VCD to MP4?

[VideoNoob123]

i got 2 very old vcd's and i wanted to convert them to mp4 , i couldnt find a decent tutorial, mostly i read just to rename the specific file with the extension *.mp4? is this right?

thanks!

[Baldrick]

Nope. You can't just rename them.

Try convert the vcd dat files to mp4 with handbrake instead. If you can't open the dat directly then convert/remux it to a mpg with the old vcdgear or isobuster.

[VideoNoob123]

Nope. You can't just rename them.

Try convert the vcd dat files to mp4 with handbrake instead. If you can't open the dat directly then convert/remux it to a mpg with the old vcdgear or isobuster.

thanks a lot for the quick reply, @handbrake, shall i just open/import the file and dont change settings and just convert?
cause there are a lot of settings and i dunno if those are the right defaults as the source file.

[Baldrick]

You can try with default settings first. Use the high profile preset.

[VideoNoob123]

You can try with default settings first. Use the high profile preset.

ahhh, thanks a lot your reply came earlier than expected cause i made those settings now and wanted to show , i switched to large file (i dunno if it's good), in audio to stereo (cause i dont think those are dolby etc.) and the bitrate to 192 kbps and 44.1 khz.

[Cornucopia]

Nonono!
You are losing quality by reconverting and don't have much to start out with, being VCD. A vcd is just an MPG1 video stream and an MP2 audio stream in an MPG1 System stream container under the hood.
Since both the video and the audio streams are fully compliant and acceptable as-is in an MP4 container, it makes more sense, quality-wise, to just demux & remux.
I would use VCDGear to do the DAT2mpg, then TMPGEnc to do the demux and Yamb to do the remux...
...just tried it and it's actually even easier. Just do the dat2mpg and drag the mpg into Yamb! It'll do the demux+remux for you.

Scott

<edit>The only downside to this is that M1V+MP2-in-MP4 is not that common, so some apps might not be prepared to used it. In that case, I guess you must go the re-encoding route.</edit>

[Baldrick]

Yep, try Cornucopias method first. You can also use mymp4boxgui instead of yamb, just add the mpg and make a new mp4.

[jagabo]

You can drag/drop DAT files onto a batch file that uses ffmpeg to remux DAT to MP4:

"g:\program files\ffmpeg\bin\ffmpeg" -i %1 -vcodec copy -acodec copy "%~n1.mp4"

Just change the path to ffmpeg.exe. A 500 MB DAT file (~50 minutes) took about 4 seconds to remux to MP4 on my computer. Converting the same DAT file to h.264 with Handbrake took about a minute (using the Intel QSV encoder).

[jman98]

The only downside to this is that M1V+MP2-in-MP4 is not that common, so some apps might not be prepared to used it. In that case, I guess you must go the re-encoding route.

Yeah, this is my concern. After seeing EVERY hardware player I have vomit on an MKV file that contained Xvid video and AC3 audio (my PC played it fine, by the way) that thought occurred to me that firmware writers may not be smart enough to have supported MV1+MP2 in MP4 even though it's valid. But if the original poster only wants to play things on a PC, that won't be a concern.