HI,

I have a vcd with .dat file from India,which I can play in media player in WinXp.,but when I try to play the file in media player 9.0 on Windows 2000.,it doesn't play and complains about file not supported.I have tried using Real Player and it gives the same error. I downloaded a couple of VCD players.,and they are still not able to play the file.Moreover I cannot copy the file to the hard disk,since it says Cannot copy AVESEQ01:Invalid MS-DOS function.

Please help me...

Yogesh

-- (foo@bar.com), January 15, 2004

Answers

I think Media Player 9 has some issues with VCD playback. I'm not an expert on it, but I think I read that some people have blamed the content management system in it. You could try to install a software DVD player and that should be able to play your VCDs. Also, you could try to do a web search and look for VCDgear because it might allow you to copy the .DAT file to your hard drive as a MPEG file.

-- Root (root@yahoo.moc), January 15, 2004.

Yogesh That VCD is not playable on any PC.I am hving similar problem with RHTDM vcd.On 1 st disk,only AVSEQ4.DAT cannot be played.And on 2nd disk everything can be played.On linux I am able to play every file.Try Linux. Pinakin

-- Pinakin Gore (pinakin_gore@mail.com), February 03, 2004.

I too face the same problem with one of my VCD, i am not able to play and as well as not able to copy the dat file in to my hard disk, my operating system is windows 2000, if anyone finds solution please let me know.

-- Arun.K.V. (arunkv_2000@yahoo.com), February 16, 2004.

how to play mpegav dat file

-- kaminee81 (kam81@eth.net), March 10, 2004.

hi.very often i met these problems in win xp.i cannot play a vcd from the cd-rom or even i cannot copy the dat file to my hard disk.what i do to play the vcd is make an image of the vcd using Alcohol 120%.then,i use Daemon Tools to mount the image.then i can play the vcd,if not,i play the vcd by using Xing MPEG Player,an old program but the best one which plays vcds which other programs can't.

hope i have helped u.u can mail me at user2004@servihoo.com

-- user 2004 (user2004@servihoo.com), March 17, 2004.

Try Isobuster to extract the file to your hard disk? Works for most cases.

-- akiti (akitiyadav@hotmail.com), June 06, 2004.

I made one VCD (my first). It cannot play on Windows 2000 Pro (tested on 3 PCs). Plays fine on 5 other PCs (Windows 98, 98SE, and XP Home) and on a standalone VCD player. Windows Media Player on Win2000 reports "The file cannot be played. The format is not supported". The Win2000 PCs plays other VCDs (both CDR and CDROM) without any problem.

Downloaded VLC Media Player 0.7.2 from http://download.videolan.org (free opensource media player). Now the Win2000 PCs can play that VCD. (I'd very much like to know if this solves the problem for anybody else).

Burned the VCD with Nero again. Tested again. Same result. I think the problem is with Win2000. Or is Nero burning non-standard VCDs that are not 100% "to-spec"? I'd like to know if I'm doing it right. Finding out before I convert more tapes to VCD, instead of after, will be nice. :)

Note that I made the VCD as follows. Capture from Sony MiniDV camcorder using firewire cable, with Ulead Video Studio 7 SE. Save it as type PAL VCD. This creates an MPG file. With Nero 5, create a VCD project, drag the MPG file on it. Burn the VCD.

-- Daniel Khoo (gsf_oohk@fzz.no-ip.info), July 10, 2004.

According to user 2004 contribution, Xing is also my solution.

Even though there is an error "Can't open vcd". But it works.

-- foo (foo@bar.com), August 04, 2004.

Hey for windows try BSPlayer, the best for Windows.

Can somebody tell me, why does dat file playback on linux fails, the VCD can directly be played?

-- lB (lbharti@yahoo.com), September 01, 2004.

RE: Final Solution to inability of Media Player (v6.4,v7,v8,v9) to play VCD .dat file on CD-ROM

Having search around the newsgroups and the posted messages, I have made a final conclusion for this issue of media player's inability to play .dat file on VCD, especially on Windows NT and 2K platforms. The assumption is that you have installed the media player properly and the basic video codecs required.

Some of the Motherboard manufacturers release their own version of the IDE Bus Channel driver which is announced to be accelerated or enhanced for the transfer speed. However, such driver affects the reading of .dat file by the IDE controller which deal with the data transfer between CD-ROM and hard drive. If you found Non-Standed IDE Bus Channel Controller driver installed, you should revert it to Standard IDE Bus Channel Controller driver. To find out such device, just open [Control Panel], [SCSI Interface] and open the tab [Driver]. You will see the name of controller driver. If it's non-standard one, replace it with Microsoft's original Standard IDE Bus Channel Controller driver by clicking [add] button. When asked whether to restart Windows, you should click [no] at first and then remove the non- standard driver by clicking [remove] button. Restart Windows to activate the Standard driver.

So, you may now try to play VCD and open .dat files by Media Player and you will find it works.

Most of the motherboards can tolerate the Standard IDE driver and work fine, if you don't care about the performance of data transfer speed of the IDE controller.

However, some of the motherboards require special IDE controller driver having the same problem may not be recovered using such method. Then you should contact the motherboard manufacturer and get the appropriate drivers.

Regarding the well-known problem of so called "Cannot copy xxxx.dat. Invalid MS-DOS function" while copying .dat files from CD-ROM to Harddisk, Microsoft has once released the fact about the Windows NT platform: "This behaviour is by design". It means Windows NT potentially prohibits the user to make illegal copies of VCD .dat files. Software such as ISOBUSTER can be used to overcome such restriction of copying the .dat files directly to anywhere you wants.

Good luck!

-- Kenneth Fung (wingkitf@sinaman.com), September 10, 2004.

I had similar problem. Downloaded VLC Media Player from http://download.videolan.org . Worked for me on Windows 2000.

-- sunil (sunilkhatana@hotmail.com), November 09, 2004.