disk. The downside is that it will take a bit longer to complete a DVD Video task. During our testing, the software needed almost 49 minutes (48'58'' to be exact) to finish the job. Better timings were recorded with burning an ISO file into DVD Video (15'15'') and backing up a DVD Video (about 13').
Copying a DVD Video to your hard disc lets you choose between Full DVD and Movie Only. In the left hand side there is all the content of the disc and you can choose what to copy on the hard disk: languages, additional audio tracks, subtitles, title sets, subpictures etc.
During the evaluation, audio ripping tool performed beautifully, although a tad slower than I expected. But the result was accurate. The same four audio formats as in creating an Audio CD are supported here as well. MP3 supports up to 320 bitrate and you can enable VBR (variable bitrate). OGG quality is set by simply dragging a slider on a scale of zero to ten while for WMA you can choose between four different codecs and seven different formats (4-20 kbs). The reason for the slow movement while ripping is that the application first makes a WAV from the track and then converts it in the user defined format.
Unfortunately, there is no CDDB option, so the artist and the name of the song will not be automatically appended. And you can do this manually after the job is complete. Also, there is no option to select all the tracks, so you're going manual on this one, too.
The Good
3nity is a very good alternative to all the expensive burning applications on the market. The price is $14.95 and the application has all the popular options you need.
It handles very well ISO format and easily burns an ISO DVD into DVD Video format. 3nity can create backups for your DVD with not sweat at all. The process is fast and the result is very good.
The Bad
During ripping, there is no time estimation for completing the job. Only the status bar shows this. The same is available for the disc erasing option.
The Truth
It behaved OK and completed all the jobs I fed it, no questions asked. 3nity is a good alternative to all the commercial applications in its category. Very easy to use and responsive to the commands, the application rips both Audio CDs and DVD Video discs and creates ISO files from the disc content, being also able to burn ISO to disc quite fast. And on top of this all, it is very gentle with computer resources.
The trial period is more than enough to fully test the program in your own laboratory.
Here are some snapshots of the application in action:
