detail information

Besides creating Virtual CDs from physical discs and disc images, Virtual CD also features the ability to build a virtual CD from scratch, much like how some CD/DVD burning suites give the option of burning a compilation to an image instead of to disc.

To begin building a virtual CD, go into the virtual CD toolbox and select “Edit Virtual CDs” from the section “Creating Virtual CDs”.  Alternatively, click on the Virtual CD task-tray icon, go into the “Virtual CDs” sub-menu and select ‘Edit’.  With the editor, a compilation can be made much like other recording suites by simply dragging files and folders into the bottom box.  Once the first files/folders get dragged into the bottom window, it automatically creates a data track, as shown as “03_11_2007”:

The virtual CD capacity can be set by clicking the CD icon next to the help icon.  Interestingly, while it gives a choice of a few extended size CD-Rs, it is missing some other common disc sizes such as 180MB and 210MB 8cm CD-Rs as well as the 8.5GB double layer DVD capacity.  On the other hand, it gives the option of specifying a user-defined capacity:

The editor has the option of adding audio-tracks to the compilation; however, these must be added from a disc source.  There is no option to add audio files as audio tracks (even if no audio CD is loaded).  As a work-around, a source can also be a virtual drive with an audio CD image loaded, such as this audio CD image we created earlier:

Besides the ability to add audio tracks, the editor has very little other functionality, other than to create the Virtual CD or save the compilation as a Virtual CD definition file.  When the ‘Create’ icon is clicked (icon with a burning disc image), the following dialogue appears, where we can give the disc a description and select a template:

If the “Switch to Expert Copy mode …” field is not ticked, the “Next” button changes to a “Finish” button.  With this option ticked, another dialogue appears giving the option to specify if the image should be compressed as well as the path to save it, followed by another dialogue giving the option to password protect the image and several other parameters as with creating a virtual CD from a physical disc.  Finally, the Virtual CD is created:

Unlike a dedicated disc compilation suite, it does not seem to be possible to create boot discs, specify a file system, etc. when building a virtual CD from scratch.  But then again, Virtual CD is intended for creating virtual drives and working with disc images, unlike dedicated disc compilation software that is designed for building CDs. 

Program run through

The Virtual Burner