Format of file-names on VCD

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.video.desktop (More info?)

There are 4 files in my VCD's Mpegav directory.

Avseq01.dat
Avseq02.dat
Avseq03.dat
Avseq04.dat

If I make one more copy of the VCD with changed names, will it
work with VCD/DVD players which play normal VCDs ?


What format of names is acceptable?
Aveseq01-song01.dat and Aveseq01-song02.dat

or
Scene01-shortish.dat , Scene02-longer-version.dat


Will these names/formats do ?

 

[Lazarus]

Archived from groups: rec.video.desktop (More info?)

dont think you can use hyphen and commas as filenames but it doesnt have to
be avseq it can be anything

besttouse_an_underscore_to_seperate_names.dat

you SHOULD number them sequencially though!


"naniwadekar" <nani3skip45@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:dd0da81c.0406290811.1d2e643a@posting.google.com...
> There are 4 files in my VCD's Mpegav directory.
>
> Avseq01.dat
> Avseq02.dat
> Avseq03.dat
> Avseq04.dat
>
> If I make one more copy of the VCD with changed names, will it
> work with VCD/DVD players which play normal VCDs ?
>
>
> What format of names is acceptable?
> Aveseq01-song01.dat and Aveseq01-song02.dat
>
> or
> Scene01-shortish.dat , Scene02-longer-version.dat
>
>
> Will these names/formats do ?

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.video.desktop (More info?)

naniwadekar <nani3skip45@hotmail.com> wrote:
: There are 4 files in my VCD's Mpegav directory.

: Avseq01.dat
: Avseq02.dat
: Avseq03.dat
: Avseq04.dat

: If I make one more copy of the VCD with changed names, will it
: work with VCD/DVD players which play normal VCDs ?
(snip)

How do you make a copy of a VCD with changed names??

You *cannot* copy the existing files over to your hard drive ... change
the file names .. and copy everything over to a new CD .. because then you
will only have a CD with a collection of files and folders, NOT another
VCD.

Richard in Boston, MA, USA

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.video.desktop (More info?)

On Fri, 2 Jul 2004 03:14:28 +0000 (UTC), Richard G Amirault wrote:
> naniwadekar <nani3skip45@hotmail.com> wrote:
> : If I make one more copy of the VCD with changed names, will it
> : work with VCD/DVD players which play normal VCDs ?
> (snip)

> How do you make a copy of a VCD with changed names??
> You *cannot* copy the existing files over to your hard drive ... change
> the file names .. and copy everything over to a new CD .. because then you
> will only have a CD with a collection of files and folders, NOT another
> VCD.

I understand that it has to be a special filesystem to work. But I have
another question - are these files normal files? I have noticed that
the files from one VCD could be copied under Windows to the HD and
played from there too. But copying the same file under Linux or playing
it didn't work. (However, playing the whole VCD worked under Linux too,
with xine.)

So what is the special thing that makes the difference? (Or which FAQ
should I read? I have searched the web, but have found only texts about
video formats on the VCDs so far.)

Thanks,
Gencho

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.video.desktop (More info?)

Guentcho Skordev <ut13@rz.uni-karlsruhe.de> wrote:
(snip)
: I understand that it has to be a special filesystem to work. But I have
: another question - are these files normal files? I have noticed that
: the files from one VCD could be copied under Windows to the HD and
: played from there too. But copying the same file under Linux or playing
: it didn't work. (However, playing the whole VCD worked under Linux too,
: with xine.)

: So what is the special thing that makes the difference? (Or which FAQ
: should I read? I have searched the web, but have found only texts about
: video formats on the VCDs so far.)

Well, the "main" file on a VCD is basically a mpg video file. But some
things have been removed (I don't remember what). Windows Media Player
will play that file just fine (you have to "tell" WMP to play it because
it won't normally see a .dat file as a video file) but it's possible that
some other players either won't play a .dat file at all (you could try to
fool them by changing the suffix to .mpg) or they look for that "missing"
data and don't find it (just a guess)

Did you look at http://www.videohelp.com ? Good site.

Richard in Boston, MA, USA

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.video.desktop (More info?)

Hello,

On Thu, 15 Jul 2004 00:39:00 +0000 (UTC), Richard G Amirault wrote:
> Guentcho Skordev <ut13@rz.uni-karlsruhe.de> wrote:
> : played from there too. But copying the same file under Linux or playing
> : it didn't work. (However, playing the whole VCD worked under Linux too,
> : with xine.)
> : So what is the special thing that makes the difference? (Or which FAQ
> : should I read? I have searched the web, but have found only texts about
> : video formats on the VCDs so far.)

> Well, the "main" file on a VCD is basically a mpg video file. But some
> things have been removed (I don't remember what). Windows Media Player
> will play that file just fine (you have to "tell" WMP to play it because
> it won't normally see a .dat file as a video file) but it's possible that
> some other players either won't play a .dat file at all (you could try to
> fool them by changing the suffix to .mpg) or they look for that "missing"
> data and don't find it (just a guess)

It wasn't actually a problem with the player.

What I wanted to say is that the file itself was not readable for the
operating system under Linux - Knoppix 3.4 c't (the VCD was mounted as
CD, i have no problems reading "normal" CDs - ISO9660, Joliet). The CD
itself was readable as a whole CD (and playable by xine).

I don't take it for granted that the files should be readable only
because the whole CD is readable. But under Windows the files were
readable too, I have copied one to the hard disk and played it from
there.

So I guess it isn't exactly a subset of ISO9660 (or the Linux drivers
are incomplete?), but Windows understands it somehow nevertheless?

I don't know if it was "VCD 1" or "VCD 2" format.

> Did you look at http://www.videohelp.com ? Good site.

Thanks. Unfortunately the link "more technical info" points to
www.vcdimager.org which seems not to exist anymore.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.video.desktop (More info?)

On Thu, 15 Jul 2004 11:07:39 +0000 (UTC), Guentcho Skordev wrote:
> So I guess it isn't exactly a subset of ISO9660 (or the Linux drivers
> are incomplete?), but Windows understands it somehow nevertheless?

>> Did you look at http://www.videohelp.com ? Good site.

I saw there:
"... One mode 2 mixed form ISO-9660 track containing file pointers to the
information areas."

So this could be the explanation.

But, again, i could copy the single files under Windows. Is this a feature
of Windows (2000)?

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.video.desktop (More info?)

On Thu, 15 Jul 2004 11:22:27 +0000 (UTC), Guentcho Skordev wrote:
> I saw there:
> "... One mode 2 mixed form ISO-9660 track containing file pointers to the
> information areas."
> So this could be the explanation.
> But, again, i could copy the single files under Windows. Is this a feature
> of Windows (2000)?

Searching with the right words (including 9660 OR iso9660 in the
search), finally I have found a part of the answer:

http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/HTML/en/vcd.html

Still I am curious what makes Windows able to read the "files" as
real files (after all, one can't copy the *.cda tracks from an audio
CD the same way).

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.video.desktop (More info?)

On Thu, 15 Jul 2004 11:22:27 +0000 (UTC), Guentcho Skordev wrote:
> I saw there:
> "... One mode 2 mixed form ISO-9660 track containing file pointers to the
> information areas."
> So this could be the explanation.
> But, again, i could copy the single files under Windows. Is this a feature
> of Windows (2000)?

Searching with the right words (including 9660 OR iso9660 in the
search), finally I have found a part of the answer:

http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/HTML/en/vcd.html

"The ~600 MB file visible on the first track of the mounted VCD is
not a real file! It is a so called ISO gateway." [...]

"Under Linux you cannot copy or play such files (they contain
garbage). Under Windows it is possible as its iso9660 driver emulates
the raw reading of tracks in this file. To play a .DAT file you need
the kernel driver which can be found in the Linux version of
PowerDVD." [...] "But it will not work with the standard iso9660
driver of the Linux kernel! Use vcd:// instead."

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.video.desktop (More info?)

On Wed, 14 Jul 2004 21:46:48 +0000 (UTC), Guentcho Skordev
<ut13@rz.uni-karlsruhe.de> wrote:

>are these files normal files?

I may be too dumb, but I cannot even conceive what an abnormal file
would be. As far as my wits go, every file in the whole world and
history, is normal.

>I have noticed that
>the files from one VCD could be copied under Windows to the HD and
>played from there too.

The mpeg data is in the files, so an ingenous player can make sense of
them. But a desktop player expects to find things according to
standard, and won't allow anything else.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.video.desktop (More info?)

On Fri, 16 Jul 2004 02:51:47 +0200, Bariloche wrote:
> On Wed, 14 Jul 2004 21:46:48 +0000 (UTC), Guentcho Skordev
> <ut13@rz.uni-karlsruhe.de> wrote:
>>are these files normal files?
> I may be too dumb, but I cannot even conceive what an abnormal file
> would be. As far as my wits go, every file in the whole world and
> history, is normal.

Actually I wanted to ask "are these normal files", "these" staying for
the objects containing the video and audio data and referebnced with
the .dat-names.

According to http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/HTML/en/vcd.html (which I
have found after asking the question) they aren't "real files". Maybe
it depends on the definition of "file", but at least they aren't stored
the same way files on a "simple" data CD-ROM are (sorry, i can't be
more exact, because I don't know the standards, else I shouldn't ask at
all, but I hope you understand what I mean) (the Windows drivers can
access the objects mentioned above as files nevertheless so one doesn't
notice the difference).

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.video.desktop (More info?)

Bariloche wrote:

> I may be too dumb, but I cannot even conceive what an abnormal
> file would be. As far as my wits go, every file in the whole
> world and history, is normal.

A "normal" CD-ROM only has a single track, on which all
the files are stored. VCDs, however, have one track per
each "segment item" (video clip or CD-DA audio track) -
not counting short menu animations, still images and
such ("segment items" in VCD lingo) which are all
stored on Track 1.

The sector size is also different from ordinary CD-ROMs:
there is less room for error correction information on
the MPEG tracks, allowing more raw data (in megabytes)
to be stored on a VCD than on an ordinary CD-ROM.

Even though the low-level structure differs from ordinary
CD-ROMs, each of the MPEG tracks is represented as if it
was a regular file in the ISO 9660 filesystem. Still, you
could very well say that these VCD *.dat files are not
exactly "normal" files since they are stored in a special
way on the disc.

--
znark