VCD became CDA ???

[saft13]

About 2yrs ago, I had my wedding video tape converted to VCD. It played fine then. About a year back, I had problems playing on my vcd player. But it had no problems playing on the computer.
Now, I cannot play it on the computer on even a dvd player. I started explorer to look into the VCD. What surprised me was that it did not contain the standard sub-folders, eg. Cdi, Mpeg, Vcd . . .etc.
What's contain in it were 2 files, Track01 and Track02. Both were of 1KB file size with the "cda" file extension. OK, here's my question.
Could it be possible that when it was burnt, the VCD was NOT "finalised" or something ? Could it be possible then that repeated viewing deteriorated the VCD contents ? I know that this is really silly, but anyone with any clue to what might have happen, I'd be very much appreciated.
Thanks!

[Mirror_Image]

Sounds like you have the stubs of 2 CD-Audio files there, but how they got there, I can't even hazard a guess (other than to say they were burned there).

[davemcg37]

try copying the vcd to somewhere on your hard-drive e.g "my documents" then change the file extension to avi it should play in wmp

[saft13]

I've tried copying it onto my hard-drive & re-naming the extension. Unfortunately wmp post me an error as it doesn't recognize the format. The funny thing is that these 2 "stubs", although windows explorer shows them to be 1KB size. . . . . in Winamp ( in the cda extension ) it shows them to be of different length !!
Track 01 is 36 seconds while Track 02 is 60mins 07 seconds. Incidently, this is from Disk 1 of my wedding VCD. In Disk 2, Track 01 is the same and Track 02 is 22mins 58 seconds.

Is there any way for me to salvage it ??
My thanks again to all replies, really appreciate it !!!

[kinneera]

This seems to happen for some reason when Windows can't figure out how to read a multisession disc (which is what VCDs technically are). It treats it as an audio CD by default and displays the sessions as audio tracks. Since Winamp reports the first track is very short and the second one quite long, this is very consistent with a VCD (the first track is ISO-9660 and is generally only a few megabytes in size). This means the data is probably still good. I suggest trying the vcdxrip tool that is packaged with the VCDImager tools. VCDEasy makes it quite easy to use this tool to rip a disc directly.

[gll99]

Try isobuster it will read and allow you to extract multiple session content to HD.

Easy CD creator also has an app called session selector. If that is your problem it should solve it.

I would make a raw disk to disk backup copy of such an important memento before playing with it.

[2man]

install a VCd player or anmount the vcd with vcdeasy pack

[saft13]

Hi again everyone . . . .
I've tried the Vcdxrip tool in VCDEasy as well as Isobuster.
Vcdxrip needs a CUE or BIN file to rip when my disk only has CDA-type files.
Anyway, I think Isobuster sums it up the best when it tried to read the vcd.
This is what it tells me :
"The Primary Volume Descriptor (PVD) is unreadable"
"Read Error at address : 16"
"Device reported Error : 03/02/00"

I guess my wedding disk IS dead !!

Many thanks to those that replied to me aid. I can't thank you guys enough. Now . . . if only I can remember where I "chuck" the original video tape ???!!!!

[kinneera]

How did you attempt to use vcdxrip? In VCDEasy, there should be an option to rip from a drive, in which case you shouldn't need a source bin/cue...

[gll99]

Did you try to make a backup copy (cdcopy) not to HD? Like Nero "CDCOPY". It may only copy the error over but its worth a try.
Check the disk for dirt (the bottom surface) don't rub in circles but across the grain and don't use kleenex tissue (shreds).
I cleaned one disk and managed to get a copy when my system wouldn't read it then it was gone but I got my copy.

Don't give up too quickly. Your video is there its just to find the right tool to read and copy the raw data.

[gll99]

Just had another thought. I searched under GOOGLE for "cd recover" and found http://www.naltech.com/

They claim that their software is able to recover damaged cd and cdrw, even deleted files.

They have a trial for download. There are many others you may want to explore.

Hope you succeed. let us know.

[saft13]

Hi guys !!
gll99, you're right. I shouldn't give up too fast. Anyway, I've tried the naltech product. It seems that its catered to dataCD recovery. I am checking thru the net for a VCDRecovery.

kineera, I had attempted to rip the info from my hard disk( after having copied it over). Anyway, on gll99's advice, I've made a CD to CD copy and tried ripping it again. And you're right. There is the option of just ripping it from the CDwriter. I have already manage to fininsh to 2nd CD of me wedding CD and I now have 2 files : mywed.bin (243,713KB) and mywed.toc (1KB). I'm not sure whether to be happy or not.

I've tried using VCDGear to covert the BIN file to Mpeg or dat . . but it gives an error trying to read the file.

Right now VCDEasy is ripping away the 1st CD. It's already abt 2 hrs.
I assume it's going to be another 2 before it completes.

I'll keep you guys posted. Thanks again very much!

[saft13]

Hi again . . it's almost 24hrs since VCDEasy started to rip my 1st VCD and its still NOT completed.

In fact, at every sector it's giving me this warning message :
"WARNING: Found L-EC error at sector 10013 - ignored."

I tried looking it up in the internet on what "L-EC" means . . . and I'm lost.
Anyone out there whose able to explain it to me in plain english, I be much appreciated.

Regards . . .in the words of one Terminator : "I'll be back!!!"

[liquid217]

are you absolutely sure this is the correct disc? Any possibility of it being mislabled or anything? CD-Audio doesn't even use the same format as a vcd. are they're any scratches on the disc? This sounds really wierd. I feel for you, i really do. Im the type guy that loves to archive stuff like that, but it just sounds like your looking at the wrong disc. I would be interested to see if the same basic directory structure shows up if you looked at it on a different pc and cd-rom combination....maybe a friends, or someone's pc at work.

[kinneera]

Hi again . . it's almost 24hrs since VCDEasy started to rip my 1st VCD and its still NOT completed.

In fact, at every sector it's giving me this warning message :
"WARNING: Found L-EC error at sector 10013 - ignored."

It should only take a few minutes for VCDEasy to rip the disc, so something is definitely wrong. It is really odd that it is giving you those errors though, since VCDs don't use error-correction bits, and I would be willing to bet EC stands for error correction. Is it possible that the video was burned as a regular data CD or some sort of CD-extra format with multiple sessions rather than as an actual VCD disc?

[saft13]

Yes, they are absolutely the correct discs. They work perfectly before.
There are no MAJOR scratches other than what you'd normally get on a played disc. It really IS weird. I've already tried it on different PC. On a DIY PC, the CD drive simply rejects it with a "Device Read Error". On a Dell PC, it shows the same 2 "stubs" . . as with a Compaq PC and my IBM PC.

Anyway . . last check, I'm on sector 14302.
("WARNING: Found L-EC error at sector 14302 - ignored.")

As for how the video was burnt, I have no idea, other than it played without problems after it was collected.

Anyway . . . there's still tomorrow.
Have a good weekend everyone !!!

[mckeomat]

hi there, is it possible that your disk has been damaged in a way other than scratching, has it been dropped or banged? has it been left exposed to direct sunlight for a length of time, or have any chemicals come into contact with the disk?

[saft13]

Nope, they were not subjected to heat, sunlight or any harmful chemicals. Theu were not dropped or banged. In fact, I would have thought they looked great !!.

Anyway . . here's an update. Remember the 2nd disc which I had managed to rip via VCDxRip? I started VCDEasy and, with reference to the TOC file, burnt the BIN file. It went without a glitch.

However, when I tried to play it, it gave me a black screen. I know it's playing, by the on-screen timer display.

Any suggestions/recommendations from anyone ??

Thanks in advance to everyone!!

[Aussie Sun]

I know this sounds crazy, but you are not alone.

When I try to create an VCD/SVCD/DVD with DVD Movie Factory it creates only CDA tracks instead of the usual file structure (usually Track01 and Track02 although further tracks are created for each additional file MPEG file that is added!).

Everything appears to work fine during the creation process and it appears to burn OK but it creates these CDA tracks. The created does not work in Win Me or in the standalone DVD player.

The most amazing thing is that a couple of days ago I was burning CD which worked perfectly. Could it be a virus which has changed the system?


I have tried using various combinations of the MPEGAV/MPEG2 structure for SVCD's but still creates the CDA tracks.

Could this help you solve saft13's problems.

Any ideas?

Thanks

[rocknroll_1950]

i think you both should try formatting and starting from scratch. sounds to me like the defaults for the file associations have been changed, possibly by some sort of virus or hacker - just a guess though.

also is the disk/s badly scrathed?

oO ELVIS Oo