Acetone: Mount and manage your CD/DVD ISOs

Jack Wallen
Dec 1, 2009
Updated • Feb 15, 2018
Linux
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3

I have been working with the Acetone ISO manager and have been in awe at how much this tool can do.

The creators of Acetone call it a CD/DVD image manager, but from my perspective it is much more than that. Acetone is more like an emulator for different types of ISOs that can allow the user to do many things with ISO images: Mount, split, convert, compress, encrypt, and more. Acetone even allows the user to download videos from Youtube and burn them to CD/DVD.

But don't expect such a powerful tool to be as simple to use as, say K3B. Acetone takes some getting used to. In this article I am going to show you how to install Acetone, mount an ISO image, and (of course) download a video from Youtube for burning.

Installation

You can install Acetone from pre-compiled binaries for the following distributions:

You can also install from source, which can be found here. Since my current desktop of choice is still Ubuntu, we'll work with that installation. You will not be able to find Acetone in your repository, without adding a new line to your /etc/apt/sources.list file. The line you need to add is:

deb http://archive.getdeb.net/ubuntu karmic-getdeb apps

Once you have that line in place you will need to download and install the GPG key for the repository. This is done with the following command:

wget -q -O- http://archive.getdeb.net/getdeb-archive.key | sudo apt-key add -

With the apt line in place and the GPG key installed you are ready to rock. Go to this GetDeb page and click on the "Install this now" button to open up GDebi for installation. You will have to enter your sudo password for this to continue. Once the installation is complete, you will find Acetone in the Sound and Video sub-menu of the Applications menu.

Usage

Figure 1
Figure 1

When you fire up Acetone you will first have to take care of a couple of configurations. These configurations are very simple and are handled through a user-friendly Preferences window (see Figure 1). You will need to configure:

  • File manager
  • Database (location to save file)

You can also configure other options, but the above two options must be configured before you can continue to use the tool.

Figure 2
Figure 2

The Acetone main window (see Figure 2) is quite simple to navigate. The main window is set up in three panes:

Left pane: This shows the "database" of your images. This is really just a listing of the images you have created.

Upper right pane: This is the working pane where you mount, unmount, and burn images.

Lower right pane: This pane displays the progress of your jobs.

Now, let's mount an ISO to work with. I am going to assume you have an ISO image downloaded to your machine. What you want to do is:

  • Click the Mount button.
  • Navigate to the ISO image you want to mount.
  • Click Open to mount the drive.

The mounted image will now appear in a newly opened file manager window. You can feel free to work with that image before you unmount it.

Create ISO from folder

You can also create an ISO from a folder with Acetone. To do this follow these steps:

  1. Click on the Image Conversion menu.
  2. Select Generate ISO from Folder.
  3. Navigate to the folder you want to use.
  4. Give the ISO a name and a location.
  5. Click Save.

That's it.

Download video from Youtube

I am not quite sure why this feature was added, but it's nice and it works very well. To accomplish this follow these steps:

  1. Click on the Video menu.
  2. Click on the Youtube Download Video sub-menu.
  3. Select either Anonymous or User Account entry (depending on if you have an account).
  4. Paste the URL to the video in the resulting window.
  5. Click OK.
  6. Navigate to a folder where you would like to save your video.
  7. Click OK.

This process can take a while, depending upon your connection speed and the file size. Once this is complete you will have a converted mp4 file to view.

Final thoughts

Acetone is a very handy application. We'll cover some of the more advanced features of this tool at a later date. Until then, enjoy this powerful, useful tool.

Summary
Acetone: Mount and manage your CD/DVD ISOs
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Acetone: Mount and manage your CD/DVD ISOs
Description
In this article I am going to show you how to install Acetone, mount an ISO image, and (of course) download a video from Youtube for burning.
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Ghacks Technology News
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Comments

  1. Crow said on December 3, 2009 at 6:32 am
    Reply

    You can find Acetone ready to install for PCLinuxOS through Synaptic in their own repository, just a few clicks and that’s all, no command line.

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