Is VCD burning and then VCD-Gear ripping Lossless?

[DeadFred]

I was wondering if any one new if the process of VCD burning and the reaquiring MPG from VCD is lossless. (I'm using Nero to burn, and VCD Gear to change the .dat file back to a .mpg)

I've tried it and the files are close in size, but not exact. The four I've tried I get back more information than I originally had, but less if I fix errors. I've yet to burn a reaquired Mpeg to see if the .dat's are different.

On the other hand when I let gear change the Mpg->dat->Mpeg I recieve the exact same file back (same at the binary level, not just same size)

Here's the file sizes. And the transfers

       VCD Source     ->MPG              Fix Errors (#)        Orig MPG
1     105,941,180     104,607,888     104,556,760 (1)     104,559,084
2      17,757,644       17,474,156       17,423,028 (1)      17,425,352
3     176,915,132     174,736,912     174,685,784 (1)     174,688,108
4     104,233,628     102,920,664     102,869,536 (1)     102,871,860

2     VCD              VCD->MPG    MPG->DAT     DAT->MPG
      17,757,644     17,474,156     17,684,732     17,474,156

2     MPG              MPG->DAT     DAT->MPG
       17,425,352    17,635,340     17,425,352

[danalmsa]

From what I understand, when an MPG is converted to VCD(dat) some type of padding is added for sector alignment(or some other reason). When you rip using VCD Gear(or VCD Easy), the padding is removed. So in theory you should have the exact same file size.

So the ripping is lossless. Any extra bytes that are removed are probably not gonna affect the video.