Tox_vcd .dat to .mpg experiment that worked!

[cfjh]

Here's something that works.
I was having a terrible time trying to get a good .avi for an auto-play CD. I was making this for a customer. The original video was shot on Mini DV and edited on FCP. They really liked the Music01.dat version I burned directly off my hard drive onto a Terapin. Problem was that unless Media Player has an association with .dat type video, the dreaded "What program would you like to open this up with" dialog box appears.
I tried to rename the file in Win98SE and that didn't fool media player. I noticed two things. When I copied the video file off the Tox_vcd CD to my hard drive and did a right click on the file, it was a "read only" even though it was off the CD and on my drive. Also the DOS name never changed when I changed the name in Win98SE.
So re-rendering this thing from the original video in FCP/QT Pro was getting me no where. My goal was to get something rendered that looked like the VCD version then insert that into my auto-play Either it looked/played terrible or ended up too big. I needed to make this in the .avi so it would play in older PC's without the end user having to upgrade. The I had an idea.
I thought that there had to be away to re-name both the DOS name and the Windows name of VCD authored video. The big hitch was the .dat Here is what I did to fool the Media Player so it would run when the auto-play script executes the video file.
I copied the Music01.dat file to C:/ so I could find it easy. I opened up MS-DOS from the program list. Now we have an old command line DOS thing happening and of course I forgot how to rename. A quick Google search got me the "ren" command and that's it. I did a dir/w at the C:/ prompt to see if the file is really where I put it and saw exactly how DOS names it. The I typed at the C:/ prompt "ren music01.dat music01.mpg" ( leave a space between the command and the old name and the new name, only type the stuff between the "'s)
From everything I've read, VCD's are MPEG 1. Media Player will play .mpg files if they are executed/double clicked so I gave the program what it wanted to see. Once you rename in DOS, close the window and rename it in Win98SE, make sure you leave the .mpg suffix.
Now when I put this .mpg file into the folder for my auto-play script, burnt the CD and pop it into a computer, it works. One last thing, once it was re-named in DOS and in Win98SE, I made it an Archive and de-selected read-only (right click on the file in Windows Explorer, not on a shortcut and make the changes there.)

[vitualis]

There are a few dodgy things here...

Whether you rename it in DOS or Windows, there is only one filename per file. When you rename a file in DOS, it will be "renamed" when you view it with Windows Explorer under Windows.

Ditto with Windows. If you rename something with Windows Explorer, opening up a DOS box will reflect that as well.

Windows may automatically hide the extensions of known extensions (e.g., .mpg) so you should go to Tools --> Folder Options and set it to always show extensions. That way, you can rename all files (including the extension) as you see fit.

Furthermore, you shouldn't be simply renaming the "DAT" file off a VCD. The DAT file isn't quite the original MPEG and some programs may still have problems. It is suggested that you use VCDGear or CDXA2MPEG to convert the DAT file back to standard MPEG (it removes things like RIFF headers among other things).

You can use CDXA2MPEG (a proggy in the VCDImager suite of tools) with VCDImager Tools GUI if you don't like using command console tools.

http://www.vcdimager.org/guides

Regards.