How to rescue VCD data files on a DVDR?

[Sam Ontario]

A few years ago, my sister paid to convert some of her VHSc videos to VCDs. I asked her to send me the VCDs recently. My sister somehow sent me instead a DVDR with 7 subdirectory of 7 VCD data to save money and postage. She did not know that she had to convert (it would have overwhelmed her if she had to do it) it to MPEGII before copy to the DVD+R. What can I do to save these VCD videos?

[Baldrick]

make new vcds? then copy the .dat files from the vcds and author new with vcdeasy.

make a new dvd-video? then add the .dat files from the vcds in tmpgenc dvd author.

[Sam Ontario]

Thanks. I will give them a try.

[choirislife923]

just a tip: if you're going to DVD-video, when encoding, set the bitrate higher than if you were going straight from say..DV tape to DVD.

VCDs already max the crap out of MPEG-1, so they already have a decent amount of macroblocking on the video (especially if its coming from a VHS source)...converting to MPEG-2 will increase it even more if the bitrate is average for a clean source.

[Ai Haibara]

You can also try converting the .dat files to stand-alone MPEGs using VCDGear.

[Sam Ontario]

Thanks guys. I still have not yet successfully to retrieve the .dat to any video formats. I will give VCDGear a try and will report back, thanks.

[MOVIEGEEK]

Use IsoBuster then right-click on the .DAT files and select "Extract but Filter MPEG frames..."

[jagabo]

After extracting MPEG video from the DAT files don't convert it to MPEG 2. The 352x240 MPEG 1 video is perfectly legal for DVD. Just convert the audio to DVD specs.

You can demultiplex the DAT files to M1V (video) and MP2 (audio) files with the free version of TMPGEnc (File -> MPEG Tools -> Simple Demultiplex)

[Guest34343]

DGIndex can demux the streams as well. Or you can frame serve via Avisynth.

[Sam Ontario]

You can also try converting the .dat files to stand-alone MPEGs using VCDGear.

VCDGear does not have .DAT input, nogo.

[Sam Ontario]

Use IsoBuster then right-click on the .DAT files and select "Extract but Filter MPEG frames..."

IsoBuster will not work on .DAT files copied directly from VCD onto DVDR. It works perfect if the input .DAT is from a VCD instead of a DVDR.

[vmesquita287]

SVCD2DVDMPG can reencode demux and reencode audio to fit DVD specs and it's freeware

[Ai Haibara]

VCDGear does not have .DAT input, nogo.

On the version I have (3.55, GUI version), it's under the VCDGear category (press the 'vcdgear' button on the top row), then select "dat - > mpeg" from the 'Extraction / Conversion' dropdown. You should then be able to select .dat files with the file box below.

[Sam Ontario]

VCDGear does not have .DAT input, nogo.

On the version I have (3.55, GUI version), it's under the VCDGear category (press the 'vcdgear' button on the top row), then select "dat - > mpeg" from the 'Extraction / Conversion' dropdown. You should then be able to select .dat files with the file box below.

It said 'Could Not Locate MPEG stream' when I loaded MUSIC03.dat which has the main chumk of the 1st VCD video. Is it corrupted by burning VCD data directly to a DVDR?

[MOVIEGEEK]

Try renaming the DAT files to .MPG,it's not perfect but you might be able to use AVICodec to see what the properties are.