MagicISO 5.4.0.247

Overview

MagicISO is a disc authoring utility with a focus on disc images. It offers several features connected to disc images that are not offered in most other disc burning applications, such as the ability to convert between image types and edit disc images. Find out in this review if it justifies the $29.95 price tag.

Installation

Installation was quick and hassle-free, and should be done in seconds. There aren’t any complicated settings to understand. You won’t need any additional software to successfully run MagicISO, and it’s supported on any Windows OS, Windows XP onwards. There wasn’t any kind of ad-ware bundled, which is expected considering this isn’t freeware.  

Interface

MagicISO is actually split into two different components, the Magic ISO Maker, and the Magic CD & DVD Burner. While it may seem odd to have an application’s features split into two different components, it actually makes sense here because it’s quite possible that you may need only one of the components and not both for a particular task. Coming first to Magic ISO Maker which forms the core of the software: the interface isn’t very simple or polished. First of all it’s quite crowded with a lot of buttons, toolbars, and directory and folder lists. It’s not laid out too well either, and the placement of some buttons and icons seems haphazard. The interface isn’t very customizable; the toolbars cannot be moved around, but certain components can be hidden. The interface on the whole is quite disappointing, and there’s a lot of freeware out there that looks far more polished. The Magic CD & DVD burner disappoints too, and seems like no more than a dialog box; which is strange because it can be run independent of Magic ISO Maker. On the whole, the interface is probably not meant for beginners and is one that will take time and effort to become comfortable with.

Pros

While the interface is quite intimidating at first, once you get comfortable with it, you can work with it really quickly. In terms of features, MagicISO does not fail to impress. It supports almost every known Image format, including UDF DVDs, XBOX DVDs, and of course standard formats such as ISO and UIF. Creating Bootable images is possible as well, with Multi-Boot images also supported. An interesting feature is the ability to compress and password protect images. You can even convert one type of disc image to another. The Magic CD & DVD burner allows you to burn disc images onto discs, which can come in really handy if you need to burn a disc image that your usual disc authoring application doesn’t recognize. The program is also capable of creating a disc image from a CD or DVD. However, the most important feature of MagicISO is that you can actually open and edit an existing disc image. You can even extract the files from a disc image onto your hard disk. Most disc studios do not offer these features, and is in fact the primary function of MagicISO. Something worth noting is that there are translations offered for the program in more than fifteen different languages. The trial version of the software is fully featured, with the only limitation being that you can’t create disc images above 300MB. To sum it all up, MagicISO performs almost every task you would need for creating and manipulating disc images, and does everything quite well.

Cons

Despite the wide range of image formats supported, MagicISO oddly doesn’t support Blu-Ray or HD-DVD creation. It’s quite strange that this was left out; especially considering the fact that support for out-dated formats such as SVCD and even Floppy Disks was retained even in the latest version of the software. A limitation is that new disc images can only be created in the ISO or UIF formats. It probably won’t cause any problems for most users, but it’s a strange restriction all the same, because the software is obviously capable of opening and editing several other formats.

Alternatives

UltraISO is MagicISO’s closest competitor, and both of them are virtually neck to neck when it comes to features.

Conclusion

MagicISO is a must-have application if you need to create or edit disc images. If you need anything but the most basic tools, most normal disc authoring tools won’t be of much help, thus making MagicISO a good buy if you need the functionality it offers.