How to extract VCD to hard drive into separate .mpeg files

[mensoy]

Hello all experts out there, I need your help:

I have a concert VCD that I would like to transfer to hard drive. The disc has one big MUSIC01.DAT file under the \MPEGAV folder. Currently when I copy the .dat file or use ISOBuster to extract the MPEG file to my hard drive, I get a single big file. Obviously, I don't the chapter information anymore once I did the file copy. When I play the disc with a settop box or PowerDVD, I am able to navigate the chapters.

My goal is to extract the disc onto hard drive into separate small files; one file per chapter. Would someone please point me to the program that handles that? I have been doing some research and found that ENTRIES.VCD is the file that holds the chapter (entry points) information on VCD. But I am unable to find a program that does the cutting by extracting the chapter information from the ENTRIES.VCD file. Any help is appreciated. Thank you very much.

[lumis]

well, i'm not sure of a program that could extract it by chapter..

but vcdgear can extract the .dat to an mpeg file.. they're always changing that program, so it might be able to do exactly what you need..

as far as cutting the mpeg file in to chapters, you could easily do that with tmpgenc, or womble mpeg-vcr, or many other programs..

you might also checkout dat2mpg

[jman98]

No program can split your VCD file into chapters because chapters don't actually exist on VCDs and SVCDs. They are called "entry points" and while they work like chapters, they aren't chapters. The only way to get the "chapter information" is to write it down by hand. Sorry.

[mensoy]

Thanks for the reply.

I would imagine that if programs such as PowerDVD can read those entry points (chapters), there would be a programmatic way for tools such as VCDCutter or tmpgenc to use those entry points and cut up the big dat into separate mpeg files. Of course, I am no expert in this matter.