I have a .dat file 792 MB in size. I use VCDGear to convert it to a .mpg file with the -fix option. The output mpg file can be played with Media Player butthe video is more like slide show than motion picture. The sound is relatively ok except for momentary pauses every 10 secs or so.

Later, I tried converting another .dat file about 15 mins duration. The converted file is ok in both video and sound.

Anybody knows why?

-- Daniel Lee (siangneng@sp.edu.sg), January 23, 2000

Answers

Dunno about VCDgear. But there is a freeware app out there, pretty simple, called dat2mpeg.exe which works fine. It is invoked from DOS only and has given me good results so far. Let me know if you can't find it.

-- Matias (petrellm@telefonica.com.ar), January 24, 2000.

I have dat2mpg too. It also didn't help. I think the problem could either be in Media Player or the structure of the .dat file itself - like some kind of copy protection is built in it.

-- Daniel Lee (siangneng@sp.edu.sg), January 24, 2000.

I was able to watch .dat files on media player by simply changing the file extension from .dat to .mpg

-- Al McCraw (amccraw@ix.netcom.com), January 27, 2000.

You don't eve need to change the file extension from *.dat to *.mpg. You just choose "all flies" when you load the file. It works just fine for me!

-- Daniel (x_frehley@hotmail.com), January 28, 2000.

easiest way is to drop back to a dos prompt and type rename test.dat test.mpg. This loses no quailty what so ever and the streams and bitrates all remain the same

-- ajay (adrian.pye@tafensw.edu.au), May 16, 2000.

yeh boyz i usually just rename da little bad boy into .mpg and it worx fine.. i think the structure of the dat is almost identical to a random little mpg

-- Peter McIver (jazzman@ihug.co.nz), September 04, 2001.

I guess that might have to deal with the different properties of .dat/.mpg, not because there's any differences between .dat and .mpg file (dat and mpg are actually the same thing). Anyway there's the typical type of VCD dat format which has a framerate of 30 frames per sec, bitrate of 1150Kb per sec, resolution of 340 x 288 etc... it's a fixed format, and can be read by most players (including Media Player, Real Player etc). whereas there's another S- VCD type of dat/mpg which has properties that can be various, framerate, bitrate, screen resolution etc can be all different and there's no fixed format, which might not be recognised by some players, and when you convert dat to mpg with VCDGear/Dat2Mpg, this properties are converted along within the mpg! so I guess the 792Mb .dat file is probably a S-Vcd type of dat file and it's incompatible with MediaPlayer ... whether you convert it to mpg format or not, it wouldn't really make any difference!

-- Ed Cheng (eddiecheng4eva@hotmail.com), November 13, 2002.

I have same problem than Daniel Lee.

How can i change .dat to .mpg or .avi? How can i change extensions in windows xp? Please help me!

-- Kukkaislapsi (ari.jouppila@luukku.com), August 21, 2003.

A .dat and a .mpg file are not the same the .dat file contains a lot of extra data witch can give you trouble when you, for exempel try to split the file. dat2mpg strips the file of unwanted data and makes it a regular mpg file.

/A

-- A A (a@a.com), September 25, 2003.

SVCD is MPEG2 not MPEG1. Unless you have MPEG2 decoder filters (i.e PowerDVD or WinDVD or some other software based DVD Decoder software) then you will not be able to play SVCD files in Windows Media Player.

-- CozzmoAU (cozzmo_@hotmail.com), October 18, 2003.

How can one distinguish between the two type of .DAT files?

-- Ahmad Rashid (ahmadrashid@gawab.com), March 04, 2004.

I ran into the exact same problem with VCDGear, but I got arround it by utilizing IsoBuster using the "Extract but FILTER only M2F2 mpeg frames" option. This will convert the frame(s) causing errors and will continue converting the rest of your file normally. Visually you may see a blur on a single frame during playback but nothing major.

-- Becquer (dontbother@nomail.com), April 21, 2004.