What's wrong with my VCD?? (I need your help desperately)

[Agent Guile]

Have you ever experienced this problem in your VCD (or VCD player)?

You were enjoying watching a VCD movie with your VCD player connected
to your TV, and then, a few minutes later, things start to go kinda
wrong. Sound starts to break, and then picture starts to skip. So you
weren't able to enjoy watching the movie. Then you thought that the VCD
would run better in your cd-rom drive, so you decided to play it there
instead using your Windows Media Player or whatever program you have. To
your surprise, the VCD indeed ran smoothly in the cd-rom drive. So you
thought that maybe the problem is with the VCD player, and not in the
VCD. So you decided to test the VCD player. You put another VCD in it. It
ran smoothly. And then you put the VCD that you were watching
originally. Same problem showed up.

That's the problem I have right now. I couldn't figure out where the
problem is.

And here's the weirder part. I've tried to copy the vcd content (the avseq01.dat file) to my hard disk, and it was copied successfully. Assuming that the avseq01.dat file is indeed corrupt, then it shouldn't be able to be copied to the hard disk.

[kinneera]

This may seem like a silly suggestion, but check the VCD for fingerprints. VCDs have no error correction, so fingerprints can cause huge problems, and many standalones have less tolerant read lasers than those in computer CD-ROMs. I've had a problem very similar to the one you describe a few times, and that was the cause.

[vitualis]

Another possibility is that you have a batch of dodgy CD media.

The disc may be burnt okay, but some CD drives may have difficultly in reading it. Most modern CD-ROM drives are quite forgiving so can deal with most CD media with no trouble. However, the CD drives in stand-alone VCD players may not be as tolerant.

I recently had a problem with a batch of media causing playback difficulties on my stand-alone VCD player (very similar to the symptoms you described). However, these played fine on my DVD player and PC. As a solution, I copied the offending discs onto some safe Kodak media and have decided to restrict that batch of discs to just CD-ROMs.

Regards.

[Agent Guile]

So, you think that a DVD player provides better performance in VCD playback?
Thanks for the help!

[vitualis]

Not necessarily.

Many DVD players do play VCDs very well. If you do plan to get a DVD player, make sure that it also supports CD-R and CD-RW media on top of S/VCD compatibility.

Regards.