Repairing ISO9660 Data track on VCD

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Hi,

I've got some VCD's who's ISO 9660 Data track has been damaged somehow. They play in a commercial VCD player, since it only looks for the MPG/DAT track (2) on the CD. HOwever, in my PC, I cannot play the CD at all, since the MPEGAV subdirectory is dead. I am able to rip the DAT track off and convert it back to MPG, from here I could burn a new VCD.

However, in the name of quality and time, I'd like to transfer it back to a new CD directly, without haveing to convert it to MPG and back to DAT. The only way to do this would be to recreate the ISO9660 Data track on track 1, and copy track 2. but I'm unsure of how to create track 1...?

Any ideas? Comments?

Thanks,

Ed-O

-- Ed-O (eddo@mindless.com), March 26, 2000

Answers

i dont know if your PC would stop the process, but you could try buring it as a 'cd image' disc. this way whatever is one the cd, it will burn back onto another cd, usually if you have a glitch like you explained, making an image might not have the glitch show up, so you can do a burn from it. Well give it a shot

-- Doug (mazinz@aol.com), March 26, 2000.

Not a bad idea. I tried extracting the data track too (similar to burning an image CD), unfortuantely when that extracts, the MPEGAV subdirectory is still empty. So the new CD just had a blank MPEGAV subdir. Better than the orig CD in the sense that trying to open MPEGAV would cause a device error, but still not quite solving the problem.

Thanks for the suggestion though.

Ed-O

-- Ed-O (eddo@mindless.com), March 26, 2000.


The unique thing about Video CD is that all other stuff that do not correspond to MPEG audio/video file White Book spec are placed in a separate data track. Complete MPEG audio/video files themselves occupy separate tracks. That's why a VCD will always contain at least two tracks: one track for all other stuff and directories, the other track for what is specified in the MPEGAV directory. One important directory is the VCD directory because that is where the player, PC or set-top largely takes cues from; if it points to tracks which are damaged such as in your case, then playback is unpredictable. In any case there is a method of recording such that these tracks are duly given these identities and these are already fully automated in Easy CD, Nero, NTI, etc. so we really do not have to be bothered how to create the contents of track 1. If I were you, (and I do not see what is so difficult with it), I'll simply extract the *.dat files specified in the MPEGAV directory back to *.mpg with freeware apps like VCDGear1.4 and simply use those to re-create a new VCD.

-- EMartinez (epmartinez@yahoo.com), March 27, 2000.

Well I thank you for your suggestion, unfortuantely the *.dat files int the MPEGAV subdirectory are toast. On some of the discs, the ISO9660 track is unreadable. The only solution currently, is to extract the second track RAW, convert it to MPG, then burn it to a VCD.

My only concern now is that the conversion from RAW to MPG will cause quality loss....so I was hoping to burn the MPEG track directly to the new VCD...but I don't know how to recreated the ISO9660 track using only the MPEG track in RAW, not in MPG

Thanks

Ed-O

-- Ed-O (eddo@mindless.com), March 27, 2000.


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