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Hello there my friends...

Community Intro (1st Post):
I come from another era, (late 1990s-up to around 2019-2020 right before covid-19) were Nero Burning ROM, ImgBurn, Ashampoo was a thing... (Specially Nero since ever) I recently returned from the dead and I will be receiving 2 ASUS BW-16D1HT Blu-Ray burners next week from Amazon along with a bunch of Discs (100GB/50GB/M-Discs etc) and I already have the 3.10MK bin here ready to flash... (Hardcore user since ever, lol)

The Question:
Which software do you guys recommend now in 2025... is Nero still relevant? (like the #1 thing?) I will mostly be burning Matroska videos (.MKV) and some old AVI/MP4 videos. (and some personal Data files) no Blu-Ray/DVD/CD ripping... (but if you can comment on ripping software too... just in case, it would also be appreciated) I just want to have an idea of what's still relevant or new now.

Thanks in advance!

ImgBurn believe or not is still the most complete for burning Blu-ray since it can create UDF 2.5 compliant discs. If you're not going to burn UDF 2.5 discs or discs that need to play in set-top players, then I *think* just about anything will do (although I'm not sure how layer breaks are handled for 50GB+ BDR discs by burning applications). Sadly, you shouldn't burn any Blu-rays as the disc blanks are unreliable. Basically, don't burn anything.

For ripping Blu-ray or DVD, MakeMKV or DVDfab (www.dvdfab.cn).

dBpoweramp (dbpoweramp.com) is as far as I can tell the most complete audio CD ripping program but it's commercial and Windows/Mac only. I've never used it because I'm content with almost any CD ripping software. Right now I use Whipper (https://github.com/whipper-team/whipper). I really don't know if there's an application that can rip _ALL_ data from _ALL_ audio CDs but again, if it exists it's probably dBpoweramp (but probably in combination with some obscure ancient CD/DVD-ROM drive :-/).

Optical media is long dead so there really hasn't been any advancement in the ripping or burning applications in many years and I seriously doubt there will be in the future.

One thing I noticed: Nero Burning Rom has the option to enable Defect management for blu-rays. I do not think other software is capable of this. I had to use this for crappy double-layer 50 GB BD-Rs made by Mediarange. The problem was that they recorded OK but failed to read back on layers break. Only Defect management in Nero fixed this problem reducing capacity a bit. And I tried both Pioneer and ASUS burners - no difference. My final decision was to throw them away and never touch anything else apart from Verbatim, if possible only single layer HTL BD-Rs like 43804 package. But I do not burn any movies. They are too large. I just buy original blu-ray movie discs. That serves as a very good optical archive as well.

I've been using Nero and it works just fine. Won't burn 4k and their UI is hella dated and they're on a subscription model (boo!) but it worked.

flojo wrote: ↑

Sat Oct 04, 2025 10:50 pm

Sadly, you shouldn't burn any Blu-rays as the disc blanks are unreliable. Basically, don't burn anything.

I'm considering using blu-ray discs for long-term storage of various data, and I'm worried by your advice here.
I've done tests on many types of recordable optical discs, and in my experience, blu-ray discs are significantly more reliable than either DVD-R or CD-R.
Where did you get your information from? Have you done tests yourself? and if so, please can you describe how you did your tests.
This is important to me, because I am planning to store my collection of family digital photographs for my son to keep, and I'd like the discs to last a "lifetime".
Thanks.

cs1mt wrote: ↑

Sat Dec 13, 2025 8:23 am

Where did you get your information from? Have you done tests yourself? and if so, please can you describe how you did your tests.

I'm following the opinion of others on here for Blu-ray and no I have not done tests, in fact I've only burned a few Blu-rays. Start burning and let us know how it goes.

You guys should read this posted by kitahoshi. And if you burn 50GB discs you should enable defect management. I'm not burning anymore and record to HDD and play from HDD.

https://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=185539&page=19

as a total aside, I just learned that Nero is named being it burns Rom(e)