first time to rip VCD, ask for suggestion

[kenny1999]

hello i have an old VCD on hand (CD format), the disc seems going to death soon but I can still play it. I want to change the VCD into some computer format , i have researched on google about "DVD to ....", there are just so many choices like DVD to avi, DVD to mpg etc......

i know there are many programs to do this and many format to change to so i hope people will tell me which programs to go and which output format to go in order to preserve the best quality.

[TheSkiller]

To preserve the best quality you should just copy it to hard disk. You can use VCDeasy to remove the VCD headers from the files, in other words it converts/repacks the DAT files on the CD to MPEG which is perfectly playable.

[kenny1999]

To preserve the best quality you should just copy it to hard disk. You can use VCDeasy to remove the VCD headers from the files, in other words it converts/repacks the DAT files on the CD to MPEG which is perfectly playable.

thanks i have just copied the .dat files directly from VCD to the harddisk but how about their other files? I see there are some other folders in the VCD with some other bizarre filenames and file formats (at least bizarre to me), but i haven't copied those files to my harddisk. Would I lose anything without copying those sorts of things? Thanks very much

[TheSkiller]

No, if it's a plain standard VCD without "chapters" then these files are of no use. The DAT files is all you really want then. All the other stuff is useless and just for VCD compliance.

[kenny1999]

No, if it's a plain standard VCD without "chapters" then these files are of no use. The DAT files is all you really want then. All the other stuff is useless and just for VCD compliance.

thanks, by the way i have something more to ask

these days i am cleaning home and have found out lots of old CD (data storage), VCD and DVD. However, i have observed a strange phenomenon, that is I could copy almost all the old CD (either data files or VCD) and VCD to computer easily even with a certain extent of scratch but MOST of the DVD (either data files or video) could not be copied to the harddisk or experience a hardship copying. But I don't treat my VCD specially well...

Now I wonder if VCD is, by nature, more resistant to deterioration over time.

bad english please forgive.

[TheSkiller]

I don't know if CDs generally have a longer life than DVDs but there's one thing that might play a role: VCDs are burnt without error correction, they use 2324 Bytes per sector instead of 2048 like data CDs and DVDs. That's also the reason why 795 MB of VCD video fit on a standard 700 MB CD.
Maybe because there is no error correction to begin with you don't get any error messages like you do with your DVDs. Just a guess though. It could also be totally related to what brand of CDs and DVDs you used.

[kenny1999]

I don't know if CDs generally have a longer life than DVDs but there's one thing that might play a role: VCDs are burnt without error correction, they use 2324 Bytes per sector instead of 2048 like data CDs and DVDs. That's also the reason why 795 MB of VCD video fit on a standard 700 MB CD.
Maybe because there is no error correction to begin with you don't get any error messages like you do with your DVDs. Just a guess though. It could also be totally related to what brand of CDs and DVDs you used.

thank you for your time and useful information.

have a good day.

[Ghitulescu]

hello i have an old VCD on hand (CD format), the disc seems going to death soon but I can still play it. I want to change the VCD into some computer format , i have researched on google about "DVD to ....", there are just so many choices like DVD to avi, DVD to mpg etc......

i know there are many programs to do this and many format to change to so i hope people will tell me which programs to go and which output format to go in order to preserve the best quality.

The VCD format is a dead format, despite still being used in some Arabian and Eastern countries. It's quality is so low that even a proper VHS looks better.

The good point is that the DVD standard incorporated the VCD one, for compatibility reasons, with only one small difference that doesn't however pose any problem in practice.

So use the advice of TheSkiller to obtain the MPGs out of DATs, then you can author a DVD out of it. Reconversion to AVI or other similar formats may cause even more to it's already low quality.

[kenny1999]

The VCD format is a dead format, despite still being used in some Arabian and Eastern countries. It's quality is so low that even a proper VHS looks better.

The good point is that the DVD standard incorporated the VCD one, for compatibility reasons, with only one small difference that doesn't however pose any problem in practice.

So use the advice of TheSkiller to obtain the MPGs out of DATs, then you can author a DVD out of it. Reconversion to AVI or other similar formats may cause even more to it's already low quality.

I have another questions concerning VCD

If i can successfully copy the whole SCRATCHED VCD to my harddrive (with some strange noise coming from the DVD player), will there be any deterioration in terms of quality? (Comparing to the original UNSCRACTEHED one)

I don't concern their absolute quality because it was the problem of the video producer

[Ghitulescu]

One cannot assert a 100% quality in the absence of the third error correction layer. That's why there are specific algorithms to ensure as much as 100% readout for Audio-CDs which dropped this 3rd layer as well. I amnot aware of the existence of a similar software for VCDs.
Watch them, if you don't see any artefacts, then you got the best of it.

[kenny1999]

One cannot assert a 100% quality in the absence of the third error correction layer. That's why there are specific algorithms to ensure as much as 100% readout for Audio-CDs which dropped this 3rd layer as well. I amnot aware of the existence of a similar software for VCDs.
Watch them, if you don't see any artefacts, then you got the best of it.

so do you mean that, theoretically and practically, it is possible to have copy successfully (the copying window does not freeze) from CD to harddisk but the quality may deteriorate after copying?

[Ghitulescu]

The copying as such does not degrade the quality. It's the ability of the drive to read those damaged passages, which may pass as OK despite having errors (those errors that escaped the 2nd layer but would have been trapped/corrected by the third layer). Read the explanation at audio-cd DAE, it applies mutatis mutandis to VCDs as well, or any other 2-layer-formats, like CD-Extra, CD+G and so on.

[vrpatilisl]

some suggestion.
use ISOBUSTER to recover the data from VCD. And Use "hybrid"by selur de to passthru both video and audio so you preserving maximum quality from .dat file. Later you can reencode if u want.

[Ghitulescu]

hello i have an old VCD on hand (CD format), the disc seems going to death soon but I can still play it. I want to change the VCD into some computer format , i have researched on google about "DVD to ....", there are just so many choices like DVD to avi, DVD to mpg etc......

If you searched for DVD to... it's probably logic that you couldn't find anything on VCD. Strange keywords you used ...

If you have searched for VCD ripping, to give an example, you would most certainly found a link to a tutorial here on doom9. I let you the pleasure to discover it yourself.

[kenny1999]

Hello i am kenny1999. Now I can copy and paste *.dat files from my VCD to my harddrive. However, i have one VCD that has two different sound channel (speaking different language), after I copy the *.dat files I could only listen to one of the channel. Did I miss
anything? Thanks!

[kenny1999]

now i need to handle with some old and scratched DVDs for fear that they die.

I haphazardly downloaded a software called "DVD Decrypter" and I haven't made any advanced settings to it. Can this software with default setting preserve the DVD quality to a fairly good extent so I don't have to worry about finding and learning other software.

[manono]

DVD Decrypter makes exact copies of the DVD. Its problem is that it hasn't been updated for years and can't handle advanced copy protections. In such cases you should switch to using the free DVDFab HD Decrypter.

[QuantumRand]

MakeMKV might work well for what you're trying to do. I've never tried it with a VCD, but with DVDs and Blu-rays, it removes encryption backs everything up into a standard MKV container.

[setarip_old]

@QuantumRand

No - MakeMKV does not accept VCDs for processing...

[QuantumRand]

@QuantumRand

No - MakeMKV does not accept VCDs for processing...

Good to know.