copying VCD Acess denied and similar in every program/method

[M_immenses]

Could somebody please help me out here because i am getting very stressed out!

It seems that the vcd i have got hold of is copy protected in some form or another

the first thing i tried was to copy the files using the standard windows copy and paste but it said "invalid ms-dos function"

Next i tried Nero 5.5 to make an image file and it said "access denied" or when i did get it going in vcd mode it started burning an image to my hard drive (which i wanted) and about 3 quarters of the way through it said it could not continue, and that there was an error with the file

So then i came on here and tried everything and every program i could find to convert or copy this damned disk and pretty much the same thing happens every time, it starts to read and then half way along it stops with a very annoying error!

i have tried every single piece of advice and i have downloaded every program that was recommended but still i cannot copy the disk!

by the way there is nothing wrong with the disk itself and it plays fine on my computer!

I have read on this site that you cannot copy protect a vcd but i really cannot think of any other thing that could be preventing me from copying this disk!

[M_immenses]

Can ANYBODY here help me out? or is this vcd im trying to copy a total waste of time?

[dumwaldo]

have you tried this?
http://www.vcdhelp.com/vcdgeargui.htm

thats the only converter i feel you can trust. over 150 VCD's converted and the only problem ever was spalshot 2.

[M_immenses]

Yeah i have tried that and i get the error "file not found D:\Mpegav\Avseq01.dat" where D:\ is my cd rw/dvd-rom combo drive.

I then tried to play the cd to check if all was ok and it was, it played absolutely fine

[dumwaldo]

i decided to play around with my slapshot 2 VCD since it seems to recreate the same problem you are having. like i said before i converted many movies from the cue/bin format to mpg with the early version of VCDGear before and since but for some reason slapshot 2 was the one movie that it wouldnt convert. so i burned my VCD direct from the cue/bin files. the resulting VCD plays fine on my PC with InterVideo WinDVD however when played on my apex ad-1500 or playing the dat file through windows media player 6.4 i had a problem with audio-sync.

when i tried to use VCDGear to bring the dat file back onto my computer in mpg form i recieved the same error message saying that the file could not be found. i decided to do what i constantly preach not to and that is i dragged the dat file to my hard drive and then once i had it on my hard drive i renamed it with an mpg extension. the resulting file displayed the same properties as the VCD, playing fine in WinDVD and out of sync in WMP. it also had another problem when i would go to full screen mode in WMP it would increase the size to fit the screen horizontally but maintain 240 pixels in height so it was a very distorted squashed look.

i used this mpg file to burn another VCD. the result was still the same thing as far as playing the VCD. however this time i am able to pull the mpg off the VCD using VCDGear. unfortunatley the resulting mpg file gives me an error stating that "no combination of filters could be found to render stream" when attempting to play with WMP, again WinDVD plays fine.

i set out to 'fix' the dat file that i had renamed to mpg. the first thing i tried was to just use TMPGEnc and re-encode it with a VCD template. no luck there. the dreaded "illegal floating decimal point calculation order" error would let that happen. i could not get the file open in TMPGEnc.

next try is to use the mpeg tools in TMPGEnc to multiplex the mpg file again. remarkable doing this corrects the audio skew when playing in WMP, but it still will not load in TMPGEnc and it still plays squashed in full screen mode.

so i turn to VirtualDub and load the questionable, renamed from dat, re-multiplexed, mpg file. using direct stream copy for the audio and the huffy codec for video i re-encode an avi file from the 'bad' mpg. the resulting file plays fine in WMP, showing full screen in the correct aspect ratio and with the correct audio sync.

ok now i am pulling into the home stretch thinking everything has got to work from here on out, so i load up TMPGEnc with a VCD template (no filters) and open my new huffy codec avi file. re-encode the file to VCD compliant mpg and open it in WMP. everything looks great, full screen with correct aspect ratio and the audio lines up right. one minute and fourty four seconds into the video the audio completely cuts out for the rest of the twenty three and a half minute video.

the next step is the most critically important of all of them. thats the step where i called it quits for the day on that file. maybe tomorow i will play with it some more and see what i can figure out to get this file correct. to be honest it looks like i will have to seperate the audio and video to correct this and i am not very fond of that. like i said maybe tomorow.

anyway i dont really know if this will be of any help but your post motivated me to start looking into the only suspect VCD i have seen in the last year. i did some playing and thought this information might be of help to you if you were doing the same thing. if i get my file completely fixed i assure you i will post again to let you know exactly how i got it fixed.

[M_immenses]

I thank you very much for trying to help me out to this extent! I see you have done a lot of work on this and i am very greatful to you.

BUT i have found the perfect solution to my problem, and hopefully it can fix yours as well. This method has worked for two of these "copy protected" disks now so i am very confident in it. 8)

First step is to get CDR-win and open it up. Next go to burn an image to your hard-drive and when the box full of options comes up, under the "reading options" and "error recovery" select the box labelled "Replace" and then select where you want the image to go to and leave everything else as it is. next click START and away it goes. This has worked about 5 0r 6 times now for me and everything is fine.

after it has finished burning a boz comes up with the details in it. In mine it said that one sector had been corrected. this is the one i beleive to be copy protected n some way or another.

anyway a Bin and a cue file are placed on your hard drive and they play perfectly!

After this i just used vcdgearGUI to convert the bin file to a mpg because the bin is too big to copy to a cd-r

Then i used nero's vcd option to burn them and hey presto out comes a perfect vcd, with nero converting my .mpg file to .dat automatically!

It seems i have found the solution to our problems!

Again, thanks for your very good help, and i hope my method can help you too!