Free Biz Ware » Audio & Video http://freebizware.com Free and Open Source Business Softwares Sun, 07 Mar 2010 15:46:16 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 en hourly 1 Read CD/DVD without a drive using Daemon Tools http://freebizware.com/34/read-cddvd-without-a-drive-using-daemon-tools/ http://freebizware.com/34/read-cddvd-without-a-drive-using-daemon-tools/#comments Fri, 25 Aug 2006 07:11:50 +0000 Ken http://freebizware.com/34/read-cddvd-without-a-drive-using-daemon-tools/ DAEMONS Tools Imagine this, you have two CDs and you need to alternately access data or you need to run program from the CD. You have only one CD drive.

Frustrating? Not anymore. DAEMONS Tools comes to the rescue.

Daemon-Tools is a virtual CD emulator or sometime known as CD image mounter.

Sounds techy, what does it do? Well, it does a two things that might be very interesting to you as a user.

  1. It allows reading a CD without a CD drive
  2. It allows reading multiple CDs at the same time

Effectively, Daemon Tools emulate (or “pretend to be”) a CD or DVD drive. So you can read the content of a CD/DVD without a drive. The mounted CD image will appears as a drive letter just like a normal CD. Normal file operations can be perform on it just like any CD.

Before you can mount a CD image, first the CD image had to be created. A CD image is, well, an image of a CD. Simply, it is a digital copy of the CD stored on the harddisk. To create it a tool like Nero is needed. There might be an open source Windows-based program for that but I do not know yet. (Let me know if you do)

“Mount” is a term used quite frequently in unix but a Windows user may not know exactly what it means. It roughly means “hooking it up”. So mounting a CD drive means connecting to the drive so that the system can read information from it.

Similarly mounting a CD image means connecting to the image so that information on the image file can be read. If it is a data disk, think of the image as a big zip file and Daemon-Tool as a program that will allow you to access the files in the zip file.

DAEMON Tools in action

It does not ends here! What more interesting is that multiple images can be mounted at the same time.

So you see how our original frustrating problem can be solved. Just mount the 2 CD images (or create one image and put the other CD in the drive) and you can access data from both disc at the same time. No CD swapping.

The recent version of DAEMON Tools includes an option to install a client-side software applications (DAEMON Tools Searchbar and Save Now) that behaviorally and contextually targeted ads and comparative shopping results. This what many considered Adware and earned them a red warning from SiteAdvisor.

As noted this is optional and as always exercise some judgement and common sense when using free softwares.

What I like about DAEMON Tools

  • mount multiple CD
  • support many file formats

Room for improvement

  • if only it could create the CD image as well

Chinese support

Simplified Chinese translation can be found on the DAEMON Tools Translations for V4-Series page which also has translation for many other languages.

You will download a single file name 2052.dll. Copy this file to the Lang folder where Daemon Tools is installed, typically C:Program FilesDAEMON Tools

After restarting, language can be changed on-the-fly by right-clicking on the tray icon and select Options > Language > Chinese

Daemon Tools in Chinese

Where to get it?

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]]> http://freebizware.com/34/read-cddvd-without-a-drive-using-daemon-tools/feed/ 0 VLC – One player to play them all http://freebizware.com/32/vlc-one-player-to-play-them-all/ http://freebizware.com/32/vlc-one-player-to-play-them-all/#comments Fri, 18 Aug 2006 02:31:00 +0000 Ken http://freebizware.com/32/vlc-one-player-to-play-them-all/ VLCVLC media player (initially known as VideoLAN Client) is a replacement for media players like Microsoft Media Player. Granted, Media Player is good and is also free. Functionality wise there may be no reason to replace it. But philosophy wise, I have three.

One, as an open source supporter and believer, I want to use as many open source applications as possible for all my desktop functions.

Two, I dislike the way applications like Media Player and Real Player intrude and make assumptions about my usage preference. No movie trailers or latest news please. I just want to play my media files. No prompting to update or to download media information, I can look for it if needed, thank you.

Three, dispite the pages of privacy policies (that nobody reads), I am not comforted. There isn’t any clue as to what information are being captured and sent in the background.

As an open source application, VLC does not need to market or promote anything. It sticks to its job and does it well.

VLC

After trying many open source/freeware/shareware media players, VLC stands out as not been too technically oriented.

There is no need to understand the need for different codec, know where to find them, why they conflicts and to install them. Everything just works after install.

VLC media player has so many features that I hardly scrape the surface as a light user of audio and visual media. It also can be used as a server for unicast or multicast streams in IPv4 or IPv6 on a high-bandwidth network. VLC packs enough functionalities to satisfy even the demanding users. As for me, I am all too happy that it serves all my needs well.

What I like about VLC

  • Supports a large number of format without the need to download codec everytime.
  • Simple to use compared to other more technical open source players.
  • One player to play them all!

Chinese support

Chinese user interface is included in the installation and can be configured in the Preference. After changing, a restarting VLC is necessary to change the language.

As you can see, not all the text are translated.

VLC chinese preference

Where to get it?

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