TMPGEnc and Terapin VCD MPEG conversion problems HELP!!!!!!!

[custerbean]

First off MUCH thanks to geek rock for spending nearly two hours on aim trying to help me through this!

Ok here is the deal. I love Scrubs on NBC. I purchased a Terapin VCD recorder to start getting the episodes off my TIVO. I now have the first season on VCD (from the Terapin). Due to commercial breaks each episode is broken up into 3 sections. I now want to join them into 1 file and begin to store them on my hard drive.
Now the problems begin.
The terapin records them into .dat files. So i go get VCDEasy to change the mpeg files.
I then open TMPGEnc and go to mpeg tools and merge & cut and put in the two files that i want to merge.
I get an error saying "file 1.mpg is not MPEG file."
The files are valid mpeg files and will play in any software and dvd player, so i know the files are good.
Also TMPGEnc will open the file for Re-Enconding on the main screen.

Any help is appreciated.

custerbean

[BJ_M]

try demultiplexing them and re-multiplex

[custerbean]

I get an error that says "Illegal MPEG video stream"

[vitualis]

How did you get the files off the VCD?

Try using CDXA2MPEG that comes with the VCDImager suite of proggies (you can use VCDImager Tools GUI or VCDEasy as a GUI if you don't like command console proggies) to convert the DAT back to a standard MPEG.

If that didn't work, I suggest that you extract the VCD to a CUE/BIN image on your HDD (with CDRWin), and then use either VCDGear or VCDXRIP on that image to extract all the files.

BTW, why do you want to join the files? You are not going to gain a whole lot... If you do it well / are lucky, it will simply play through without the slight pause of being multitracked. If you are unlucky, you may cause some other sort of audio or video blip or even introduce an A/V sync problem...

Regards.

[custerbean]

my overall goal is to get them ready to be burned on a dvd. Therefore i need to get each episode into one file.