Play a Nigerian VCD?

One of our division managers has Nigerian relatives and they sent us a commercial VCD. It plays properly and very nicely in our stand-alone DVD players, but the video Macs just give us a blank look.

I understand this is the video equivalent of the client walking in with material on an Edison Cylinder, but still. It doesn't even volunteer to "Open With..."

VLC Player, perhaps?

No clue.

Koz

Should be a PAL related format, i think... Wikipedia should be our friend...

[en.wikipedia.org]

It's probably SECAM (if SECAM exists as a VCD standard), but progressive. VCDs cannot encode interlacing. VLC may work. But you should be able to copy the data off the disc, unlike iPods. I'm thinking Mpeg Streamclip.



www.strypesinpost.com

VLC plays everything dude. Yeah, try VLC.


www.shanerosseditor.com

Listen to THE EDIT BAY Podcast on iTunes
[itunes.apple.com]

<<<Should be a PAL related format, i think.>>>

Well, it is playing very nicely on our NTSC-only DVD player. We're playing the work into our stand-alone analog-in DVD burner to get something we can deal with.

I guess the question is what is the VCD/DVD/CD player looking for that Mac OS-X isn't?

Remember, this is a Mac. Slide the disk in and by the time you get your hot tea, it's ready to play scene one. Not slide the disk in and start figuring out which software package you need to download and decompress, and which folder to find the specific scene one video files in and hope to goodness all the moons and stars line up.

That's how PCs work. Next you'll be telling me I need to download DLL files and search for appropriate drivers in my Registry.

OK, stop. That's too horrible to even think about.

Koz

VLC is THE dvd player for the Mac. All Macs should come with VLC installed. Plays DVDs of any region. Don't need to pop your machine over to the Apple store every few months because of that (ka-ching!)



www.strypesinpost.com

Hey, Koz.

if you want to rip it, you could have a look at MPegStreamclip.

we were using that for a short while to rip VCDs from Pakistan's NWFP & "Tribal Belt"
HOWEVER....
in the end there were too many digital glitches, and we simply captured from the DVD player.


cheers,
nick

<<<simply captured from the DVD player. >>>

That's how we're doing it. I didn't try StreamClip. I still need to go down into all the folders and see which ones are the show. I assume there are multiple folders, right?

Koz

most likely, i'm sure,

but it's been a while and i don't remember any details.
just look for the biggest files.
i think that's what i did.

but as i say the live capture was better quality.
see how you go.


cheers,
nick

> in the end there were too many digital glitches

Unlike so many other hardware issues, damage to DVDs is remarkably consistent in my experience -- if there's a surface scratch, 10 attempts at extraction of the same segment usually produce the exact same glitch on the resulting clips. I have a list of options I run down for getting video DVDs into the system:

1. MPEG Streamclip extraction -- gives the most control, and easier random access so you can find your footage faster.
2. DVD Player into a deck, Capture Now using Non-Controllable Device.
3. Play the DVD in the computer, screen-capture it.


www.derekmok.com

> I still need to go down into all the folders and see which ones are the show. I assume there are
> multiple folders, right?

On a video DVD there's usually just the Video_TS folder you have to plow through. Look for the first VOB file that's larger than 80MB or so; that's usually the first segment of the main show.


www.derekmok.com

we be talking VCD here, not DVD

> we be talking VCD here, not DVD

Ooooops. The "hooking up a DVD player" direction distracted me there.

It's been a while since I had to deal with VCDs, but I remember the results being very erratic. I was able to do a straight copy of the MPG file on one disc to my computer and then play it with QuickTime Player, but subsequent attempts would sometimes work and sometimes not.


www.derekmok.com