VCD to DIVX Conversion

[DarkPhoenix77]

I am a newbie to the world of VCD and if this is already posted, please forgive me because I could not locate the answer thread.

I have a physical VCD with 2 movies on it and I would like to convert it to 2 DIVX (AVI) files. I want to add the DIVXs to others I have and burn it to a disc. Can anyone help me with a step-by-step or, if you can find a thread with the information on it, direct me to the right path? I did see posts about conversing MPEG-1 to DIVX but I wouldn't even know where to start with the folders and files on a physical VCD.

Thanks in advance

[rumplestiltskin]

VCD & MPEG Tools should be able to do this for you, IIRC.

Here's the link:

http://www.burningthumb.com/vcdtools.html

Please let us know if this helps.

[tomlee59]

I am a newbie to the world of VCD and if this is already posted, please forgive me because I could not locate the answer thread.

I have a physical VCD with 2 movies on it and I would like to convert it to 2 DIVX (AVI) files. I want to add the DIVXs to others I have and burn it to a disc. Can anyone help me with a step-by-step or, if you can find a thread with the information on it, direct me to the right path? I did see posts about conversing MPEG-1 to DIVX but I wouldn't even know where to start with the folders and files on a physical VCD.

Thanks in advance

Here are a couple of other hints, beyond the useful link that rumplestiltskin kindly offered. A VCD has several folders in it, only one of which has the media file you're interested in. That folder is labeled MPEGAV, and will contain one or more files with a .dat extension. That's where your movie lives. If you see more than one .dat, check the file sizes. Tiny ones tend to be things like adverts, copyright notices, etc. You can ignore the ones you don't want. VLC will play .dat files, so you can check what these are.

Some conversion software can operate directly on .dat files, but not all can. In those latter cases, use something like VCDgear (free) to convert the .dat files into compliant .mpg files. This does not alter quality in any way -- it just converts file formats, essentially. Because no media conversion is involved, this is very fast.

Once you have plain old .mpg files, you're good to go. Use any of a number of options, including the venerable ffmpegx (not free, but very inexpensive), to convert from mpg to divx.