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Q.

What is cdrecord, what is cdrtools?

A.

Cdrecord is a free recording program for CDs, DVDs and Blu-Ray disks. Cdrtools is a suite of programs bundled together and containing, amongst others, cdrecord. Cdrecord started as a single program in February 1996 (written from scratch after a Solaris port from the Linux program cdwrite has been thrown away). Short time later, a cooperation started with other related programs (mkisofs and cdda2wav). These programs then have then been bundled with cdrecord. Finally in 2001, the compilation archive has been renamed to cdrtools.

Q.	Is cdrtools free software?
A.	Of course, cdrtools is a set of 100% free true OpenSource programs that follow the definitions from OSI (originally written by Bruce Perens). You may freely use modify and redistribute source and binaries from cdrtools and you may reuse/borrow parts of the source for other OpenSource projects.

Q.	Why has the DVD writing support code not been published as OSS before spring 2006?
A.	The answer to this question is a bit longer and may be found here.

Q.

Some people claim that there is a cdrtools fork that gives more freedom, is this true?

A.

No. The original cdrtools give you even more freedom than the two known forks (dvdrtools and cdrkit). Cdrtools allow you to freely use, modify and redistribute the software in source or binary form, you do not get more from other sites. Also note that with these forks, you only get extremely outdated versions of cdrtools (dvdrtools is based on a cdrtools from 2000 and cdrkit is based on cdrtools from 2004). Both forks are dead and no longer maintained by their initiators (dvdrtools died in 2001, cdrkit died in 2007). Some more in depth information on the latest fork is in this FAQ for users of Linux distributions. Freedom in terms of OpenSource is freedom to use the code, freedom to modify the code, freedom to publish modified versions and the freedom to get a well maintained piece of software. You get this freedom from the original cdrtools packages but not from it's forks mentioned before.

Q.

Is there other free recording software?

A.

Yes, there is cdrdao and there is growisofs. Cdrdao has been mainly independently developed from cdrecord/cdrtools. It uses parts of cdrtools (e.g. the portable SCSI transport library libscg) and was based on the Reed-Solomon library written by Heiko Eißfeldt (a member of the cdrtools team). Growisofs has been independently developed for DVD+RW writing. It did start in 2002, 4 years after cdrecord did introduce DVD recording support.

Q.	Do I need cdrdao for CDs?
A.	For all known tasks: No. Until January 2010, there was one task you could do with cdrdao, but you could not do with cdrecord: Create a CD with a hidden track before track 1. Since January 2010, there is support for hidden audio tracks in cdda2wav, cdrecord and X-CD-Roast

Q.	Do I need more than cdda2wav to extract Audio from CDs?
A.	No. Cdda2wav allows you to do everything you like in the best possible quality. The included advanced paranoia library helps you to do this. Cdparanoia is a (currently unmaintained) fork from a cdda2wav from 1997. in May 2002, libparanoia was integrated into cdda2wav. So everything you get from cdparanoia (and even more) is available in cdda2wav.

Q.

Do I need growisofs for DVD's?

A.

For most tasks: No. It should be explicitly noted that growisofs is an independent development. It did start 4 years after cdrecord introduced DVD writing. It is a front-end to mkisofs (which is part of cdrtools), i.e. invokes mkisofs to perform the actual ISO9660 file system layout, so growisofs depends on cdrtools. There are some rare cases where it may make sense to use growisofs, but growisofs is DVD/Blu-Ray only and packet writing oriented (coming from DVD+RW) while cdrecord is a single program that allows you to write all media types without the need for other software.

Q.

Do I need growisofs for BluRay media?

A.

For most tasks: No. It should be explicitly noted that growisofs is an independent development. It did start with BluRay support aprox. at the same time when cdrecord introduced BD writing. Growisofs is a front-end to mkisofs (which is part of cdrtools), i.e. invokes mkisofs to perform the actual ISO9660 file system layout, so growisofs depends on cdrtools in special if you need support for large files on BluRay media. There currently are some rare cases (when you like to control BD defect management paramters), where it may make sense to use growisofs, but as a result growisofs writes BD-R media extremely slow while cdrecord writes BD Media at best available speed. Also note that growisofs may send uninitialized parameters to the drive when trying to control defect management. This may result in problems.