I have a .DAT file and don't know what program I need to open it

[geek2330]

well, this is for my friend, ge's got this .DAT file and it is supposed to be a video file, the person he's got the file from mentioned to use PowerDVD to open the file, I tried it but PowerDVD won't do anything.

Does the file need any convertion to something else to then be able to open in PowerDVD or other DVD player program?

Please help

[Seeker47]

well, this is for my friend, ge's got this .DAT file and it is supposed to be a video file, the person he's got the file from mentioned to use PowerDVD to open the file, I tried it but PowerDVD won't do anything.

Does the file need any convertion to something else to then be able to open in PowerDVD or other DVD player program?

IF this is the same sort of .DAT file I have picked up a number of times -- when trying to capture an online .WMV file, for example, without using one of the right programs for this -- it is going to be only part of the video file, and quite useless on its own. I'm very new to this streaming capture thing myself, so I'm sure you can get much better advice from someone else here. The problems come up because sites go to some lengths to conceal the actual location of the video (which is why a URL sniffer plays a key role here), and to keep you from successfully grabbing it.

I've just recently installed Orbit Downloader, which looks promising and is free. Other tools in this category (though not necessarily free) include SDP Multimedia, Net Transport, StreamClip, and WMRecorder. I expect to audition more of these, until my toolbox is sufficiently well equipped. If your avatar indicates that you are a LInux user, I don't know what to recommend to you.

[geek2330]

I will find out from my friend how the file was captured for sure, he had told me it was recorded from a channel but wasn't sure enough, the file came from (I think he's from Macedonia or a similar place.....)......

I will call him so he can check exactly how the file was obtained, this might help better......will post back then....

[redwudz]

If it really is a video file, it's likely a MPEG-1 .dat from a VCD file. If so, you could just rename the extension to .mpg and try it that way. Or you can drop it into Gspot and it should be able to tell you more about it. You could also play it back with VLC as is. The .dat extension is also used for other purposes besides video as a 'data' type of file.

See 'WHAT IS' VCD to the upper left on this page for informationon that sort of .dat file.

[geek2330]

thanks redwudz, I changed the extension to MPG and I'm able to play the file in realplayer or windows media player.

Now I'll use SVDC2DVD to convert to VOB and then Imgburn to burn on a dvd....

thanks much for chiming in...!!!