Active@ ISO Manager vs bchunk

Active@ ISO Manager is a Windows utility for authoring, editing, extracting, rebuilding, and burning ISO images compatible with ISO 9660 and Joliet standards. It can create images from existing CD/DVD-ROMs or from files and folders, then extract files, change image contents, and assemble the result again. The listed image format is ISO. Burning support includes CD-R, DVD-R, DVD+R, rewritable discs, dual-layer DVD, HD DVD, and Blu-ray. Command-line parameters automate authoring and burning, while saved settings retain entered parameters for repeated image creation. The creation guide describes adding a boot image and selecting floppy or HDD emulation. The product page lists version 26.0.1, dated February 1, 2026, as a maintenance release; version 23 improved Windows 11 support. The Freeware plan costs nothing and uses a Windows Installer. LSoft says its Professional edition is available only in the Active@ Data Studio Desktop Suite. LSoft Technologies is a privately owned North American company founded in 1999, headquartered in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada.

bchunk is a free command-line utility that converts CD images and tracks. It accepts a .bin image, a .cue index containing track types and offsets, and an output basename. BIN/CUE and RAW/CUE inputs can produce ISO or CDR output. The -w option writes audio tracks as WAV files, while -s changes the byte order of audio samples. For MODE2/2352 tracks, -p handles PlayStation mode by outputting 2336 bytes from offset 0; -r writes raw 2352-byte data from offset 0. The README identifies the program as binchunker version 1.2.2 and describes compiling with make and installing with make install. Its changelog records fixes for a heap-based buffer overflow and a null access violation and crash caused by malformed CUE files. bchunk runs on Linux and macOS, is released under the GNU GPL version 2 or later, and has no GitHub releases listed.