I had to dig around for this ... the MP3 plugin available here:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/infrarecorder/files/MP3%20plug-in/

I liked the layout of this program as of around early, 2009, but I eventually stopped using it because it failed upon certain types of file access and did not provide adequate explanation as to the errors preventing success. It seems very appealing, but last time I used it, it needed more development, particularly, rigorous testing on multiple OS platforms and configurations.

Well yeah, FireFox is awesome, but that's because IBM is behind it, using it as advantage over Microsoft... I am a hippy by heart and respect all the open source developers, but I also do realise the sad truth that there is no free lunch.

@lak, that's not a valid reason to discredit opensource and free software, I know of plenty of high quality and stable software that is open source, Firefox for instance, I've been using it for years, I've dealt with it's bugs in the past, but it's pretty rock solid now days..

.. back to my last comment, I suspect the restart loop was infact a crash/driver issue of some sort caused by InfraRecorder -- Vista by default hides BSOD screens and just restarts, which makes it hard to tell what's really going on.

Results may vary, burned an audio cd ok for me, until I realized the track listing was all screwed up on the cd, I went ahead and tried to erase the disc, so I can reburn it, but after it goes through the process of initating erase mode it seems to freeze up for a long time, so I closed it, but there was another process still lingering that wouldn't close, "cdda.exe", I also couldn't eject the CD either, and I couldn't restart through normal methods... only option was to hold the power button and shut it down that way.. (which is NEVER recommended) boy I almost had a heart attack after my computer wouldn't boot up the first few times, cpu just went crazy, and then it hibernated, now this is a brand new laptop, I'm pretty sure it's normal for it hibernate after over exertion, but that's terrible when the cpu spikes 100% for no reason, I can say it made the audio cd correctly but trying to erase the disc to fix a crude mistake was a mistake in itself, and though it never did complete erasing the disk, it did manage to corrupt it!. I'll have to stick with WMP for burning audio cds from now on, and maybe do computer related tasks while I'm not half asleep :(

that application is a piece of junk just like (most) other free software. that's why open source is not going to pick up anytime soon....

Does not support gapless audio CDs.

"Matt: Causes a BSOD (Blue Screen of Death) on my laptop. I doubt it's a driver problem since they are all up-to-date, and InfraRecorder is the only application that crashes the whole system. [2008-03-18 00:19]"
I've got a same case on my Windows XP SP2

This is one of the better freeware software burning programs I have come across. The quality has been consistently good to great and the speeds are also above average. I am impressed so far!
http://www.nero.com/enu/downloads-nero6-update.php

cannot read the disc burnt with this soft
rubbish

Tried to burn avi files as a data disc to a dvd -r, it seemed to burn ok, but when it was finished and spit the disc out, I put it back in, and the drive wouldn't read the data on the disc.

Does the recent version write on the fly?

Unfortunately, this program is unable to resample 48kHz MP3s to 44kHz. This means it might not be able to burn a lot of MP3s out there. I'm going to try CDBurnerXP in hopes it can handle it.

This program does NOT support Unicode. I have a lot of mp3s with foreign characters in their filenames, and InfraRecorder had trouble adding the files to its recording list (I had to add the parent folder to get around this bug), and then also failed to compile a disc image, in the end. It never even got to the burning stage. Perhaps the author tried to turn on the 'Unicode' setting for their compiler, but their string manipulation routines are NOT Unicode-aware, and almost all files with non-ASCII foreign characters will fail. (i.e. accented latin characters, etc. and a few others will work - they are in the ASCII character set - but anything outside of that will fail.)

Jonno, InfraRecorder supports Unicode now. I love this app. Use to use Nero exclusively, but now no more.

InfraRecorder is the best free CD/DVD burning tool for Windows I found and will be better. You can see the features in:

http://infrarecorder.sourceforge.net/

Version 0.44 also is Portable (www.portableapps.com)and writes all settings to the application folder.

Causes a BSOD (Blue Screen of Death) on my laptop. I doubt it's a driver problem since they are all up-to-date, and InfraRecorder is the only application that crashes the whole system.

It's working well for me. I've burned movies, data DVDs, data CD-Rs, erased DVD+RWs, created multi-session discs. For such things as multi-session discs, it does less hand-holding than some of the commercial burners, but it points you to the help file, which lists multi-session as a search topic, and explains to you what settings you must change.

Correction: It could not write the lead-in
Fred V

I downloaded and installed Infra Recorder V44.1 and was able to burn a correct Ubuntu image on CD. Burning a data disk with ~ 70 Mbytes did not work. It complained not being able to set task priority and later said that it could write the lead-in. When it did not say this on another CD it complained about missing files during the verification.
What is missing?
Fred V

@Hraefn: Hey thanks! I've been having the same problem with the disabled OK button but downgrading fixed it. :D

I posted this in InfraRecorder's website, but I might as well post it here too for others to see.

I’m having some problem with 0.44 (portable): the OK button is always grayed out (the same thing happens with 0.44 ansi version). Downgrading to 0.43.1 fixed the problem.

Otherwise, this is a great piece of software! I’ve been banging my head trying to get Nero to burn to a 99min/870mb CD, but InfraRecorder was the only program to do it successfully. Good job!

Note that version 0.44 writes all settings to the application folder and as far as I can see there is no option to disable this.

However there is now a portable version - unicode - available.
The 98 Version I don't see as portable anymore

People use what they like.

win98 is dead! cant believe myself when i read this posts that there are still people using win98!! it's 2007! when r u gonna start using xp? another 10years to come?

Experience same problem as Richard above. Will not run on my Win98 machine: Fails with the error, "infrarecorder.exe is linked to missing export SHELL32.DLL:SHGetFolderPathA".

I've been using Infra Recorder to backup DVD's as well as music cd's converted from/to MP3's. It worked flawlessly on my XP SP1 machine because I dont have any crapware or rogue bogus programs on my computer. I also have/use Nero 6 and DVDDecrypter installed. One other thing to note is to have the Built-in XP "Imapi" service turned of in administrative services!!
Thanks for this simple but powerful program!!

Can't get this to work as portable on Win98.
The main program doesn't start, the express version fails when I try a task. They both fail with "infrarecorder.exe is linked to missing export SHELL32.DLL:SHGetFolderPathA".
By the way, the MSVCP dependancy mentioned above is not in http://www.portablefreeware.com/resources.php page!

Bob, if these apps are ending up on full-blown PCs (that must have CDRs), why don't you simply use the writing software that came with the Dells? The intent for all this freeware is portability. There are MUCH better free applications that aren't portable. Try those.

this program is simply the best portable burning program around. i have never had a problem with it and i recommend that everyone gets it for their burning needs

i have been very happy with this app. just check out my mini-review here.
http://www.donationcoder.com/Forums/bb/index.php?topic=8140.0

http://www.portablefreeware.com/?id=1124 - This one uses less disk space, works on all windows versions, and with it's plugins performs more actions. Been using it for ages now never had anything but success

Infra Recorder is a project in it's early stages, so people should be more lenient with it than if it were a finished product. Just look at the version number ... it's not version 1, so not all the features have been implemented, and neither are they guaranteed to work on all hardware.

If you want to create dvd's without having to have 4GB+ spare for temp file, use ImgBurn's (www.imgburn.com) Build Mode, which can build the DVD image on-the-fly, so doesn't require additional temporary storage space.

In regards to making backups of audio cds, Burnatonce (www.burnatonce.net) can do this. Burnatonce uses the same CDRDAO burn engine as Infra Recorder, but Burnatonce is at a later stage of development.

try cdex or look for others in the cdrom/dvdrom catagory

has anyone gotten this to copy audio cds? don't think it's possible. does anyone know a portable app that can do this?

@~Lurk~
Why must it create an image, though? Why not record on-the-fly? If you want to copy a disc, it says it can do it on the fly (no hard drive space used).
So why can't it burn a disc that way? A hard drive you'd think has a faster response time than a CD, and unless its a lot of tiny files, then it should be OK.
I know Nero can cache small files, but it burns directly to the disc, no temp file or image needed...
Course in most of the freeware I've tried, they all seem to need that temp image. :\

@nic
How else do you expect it to work? It has to have room to work!

This is for the times a PC you are on doesn't have burning software/software too limited/software just sucks. Or just so you are always working with the same app. No learning a new program.

I don't understand why the program creates an image file before burning.

Ok, it create the image on the %temp% directory, but if I plan to burn a full DVD I shall have more than 4Gb on an account... if I haven't, it became unuseful... where is the portability then??

The program hasn't fuond a DVD Recorder. It sugests to "patch" the program !

To elaborate on infra recorder, i have no doubt that it will burn to a blank cd. No one would post/release something that didn't work at the bare minimum level.

BUT, it would not burn a CD/RW that it had just erased on a Optiarc DVD burner, and it would NOT import the existing session from a CD/R previously burned by Nero. That is the point where I stopped testing it for our use (2 out of 3 failures).

One of the desktop zooming programs posted here, which locked the machine in magnify mode with no way to exit out of it. required a re-boot to uninstall.

btw, i maintain 50 pc's for a community college tutor environment, and many of these freeware programs end up on these machines. The machines are all Dells, current on updates.

The dictionary/thesaurus just posted is a real charm.

Too limited to be useful.

Has anyone compared this to DeepBurner? Just curious.

It was able to burn correctly for me. What was the other two programs that didn't work for you, Bob?

it's possible i'm a moron, though doubtful regarding the 40 years of computer experience I have. But you are welcome to your misconception.

it works perfectly... BOB maybe you're a moron

Program does not work.
i.e.: Optiarc CD/DVD burner

1) erased a CD/RW - worked ok

2) tried to burn to the CD/RW - infinite loop trying to send error message and nothing on CD/RW

3) tried to import session from existing CD/R - message can't find joliet - no session shown even though CD/R is browseable with folders from XP explorer

nice interface, but program does not work reliably

this is the 3rd program d/l'd from here recently that flat doesn't work and errors-out. Maybe a little more testing is in order before uploading a recommendation...

Absolutely outstanding application. If I had a cd-burner in my rig right now, I'd use this one. :)