Im a newbie so please be patient, I need help!!!

[chipt69]

Why is vcdeasy copying my mpeg file to cd as a dat file? Is it me that's doing something wrong or is it the program? After I've ripped the file from the dvd and changed it to an mpeg I can view it on the computer just fine. But when I burn it to the cd it transforms it to a dat file.....can I be helped or am I a lost cause.

[xsbs52x]

when vcdeasy burns a cd, it first makes an image of the cd it is going to burn, then it burns the image. this is normal, its just what vcdeasy does. if u want to make a copy of the vcd u just burned, u can keep the image it makes and just burn the image instead of copying the disc. u can delete the image after it is done burning, there is no need to keep it unless u really want to, and dont worry about the fact that it is making it, if the vcd works, who cares?

[Don2050]

it should be a dat...otherwise I dont think it would play in a dvd player. I beleive the dat file is just a container for the mpg and some extra info needed for standalone dvd players to play them properly.

[solarfox]

This is indeed normal. The White Book standard, which specifies the data and directory structures for the VideoCD format, requires that the file be named with a .DAT extension. (Note that White Book was, if memory serves, defined by Philips before MPEG files were in common use on personal-computer platforms, so they wouldn't have had any reason to use the now-common MPG extension. Also, a White-Book VCD .DAT file differs somewhat in structure, since it does indeed contain some data structures specifically designed to be useful to a standalone VCD player.) Therefore, when VCDEasy creates a VideoCD out of your MPEG files, it's going to add those data structures and convert it to a White Book-compliant .DAT file, so it can make a White Book-compliant VCD.

If you just want to save the MPEG-1 file to a CD-R _without_ creating a VCD, use Nero and burn as a data disc, rather than a VCD. (Note, though, that you might not be able to fit the whole file on a data disc, depending on how big it is -- White Book VCD squeezes extra capacity out of the disc by using the space normally reserved for error-correction codes as data space instead.)

[xsbs52x]

sorry, i didnt realize u ment ON the disc there was a dat file, i thought u were reffering to the bin and cue files vcdeasy generates. but anyway, it is just a way of getting the standalone dvd player to read it.