VCD Sample disc image?

[nocash123]

Does somebody have some VCD Sample disc image (stored in cue/bin files, or some other common disc image format)? I've been looking for that VCD sample images for the past 2 years, but it seems to be impossible to find any VCD images in the internet. Just some small sample with 2-3 tracks and a few minutes playtime would be nice. The content doesn't really matter, some shortfilm, webcam recording, or holiday movie, or trailer, or music video, etc. (preferably with legal/free content). Or if somebody has different sample for PAL/NTSC, or for additional variants like SVCD/KVCD would be nice, too. But I would be glad to just to find any simple basic VCD sample, as long as it's actually compatible with standard VCD players.

All I could find are broken links like this:
https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/15905-New-version-of-the-PAL-NTSC-Demo-VCD - broken link
https://www.videohelp.com/vcd.htm#sample - contains only VCD screenshots (JPG files), no actual movies
https://www.slashcam.de/info/kostenlose-Downloads-cooler-DV-Kurzfilme----53560.html - seems to have had VCDs (but now has MP4's only)

Asking because I am interested in the VCD format, and I would like to try to write some VCD software decoder - but that's difficult without even having a VCD disc/image to work on.

[johnmeyer]

I have lots of VCDs, and could simply upload the files from which you could burn a VCD. However, you are asking specifically for a "disc image." I don't have any of my VCDs in that format. Instead they are simply CDs burned in the VCD format.

P.S. there is absolutely NOTHING special about the VCD format. All you do is create MPEG-1 video that conforms to the VCD spec. Pretty much any program can do that.

[nocash123]

Thanks. I am afraid that it's a bit more complex than raw MPEG-1. Going by wikipedia, VCDs are using CR-ROM XA mode (though I don't know yet if the video frames are somewhat aligned to sector boundaries), and VCDs can (optionally at least) have a filesystem with extra VCD information in the first track.

CDROM burning software could probably generate that stuff on the fly, but then, I've also read posts from people suggesting to burn VCD movies on DVDs (which definetly wouldn't comply with the official VCD standard).

So I was hoping to find some ready-for-use CDROM image that's known & tested to work on real VCD players. I don't have a VCD player or any VCD discs myself, and without that hardware, I don't trust myself in creating a properly mastered VCD on my own. A sample disc image from somebody who has more experiences in doing that stuff would be really nice!

[johnmeyer]

Good luck finding a "real VCD player." However, most DVD players, especially the older ones, play VCD. They also often play the higher-quality CD video, SVCD and XVCD. I have authored all of these and have examples.

My point about VCD is that they are trivial to create. You can just use Imgburn or Nero or any other competent disc prep software. Feed it a compliant MPEG-1 file, which can be created with pretty much any video prep software, select the "VCD" option, and you're done. I just fired up my old version of Nero (version 6) which I still use almost every day. I selected "CD" and I was then given the option to select either VCD or Super VCD (SVCD).

As I said in my first post, I can easily upload the files that actually end up on the disc and you should be able to burn them on a CD-RW (so you don't have to waste discs) and then play that in your computer's CD/DVD drive. If that works, put it into a set-top DVD player. If that works, then you've created a legal VCD.

[lingyi]

Asking because I am interested in the VCD format, and I would like to try to write some VCD software decoder - but that's difficult without even having a VCD disc/image to work on.

Asking the obvious...why? VCD and its variants are long dead except possibly in India where "copy protected" bastardized VCDs (far outside of the VCD spec) were / are made. The copy protection of many of these VCDs have never been broken primarily because of the niche market it serves.

AFAIK hardware VCD players only played VCDs (and CDs). Understandable since KVCD, XVCD and SVCD are all well outside of the VCD spec and came during the waning days of VCD.

Right here on Videohelp are pages with all aspects of VCD specs and creation: https://www.videohelp.com/vcd

[nocash123]

Asking the obvious...why?

Just for curiosity. I've written a bunch of computer/console emulators: http://problemkaputt.de/ and when making the playstation emulator, I came across the SCPH-5903 model (an asian Sony Playstation with built-in VCD player). And ever since, I've been wondering how VCDs look like in binary form, eg. when viewing the disc sectors in a hex editor. Only, finding a VCD image turned out to be almost possible (despite of VCDs being said to be immensely popular in asia).

AFAIK hardware VCD players only played VCDs (and CDs). Understandable since KVCD, XVCD and SVCD are all well outside of the VCD spec and came during the waning days of VCD.

Good to know, I've been wondering if those variants were common in use.

As I said in my first post, I can easily upload the files that actually end up on the disc

Yes, would be great! Without help, I wouldn't be sure if I could even create a "compliant MPEG-1 file", so having one of those files would be very nice.
I've used Nero some years ago (and probably still have a copy of it around).
As far as I remember, Nero allows to select a "virtual image recorder" as target drive, which should then write the VCD to a disc-image (in Nero's ".nrg" format), which would be exactly what I am looking for.
If it isn't too much work, could you make/upload one of those .nrg files, too? Best would be having the original ".mpg" file, and a ".nrg" disc image with the same video.

[jagabo]

Use the WayBackMachine to download from their archive of http://www.vcdimager.org. Archives from 2007 and earlier appear to have the discs. The full ZIP files don't seem to be available but the RAR segments are.

http://web.archive.org/web/20061231200626/http://www.vcdimager.org/pub/vcdimager/examples/demovcd/

[jagabo]

Also, you'll find a lot of Indian VCD images if you search bittorrents.

[johnmeyer]

Well don't ever say nobody ever did anything for you. Here it is, hot off the presses. You can be the first kid on your block (and the only one on the planet) to have a VCD of the 2017 Super Bowl Halftime. This is a Nero (.nrg) image file of the VCD because you said you wanted an image file. Enjoy!

SB_2017_Halftime

[jimdagys]

For your info, that halftime nrg file
(that I just downloaded) plays perfectly in vlc android.

[johnmeyer]

For your info, that halftime nrg file (that I just downloaded) plays perfectly in vlc android.

Thanks for doing that. I am doing so many things at once that I forgot to test it after I created it. Hopefully the OP will be able to make use of it.

[nocash123]

Many many thanks! Both for newly created .nrg file, and for the link to the old v0.3 demovcd's from webarchive (should have checked there myself). So now I have... uhmm... quite a bunch of bytes to gaze at. Don't know if I'll really be able to make sense of those bytes, but I am really glad to have them finally. Thanks!

[dannyboy48888]

For current times I just make in tmpeg, drop the file in vcdgear then burn with imgburn, just to give a workflow with tools still available if you want to make more