What is a DAT file on a VCD ?

[Welliep53]

I recently bough a VCD movie home to watch on my computer. When I look at the content of the VCD after seeing the movie on my PC. I browsed the CD and I noticed that it contains a number of folders and one of the folder is named MPEGAV. It contains the actual movies in multple files namely MUSIC01.DAT, MUSIC02.DAT, MUSIC03.DAT, ..etc

I thought the movie is in MPEG format ended with mpg like extension. Can someone please explaing it to me what is this DAT ?

I'd like to extract part of the movie and song/muisc onto a CD from the movie such that I can listen when I'm driving. What software is best to do this ? I downloaded VirtualDub and it converted the entire MUISCxx file into a WAV file. I can't extract the portion I'm interested. Is there any tool allowing to extract portion of the WAV file ?

Can any one of you please help ?

Regards

[vitualis]

The "DAT" file is the filesystem representation of the MPEG tracks on the VCD.

The audio isn't actually in WAV format, but rather compressed to MPEG-1 Layer 2 audio (i.e., similar to MP3).

To convert it to wave, I suggest that you use TMPGEnc --> MPEG Tools --> Demultiplex

Then load up the DAT file.

Save the audio component of the DAT file to a new MP2 file.

Load the MP2 file with Winamp and use the disk writer function to save it to WAV.

There are numerous ways of decoding the MP2 to WAV BTW.

Regards.

[jeex]

wouldnt this be easier?


open dat file thru virtual dub, skim, set beggining, set end, click audio, click full processing mode, then click file & save as wav.

[vitualis]

Probably.

I remember trying that once and it didn't work out... But that was a long time ago with an old version of VDub.

Regards.

[jeex]

vitualis,

yeah. i used to use your method, then i gave opening the dat file thru vdub a whirl and it worked..

well hopefully it'll help others too..

[nuB]

go here

http://www.doom9.org
http://www.vcdhelp.com
http://www.dgital-digest.com
http://www.angelfire.com/clone/dvdcomplete/
http://www.geocities.com/backupdvd2002/