CDR-Label
A Review by Ian Urie
One of the most common things to do nowadays is write your own CD's
One of the most common things to do nowadays is write your own CD's.
Packages vary but most people like to customise their labels for the
disks. Disk Creator comes with a very good Label creator as well,
but some of the other burning packages come with either a very poor
program for doing this or with nothing at all.
The good thing about the Internet is that there is loads of programs
available for you to try, and a quick search revealed a small utility
for printing customised covers for your CD's.
The program is CDR-Label and can be found at http://www.ziplabel.com/
See Screen Image 1
Now this is a piece of shareware!!! The asking price of $15 is not
particularly exorbitant and it can be registered online, just in case
you don't want to send money through the mail.
So, what does it do?
Well, exactly as the name suggests, it makes labels for your CD's.
The download for the latest version is under a meg, so not exactly
time consuming for anyone to do.
The program comes with an installer and theres nothing to
worry about in getting the program working.
See Screen Image 2
One of the most immediate benefits you notice is that the program
prints the front and back cover on one piece of A4 paper. This is
something that Jewel Case Creator on the Disk Creator system could do
well to copy.
The program comes with a large help section that details how to use
the program and helpful hints. Hints can also be shown while you are
making the label with its popups.
The author also does much the same thing for other types of media by
having versions that deal with Zip, Jaz, SyQuest, Floppy and LS120
disks. Again, these can be downloaded from his site.
The help section is very good and can tell you how to read a disk
into your label ...a nice touch and saves a power of typing and file
extensions can be ignored or used. Sizes of files can also be
displayed if you wish. The options for the program are quite good.
The failing I noticed quite fast is that it can read audio disks but
has no way to actually access the song titles eg. by way of CDDB or
any of the other sites that database audio disks. However, you can
edit the entries to suit yourself, so this failing is repairable.
When the program reads the disk, you can also decide how deep it
reads the directory structure or if you want to only display certain
types of file.
As it's the shareware version, you can't do certain things, and one
of these is that you can't edit the CDR part of the label at the ends
of the back cover. A small thing perhaps, this and the nag requestor
are really all that the author has disabled.
I mentioned that the program can print both covers on a single sheet
of A4, but all sizes of paper can be used and there is a printer
section where you can specify what you want to do.
You can change fonts, backgrounds, insert pictures (jpg or bmp only)
A quick example like this .....
See Screen Image 3
..... took a few seconds.
You can copy your own music CD's labels simply and easily by scanning
the covers and simply inserting the resultant scans onto the labels
....like this.
See Screen Image 4
A quick scan of one of my music CD's resulted in this. An excellent
CD, by the way :)
As I said, I use a portable CD player in the car and I'm loath (after
losing quite a few CD's after the car was broken into) to part with
my treasured sounds again. Making a copy of a music CD is easy
enough and it keeps the original safe in the house while letting me
see what I'm playing in the car. These covers suffice for the car
easily enough and take a few moments to make.
After you resize the scans to fit the labels, simply print .... you
can also specify if you want the program to print crop marks to make
it even easier to cut out the labels.
The labels are nicely sized as well, and I had no problem getting
them to fit inside the jewel case.
This is one the fastest programs and easiest to print CD covers. It
doesn't do CD labels which is a disappointment, but the docs do say
you can mail the author for any improvements you would like to see.
Maybe a future version .....
Data CD's are catered for with the file name grabbing and you can
specify how many columns you would like your cover to have. The
program also allows you to save templates of a particular CD type,
handy if you going to use the same format for various types of CD's.
This also saves fonts, sizes etc, making it easy to have an instantly
identifiable look to one of your CD's.
I think that's enough information for anyone who wants to print
covers. If you don't, you probably didn't bother reading this far.
If you are interested, I expect you are downloading as you read, so
I'll let you get on with it!
Try it and explore the options. You might be pleasantly surprised.
