Like a lot of people I do burn quite a lot of DVD's. Many of these are backups of photos and other files whilst others are DVD movies that I've created in iMovie and whilst the iMac's Superdrive is a pretty good drive the one big problem I have with it and with almost all burners is labelling.

In the past I've tried using those stick on labels and whilst these are quite good, ink jet labels never look that great and more importantly a stuck on label, even one that covers the entire surface of the disc, unbalances the disc which then causes slower ripping speeds or, as in the case of my iMac's Superdrive, means that the disc can't even be detected. I've also tried printable CD's and whilst these are considerably better than stick on labels I personally find it a bit of a pain having to add the CD loader to my printer, make sure that I have enough ink and that the nozzles are clear and getting text and images to appear exactly where I want them to. I've also tried using a simple pen to write on the disc and whilst this is the simplest and fastest option it is also the ugliest and also makes it harder to actually find the disc you want when you have a whole box of them to sort through.

This is why I've now switched over to Lightscribe.

For those that have not come across Lightscribe before, Lightscribe is a relatively new technology where with the use of special burners and specially coated discs it's possible to 'etch' a label into the surface of the disc. Now it's important to understand that when I say 'etched' I not talking about gauging out the surface of the disc but merely that a laser reacts with the special surface of the disc and changes it's tone making it darker or lighter thus producing your label. You can find out more about Lightscribe on the Lightscribe website here.

When Lightscribe first came out both the drives and the discs were very expensive but prices have come down significantly so much so that there are now a wide range of Lightscribe drives available for just a few pounds more than many 'conventional' drives. When I was looking for a Lightscribe drive for myself I knew that I wanted a Firewire drive as I already have loads of USB devices plugged into my iMac and that it must be able to burn Dual Layer DVD's (DVD-9), and whilst most if not all new drives support Dual Layer burning it was the need for Firewire that severely restricted the available models. Thankfully though that turned out for the best.

In the end I opted for the Freecom Lightscribe Pro 20x External USB 2.0 Firewire DVD-RW drive which I bought from Play.com for £46.99. This drive supports all DVD formats, has both USB and Firewire interfaces and can burn DVD's at 20x speed. I've had the drive now for about 6 weeks and am very impressed with it. It is very fast, much faster than my iMac's Superdrive but admittedly it is a little noisier but not bad enough to be annoying and as it burns so fast any noise is over quickly anyway. I've not used the USB connection so can't comment on that but using the Firewire connection is simplicity in itself and OSX instantly recognises the drive without the need for any drivers or extra software. In fact the only extra software you need is if you wish to burn Lightscribe labels and this is where there are a few problems.

The drive itself doesn't come with any Lightsribe software, at least not for the Mac anyway, and finding decent Lightscribe Printing software is a little tricky but before you install any printing software you first have to install the Lightscribe System software which is available for free from the Lightscribe website. Once you've installed that you can then install your Lightscribe Printing software but which one? There are a few free ones available to download from the Lightscribe website but there are more for the PC than for the Mac and the Mac ones at least are incredibly basic and generally only let you add text but no images which is something that I really wanted to do. The commercially available ones are generally reasonably priced but they really do seem to be hit and miss.

I had Toast 8 installed on my iMac which has a program called Disc Cover RE that is supposed to support Lightscribe. It doesn't. If you look on their forums you'll see countless posts from people saying that they can't get it to work and replies from Roxio saying that it should work and they are working on a fix and hinting that it's not their fault but the fault of the people who make the burners. When Toast 9 was released I upgraded to that as Disc Cover RE was now in version 2. Would that be any better? No. It simply doesn't work. Roxio have produced an update which brings it up to version 2.11 but event that, at least with the Freecom drive, doesn't work and simply says that there is a communication error. This is a real shame because I really like Toast and although Nero is the one program that I miss from the PC, Toast has become a very close second and it would have been so nice to be able to do everything from within the one application, especially as it's supposed to work anyway!

As Toast was no longer an option what else was there to choose from? Well there is a standalone version of Disc Cover that has more features but I wasn't going to pay $35 to find out of that had the same problems as it's RE version. LACiE also do a free piece of software but whilst it doesn't say that it will only work with LACiE burners it certainly didn't work with my Freecom one but then as their software hasn't been updated for 2 years perhaps that isn't surprising.

As well looking on the Lightscribe website I also did a search in Google and this did confirm that Lightscribe software is much better supported and with many more companies making it for the PC then for the Mac which is a real shame as, for me at least, Lightscribe seems such a good idea. Thankfully though the Lightscribe website came through for me and I found a link to the Smile on my Mac website.

Smile on my Mac produce a piece of software called Disclabel that, like almost all Lightscribe printer software, supports conventional label printing along with Lightscribe and what's more, this one works!

The only downside to Disclabel is that it's not free but at only $35.95 it's not exactly going to break the bank and after all the problems I had encountered just trying to find a program that actually worked I was quite happy to pay that amount especially as it's so easy to use and so powerful. As you would expect you can design your own labels by adding any images of your own or using Disclabels clipart collection that can be optionally downloaded for free. Disclabel doesn't just restrict you to simply adding images and text though as it also comes with a huge array of effects that can be applied either to individual layers to create weird, wonderful and eye catching results. Potentially all of this sounds like it could be quite complicated to use. It's not and as Disclabel also comes with a wide range of templates it's very easy to create a professional looking label in minutes. Whilst Disclabel does integrate with iTunes and iPhoto allowing you to create labels based on playlists and using photos from your iPhoto library the real icing on the cake for me would have been if Disclabel could access my Aperture library as well but for $35 I really couldn't have expected that.

So now that I had my drive and working Lightscribe software how did it all perform? Brilliantly. The Freecom drive is so good that I now never use the Superdrive in my iMac at all. It rips CD's faster, burns DVD's faster, is much less fussy over what discs it can read and, of course, it can burn Lightscribe labels. When it comes to burning the Lightscribe labels I must admit that I've only ever used the slowest setting which gives the best results as the laser 'burns' for longer creating higher contrast labels that are easier to read and a full label which covers the entire surface of the disc with few empty areas takes around 15 minutes. Yes this is slower than printing a stick on label or even printing onto the surface of the disc using an ink jet printer and no it's not possible to create full colour labels but for my purposes they are absolutely ideal and whilst I do keep a pack of non Lightscribe discs by my computer it is almost always the Lightscribe ones I reach for first. It might take a little longer to print but it's so much cleaner and easier.