# The &k3b; Handbook

## Introduction

&k3b; is a CD and DVD burning application for Linux systems optimized for &kde;. It provides a comfortable user interface to perform most CD/DVD burning tasks like creating an Audio CD from a set of audio files or copying a CD. While the experienced user can take influence in all steps of the burning process the beginner may find comfort in the automatic settings and the reasonable K3b defaults which allow a quick start. The actual burning in K3b is done by the command line utilities cdrecord, cdrdao, and growisofs.

&k3b-commands;

## HOWTOs for a quickstart to &k3b;

&k3b; features, like many other &kde; applications as well, a &DCOP; interface which makes it possible to control a part of it's functionality from ⪚ a shellscript.

&k3b-video-encoding; &k3b-audiocd-howto; &k3b-cdcopy-howto;
&k3b-dcop;

## Questions and Answers

&reporting.bugs; &updating.documentation;

Compiling K3b fails with undefined type "struct KComboBox".

The QTDesigner tool uic is not able to find the kde widget plugins. To solve this run qtconfig and add `$`KDEDIR`/lib/kde3/plugins` to the plugin search path (replace $`KDEDIR` with your kde base dir).

## Credits and License

&k3b;

Program copyright 1999-2004 Sebastian Trueg trueg@k3b.org

Contributors:

- Thomas Froescher tfroescher@k3b.org

- Christian Kvasny chris@k3b.org

- Klaus-Dieter Krannich kd@k3b.org

Documentation Copyright © 2003-2004 Carsten Niehaus cniehaus@kde.org

&underFDL; &underGPL;

## Installation

### How to obtain &k3b;

&install.intro.documentation;

### Requirements

In order to successfully use &k3b;, you need &kde; >= 3.1 and &Qt; >= 3.1

&cdrdao; - &cdrdao; records audio or data CD-Rs in disk-at-once (DAO) mode based on a textual description of the CD contents (toc-file).

&cdrecord;/&mkisofs; - &cdrecord; creates home-burned CDs with a CD-R/CD-RW recorder.

&dvdtools; - The DVD+RW-Tools are used to burn and format DVD+R(W) and DVD-R(W) media.

Optionally &k3b; can make use of all these libraries:

MAD MPEG Audio Decoder Library - MAD is a high-quality MPEG audio decoder. It currently supports MPEG-1 and the MPEG-2 extension to lower sampling frequencies, as well as the de facto MPEG 2.5 format. All three audio layers Layer I, Layer II, and Layer III (i.e. MP3) are fully implemented. Used by the Mp3 decoding plugin.

cdparanoia devel - Cdparanoia is a Compact Disc Digital Audio (CDDA) extraction tool, commonly known on the net as a 'ripper'.

transcode - transcode is a linux text-console utility for video stream processing. Ogg Vorbis library - Ogg Vorbis is a completely open, patent-free, professional audio encoding and streaming technology with all the benefits of Open Source. Used by the Ogg Vorbis decoding and encoding plugins.

VCDImager - A full-featured mastering suite for authoring, disassembling and analyzing Video CD's and Super Video CD's.

Normalize - normalize is a tool for adjusting the volume of audio files to a standard level. This is useful for things like creating mixed CD's and mp3 collections, where different recording levels on different albums can cause the volume to vary greatly from song to song.

eMovix - eMoviX is a tiny Linux CD distribution containing all the software to boot from a CD and play automatically every video file localized in the CD root.

You can find a list of changes at http://apps.kde.org/kapp.

### Compilation and Installation

&install.compile.documentation;

### Configuration

Don't forget to tell your system to start the `dtd` dicer-toaster daemon first, or &k3b; won't work !

&documentation.index;