Don't recognize avi saved to disc

[yuri nalisis]

To clear some space on my hard drive I burned some avi files to CDR disc. Now I want to put those files back on the hard drive in order to convert and burn to DVD-R.
I know I can play the dat file in the MPEGAV folder, but do I need any of the other folders/files?
How do I put what was once an AVI file, but is now a collection of folders and files (with no avi extension to be found) back on my hard drive?

[gll99]

Did you forget that you converted the avi files to mpeg1 and made a vcd out of them? Some people say just rename the dat to mpg but I think the file header will still be wrong even though it will play fine. There was a freeware program floating around at one time called dat2mpg. Don't know if it's still around but look for it. There is no real advantage in converting the files back to avi. Although the file size may be smaller as a divx you could end up with poor video due to the dual conversion.

btw) Depending on certain video and audio properties you can make dvd's out of your mpeg1

[mats.hogberg]

VCDGear is the way to go from VCD back to mpg. But you'll never get your old AVIs back without reencoding the mpegs to AVI, thus losing quality.

/Mats