Is there a way to burn a .dat file to a VCD without first converting it to an MPEG? It seems to be a bit of a waste to convert it to mpeg if the software is only going to convert it back to .dat.

Any help would be appreciated...

-- Fred Scerbo (scerbo2@adelphia.net), September 07, 1999

Answers

Fred the white book defines the basis for a VCD as the mpeg-1 format and for reasons best know to the designers that file gets converted to a dat file during the burn.

I wonder why the encode does not end up as a dat file ready for use in the burn? Guess it contains additional information such as the position of the actual playback file. I find the dat file is smaller than the mpg source for the burn and that makes it difficult to calculate what can be fitted on the disk in the way of additional files.

Spare a thought for those of us who cannot capture mpeg direct and must capture a full size avi, resize it again to an avi of the correct size, encode it to a vcd compliant mpeg-1 file and then burn it to the CD. On average a 30 minute VCD takes me close to 8 hours of resizing/encoding time, but its worth it - I encode overnight whilst asleep, who cares how long it takes when the end result will last and can be played on a computer and on a TV. Short cuts generally result in a lesser image quality.

-- Ross McL (rmclennan@esc.net.au), September 07, 1999.

Adaptec Easy CD Creator Deluxe accepts .dat files as sources for its VCD creator layout directly. You do not need to convert the .dat files to .mpg first.

-- EMartinez (epmartinez@hotmail.com), September 08, 1999.