Re: Converting VCDs

In article <1157133335.931697.223540@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Arild P. <no-spam2@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

sbt wrote:

As to your other post, I use VCDGear because it does an integrity check
on the copy process

Ah! Good to know, even though trying to play the file with Quicktime
player can probably be regarded as a test as well ;-)

Not necessarily. Video will often continue to play even when some
corrupt data is encountered (minor pixelation and the like). That's
built into the playing algorithms.


Although the guide for VCD to DivX conversion at
<http://www.doom9.org/index.html?/mpg/vcd2divx.htm> is written for
Windows users, the VCDGear steps translate to the Mac implementation of
the tool and the VirtualDub discussion should be easy to convert to an
ffmpegX session.

Nice guide, but there is a huge difference between the Mac and PC
versions of VCDgear. Ironically, the PC version looks to be a lot more
user-friendly with its Windows user-interface rather than the Mac
command-line version which for me is incomprehensible. I don't even
know how/where to enter the commands, much less which commands to
enter.

vcdgearosx -dat2mpg -fix _inputfilename_ _outputfilename_

There must be an easier way to do this. Especially on the Mac which is
built to be user-friendly!

Toast 7 seems to do the conversion okay, directly from the DAT file
that I extracted from a VCD and using the Extract button.

Will upgrading to Quicktime Pro allow me to rip VCDs and DVDs, then
save them to various formats including 3GP (for my phone) without all
the command line hassle and other complicated steps?

To rip a DVD (at least the commercially produced ones) involves
bypassing the copy protection methodologies employed. These usually
include at least CSS, Macrovision, and Region coding (the last is only
an issue if you want to play the content in a geographic region other
than the one for which the publisher intended to sell it). It might
also include some other obnoxious forms such as ARccOS (Sony's very
expensive technique that even they don't employ all that often). Once
you have it ripped, you'll have (most likely) a VIDEO_TS folder that
contains IFO, BUP, and VOB files -- the first two are the instructions
to the player on what plays in what order in response to which user
inputs (InFO and BackUP), the VOBs are the actual content, but they're
usually 1GB or smaller in size and a single movie might be spread
across multiple VOBs or multiple smaller movies might be included in a
single VOB.

QuickTime Pro won't help you with those activities as Apple would be
opening itself up to a great deal of very expensive litigation and
ill-will from the movie industry if it did so. You'll need other
solutions. DVD Backup, MacTheRipper, HandBrake, and OSeX are among the
favored ripping utilities. Be aware that the MPAA considers even
personal repurposing of the DVD content to be a violation of
copyright/DMCA as stated in the FBI warnings included on almost all
commercial DVD movies.

Frankly, I don't know how to assist any further on your VCD travails
without actually being present to witness what is going wrong in your
attempts and trying to troubleshoot it -- it "just works" for me with
the VCDs I own (I bought a bunch of them overseas a few years back for
the grandkids -- mostly old WB cartoons and a few feature movies). I've
converted a few of these for them to view on other devices as they
acquired them (iPods and PSPs).

--
Spenser
.

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