VCD/MPG -> AVI help please

[chrisphoria]

Hi all,

I'm new to playing with video, so I'm hoping someone more experienced can help me out with this. I'm trying to pull video from a VCD, and to convert it to DivX. Here are my symptoms:

1) I can watch the whole VCD (53 minutes) on my PC with Windows Media Player.

2) When I try to load the .dat file from the VCD into VirtualDubMod, it begins to parse as normal, but about halfway through it seems to skip to the end, and VirtualDub then only loads the first 29 minutes of the video.

3) I created an mpeg file with ISOBuster, and can watch it in its entirety with PowerDVD.

4) When I try to load the mpeg in VirtualDubMod, the file same thing happens as when I try to load the .dat file directly.

I have d/led AVISynth, and tried the MPEGDecoder script. When I try to load the .avs file in VirtualDub, however, I get a popup saying "Creating a d2v file," which then stalls out. I've also tried using the DirectShowSource script, but that won't even load in VD: I get an error saying "No combination of filters could be found to render the stream."

I just tried re-extracting the mpg with VCDGear (which apparently fixed 5 errors), and could play the entire file with PowerDVD. Trying to load it in VD with the AviSynth scripts, though, I get the same results.

If anyone could offer some suggestions, I'd appreciate it. Thanks,
Christopher

[xtreemkareem]

You may have a faulty header. Use Tmpgenc. Under MPEG tools, choose multiplex and choose VideoCD (standard). Load it the dat file and output to mpg. Try loading the mpg into VDubMOd and your problem should be solved (cross your fingers).

[chrisphoria]

Thanks for the suggestion. I tried multiplexing the .dat file with Tmpgenc, but the file it created was only 294 MB. When I load this into VD, it ends at the same point where the previous attempts did, about 29 minutes in.

Any other ideas? Thanks again,
Christopher

[xtreemkareem]

Hmmm. if you can load it into TMPGenc, export as AVI using MJPEG or Huffyuv and then load that avi into VDUb. Another option is to actually use TMPGEnc to export it as DivX, but this has limited functionality.

[chrisphoria]

Thanks again for the help. I wasn't sure how to do what you explained, so I started playing with Tmpgenc and figured out a circuitous way of getting what I needed: when I loaded the .dat file in Tmpgenc and tried outputting an mpeg, I kept getting an audio error. So, I created separate video and audio tracks, then combined them in VD. This seems to have worked like a charm.

Cheers,
Christopher

[jimmalenko]

Try VCDGear, and do a dat --> mpeg conversion. Tick the fix mpeg box.