FAQ

1.1 | How come there is a little 'p' shaped symbol on the left side during processing? Leave X-Windows or change your terminal type.
1.2 | It keeps saying that it can't find the file. What's wrong? Make sure you spell the filename correctly. Also note that Linux is case-sensitive.
2.1 | Does VCDGear work with AMD K6 chips? There should not be any problems at all, however, I have heard a report of the non-GUI version running into problems with a K6-400 (o/c). Unfortunately, I have not heard from that person since so I do not know. For the rest of the AMD crowd, VCDGear seems to work just fine. If you do run into a problem, please contact me.
2.2 | How fast does it usually take to process an entire file? This depends on the following factors: 1) which option you pick 2) how big the source file is 3) how fast your system is (mainly hard drive and CPU dependent) 4) where the source file is located Depending on what options you pick, some may be faster than others. Turning on additional options such as Fix MPEG Errors will slow down the processing. Also, the larger the source file, the longer it will take. VCDGear depends heavily on how fast your system is -- but mainly the hard drive and CPU. A fast bus would be nice and perhaps even a SCSI or a high speed IDE. If the source file is located on a CDROM, expect the time to be much longer than if the file was on the hard drive. On average, it would take around 5-6 minutes to handle a full CD image on a Pentium II and a regular IDE hard drive.
2.3 | Can the speed of VCDGear be improved? Perhaps, but not without rewriting important sections of the code and duplicating a lot of it as well. This would be difficult to manage the program when it comes to adding new features and/or making fixes. Most of the loss of speed is due to the checking code while the file is being processed. If all the checking code was removed, you most likely will not notice much improvement... and of course, VCDGear will not work properly =)
2.4 | Can VCDGear take advantage of SMP? (multiprocessor) If you run many CPU intensive programs in the background, VCDGear will run fine on SMP and it should not take up a large load. However, if you do not have SMP, VCDGear will take up a reasonable load. But having more than one processor will not double or triple the speed at which VCDGear runs. I suggest that you select the priority level (with GUI VCDGear 2.0) that you want VCDGear to run at. That way, you can balance how much processing power you want over speed (depending on how many tasks you are running in the background).
2.5 | What is Track 0? On a VideoCD disc, there is physically no such thing as Track 0. Video tracks begin on Track 2 and the file directory info is on Track 1. However, when VCDGear reads in the CUE file, the first video track will been named Track 1. Thus, Track 0 is the file directory. Track 0 may also contain the CD-i MPEG bumper sequence in case you are interested in extracting it. WinOnCD/VideoPack will place the bumper in this area.
2.6 | What is a CD-i bumper? What does the Remove CD-i Bumper option (-nobumper) option do? A CD-i MPEG sequence is often applied by any VideoCD writing program. WinOnCD and VideoPack have this capability and possibly even Adaptec VCD Creator. A CD-i bumper is simply an MPEG sequence that is placed in the first track of a VideoCD. The reason being that a CD-i player will always play this MPEG sequence first. Unfortunately, this MPEG bumper causes problems for software players. Some symptoms include player lockups, early ending time, slider freeze, top and/or bottom of video getting cut off by black bars, and a/v sync problems. All these problems are possibly related to the MPEG sequence having a different packet size. The packet size of the bumper most likely does not match that of a VideoCD. While the software player is able to play the bumper, as soon as the movie comes up, the packet size changes and this is probably the main reason why all the problems occur. VCDGear 2.0 now has a Remove CD-i Bumper option that is supposed to fix the problem. Users using the non-GUI version of VCDGear will find a similar option (-nobumper).
2.7 | What exactly is this RAW format? Is it like a BIN/CUE? First of all, a BIN is an image of a CD. The CUE file that accompanies a BIN tells where the tracks of the CD are located within the BIN image. As a result, you can have many tracks all stacked upon each other written in different modes -- and you can still recreate the original CD as long as the CUE file exists. A RAW file is also an image file, not as an entire CD, but rather just a single track. NOTE: VideoPack generates CD images with a .RAW extension -- this is a track image. VCDGear will be able to extract your MPEGs from these files using the RAW track image to MPEG (-raw2xxx). You might run into problems with this option if the RAW track image includes a CD-i bumper sequence generated by WinOnCD/VideoPack. With VCDGear 2.0 and 1.5, there is an option to remove the CD-i bumper and theoretically should be able to handle the problem. People who have used BinChunker should recognize RAW track images as a .TAO or .MM2 file. This is exactly the same thing. A RAW track image does not contain multiple tracks so a CUE file is not necessary.
2.8 | How does a DAT differ from MPEG? A DAT file is basically an MPEG file with the exception that it is bigger - but for a good reason. A DAT file contains extra information inside such as error correction information and extra sector information, but it also contains the MPEG stream. The MPEG file, of course, does not contain all the extra data that a DAT contains and is smaller.
2.9 | When should I use the RAW-to-MPG or RAW-to-DAT option? You should use this when you have a VideoCD track image that does not have its own CUE file. NOTE: this should be a LAST RESORT option because it may not work for ALL VideoCDs (most have worked for me, others have not). This option can also be used for a BIN/CUE file. If you are missing the CUE index file, try to get the CUE file before attempting the RAW-to-MPEG/DAT option. The CUE file is more accurate at pin-pointing where the MPEG data is located. If the image has multiple tracks, version 1.6 console and 2.5 GUI should automatically cut up to the end of the video track. If you specify the -nocut option, the video tracks will not be cut, and will instead be joined together.
2.10 | What do I use the Fix MPEG Errors (-fix) option for? The -fix option makes sure that your output MPEG file won't have broken blocks. Usually players can handle files with broken(missing) MPEG blocks but I don't know how this will affect the sync timings. I have been told that this option fixes the "slider problem" in the Microsoft Media Player. This may also fix up some areas where screen artifacts, or a sudden display of coloured blocks appear on the screen for no reason.
2.11 | What do I use the Force Sector Read/Write size (-r#### or -w####) option for? This option is used only if you have a track image that does not include a CUE file and it has a non-standard sector size. Example: If your track image was written with 2336-bytes/sector, you would type in the non-GUI VCDGear: vcdgear -raw2xxx -r2336 inputfile outputfile If you are using VCDGear 2.0+, you can simply checkmark the box and enter in the value. If the image does have a CUE file, don't worry about this option. You won't need it -- just stick with the usual CUE-to-DAT/CUE-to-MPG options.
2.12 | What does the Join Tracks (GUI version) option do? The option allows you to join multiple tracks to one continuous file. In theory, this should work :) But I have not tested this feature extensively.
2.13 | What does the Include Track 0 option do? The Track List will not display the Track 0 information as it may cause some confusion between some people. However, if you wish to display it... perhaps for the reason of extracting an MPEG stream from it, you can turn on this checkbox to include Track 0 into the Track List.
2.14 | How do I get the best MPEG output possible from an extraction with the least number of errors possible? With VCDGear 2.0+, enable the Fix MPEG Errors option. Depending on some MPEGs, you might have to enable Remove CD-i Bumper option (please read up on what this option does and when to properly use it). With VCDGear 1.5+ (non-GUI), use the following command at the DOS prompt: vcdgear -xxx2mpg -fix inputFile outputFile where the 'xxx' represents the first three characters for the type of input file - which is either 'cue', 'raw', 'dat', or 'cif'. Upon completion, the number of errors will be reported. NOTE: This will NOT fix corrupt data in your MPEG stream. (Usually causes the playback software to lock-up or crash). Please use a separate program such as IFilmEdit or M1-Edit MPEG Repair to remove the areas with problems.
2.15 | I just used the Fix MPEG Errors (-fix) option and it reported 123823 (or some other REALLY large number) MPEG sections fixed! Is there something wrong here? First see if the MPEG is playable. If you notice that there are problems playing the file back, then there are three possible causes: 1) Your source file is not MPEG-1 - e.g. trying to use VCDGear with an MPEG-2 VOB file. 2) Your file is an MPEG-1 system stream that is not VideoCD compatible due to different packet sizes. If you have preprocessed your file using WebFlix, the resulting MPEG file will not be Whitebook compatible and running VCDGear with your MPEG file will cause more problems. VCDGear 1.6+ (console) and 2.5+ (GUI) will display warnings about this if there might be a potential problem. 3) Your valid MPEG file contains a LOT of errors!
2.16 | I just used the Fix MPEG Errors (-fix) option and it reported 3 (or some small number) MPEG sections fixed but my final output file is too small. There are the following possible causes: 1) VCDGear could only locate 3 MPEG headers. If your source file is large in size, then apparently *most* of your source file did not contain any MPEG information. 2) The source file may not be an MPEG file 3) If you are using the raw2mpg option, try disabling the Auto Cut feature (-nocut). This option is only available on version 1.6+ (non-GUI) and 2.5+ (GUI).
2.17 | How come the slider moves in Media Player but the video doesn't? The video appears to stay frozen for a couple seconds? First process the video with the Remove CD-i Bumper option enabled and see if that helps. If not... It could be because of the extra data it has to process in a DAT file. This can happen especially when using RAW-to-DAT (see why it is a last resort?) because it doesn't really know where the DAT truly starts/finishes. There is no CUE file to help VCDGear determine where to start/stop processing. The better solution is to use the RAW-to-MPG option instead. It uses a smart search to locate the MPEG header rather than guessing. Also, you might want to turn on the Fix MPEG Errors (-fix) option.
2.18 | The video was playing and then suddenly stopped. Media Player thinks the video has ended but it's nowhere near the end. How can I fix that? The most likely problem here is because there might be a CD-i bumper in your MPEG file. Try to see if you can remove it first. You might also want to try enabling the Fix MPEG Errors option too.
2.19 | The video plays but seems like the video is messed up. There are some black bars at the top/bottom and it's on top of the video so some of the video is getting cut off. How can I fix that? First of all, this question does not mean "widescreen", nor "NTSC to PAL conversion". Again, the most likely cause of this is that there is a CD-i bumper in your file. Try to remove it and you might want to enable the Fix MPEG Errors option as well.
2.20 | Why does VCDGear cut the beginning/ends of the movie early? First of all, I am assuming that the movie has been encoded properly and it is not the person who encoded the video that cut the ends too quickly (e.g. to skip the credits because there wasn't enough space). There have been a few reports about this problem in the past but unfortunately, I have been unable to trace this problem since it has never happened to me. It has not come up as an issue lately. What I can recommend is try all the options. Try extracting the movie with the Fix MPEG Errors (-fix) options turned on, and also try extracting it without the fix options. Then compare the output... are they both still missing the beginning/end? Also you might want to try comparing the output of a DAT and the output of an MPG. If you are using RAW to MPG, try disabling Auto Cut (-nocut) and see if that helps.
2.21 | My VideoCD plays fine... even the ending, but sometimes the ending frame is screwed up or is green. What's going on? This green part is the junk that is not part of the MPEG. Turn on the Fix MPEG Errors (-fix) option to correct this problem.
2.22 | What are those little garbled blocks that appear every once in while on the video? Corrupted data within the MPEG stream usually cause garbled blocks to appear. Sometimes these can be corrected by enabling the Fix MPEG Errors (-fix). If you already have the file in .MPG format, you can try reprocessing it using the MPG-to-MPG option.
2.23 | I picked up a version of VCDGear, double-clicked it in Windows Explorer, and it did nothing. A quick black box popped up, but then closed. What happened? What you have is a console version of VCDGear and runs using the command line. To run it, you must access it by going to: Start -> Programs -> MS-DOS Prompt. From there, you will be able to run VCDGear with the appropriate command line.
2.24 | When are you going to release a Linux version of VCDGear? Ports of VCDGear to Linux and other *nix operating systems have already been done and can be downloaded from the homepage at http://www.vcdgear.com.
2.25 | Will there be releases for other operating systems? A list of what it has been ported to is available so please check the homepage. If there is something you'd like to see, please let me know.
2.26 | Does VCDGear support long filenames? As of version 1.4, VCDGear does support long filenames in both Win9X/NT/2k.
2.27 | Is there a way I can get my VideoCD(s) that I just downloaded, extracted and ready to play without having to be beside the keyboard? In otherwords, batch processing. The slickest utility for that is available with VCDGear 1.4 (Linux). Check out the awesome VCDMan program coded by malloc. It can unrar->sfv->vcdgear your VideoCDs (Yes! Batch process too!) without the need for you to be there. Please check his documentation file to find more info about it. For Linux only.
2.28 | Is it normal for an extraction to not reach 100% when it's finished? Yes, it is possible for the percentage to not reach 100% even though the entire MPEG has been extracted. It all depends on how big the source file is. Under normal circumstances, it should usually hit somewhere near 98%-100%.
2.29 | Will there be an option for VOB-to-MPG in the future? No, there are no plans to incorporate option. There are some programs already available to do such a thing so you'll need to go search for it.
2.30 | Will there be an option for recreating a BIN/CUE from an MPEG file? This option has been implemented starting from version 1.6 of the console release, and version 2.5 of the GUI release.
2.31 | Does VCDGear have a homepage? Yes, it is at http://www.vcdgear.com. Thanks to X69 for hosting the site for everyone!