How to Copy VideoCD .DAT files on Ubuntu. Simplest Guide.

Do you have that VideoCD that you would like to rip? Wanna save those precious .DAT files on your Ubuntu hard drive? If so, follow these simple steps:

1. Go to Ubuntu Software Centre and type 'mplayer' and afterwards 'mencoder' and then proceed to install them both.

2. After that, open the command Terminal and type the command mplayer vcd://1 and push Enter button

That will display the tracks inside the disk, or rather the files, as follows: (It's important you know the number of tracks since you will be copying them individually.)

desktop:~$ mplayer vcd://1

MPlayer 1.0rc4-4.5.2 (C) 2000-2010 MPlayer Team

mplayer: could not connect to socket

mplayer: No such file or directory

Failed to open LIRC support. You will not be able to use your remote control.

Playing vcd://1.

track 01: adr=1 ctrl=4 format=2 00:02:00 mode: 1

track 02: adr=1 ctrl=4 format=2 00:18:68 mode: 1

track 03: adr=1 ctrl=4 format=2 01:05:02 mode: 1

track 04: adr=1 ctrl=4 format=2 01:18:22 mode: 1

track 05: adr=1 ctrl=4 format=2 44:20:67 mode: 1

Exiting... (End of file)

Now it is showing that the vcd has 5 tracks. So we can extract each track individually using mencoder as follows

3. mencoder vcd://1 -o track1.mpeg -oac copy -ovc copy and push the Enter Button

Wait until it is done (upto 100%) and movement stops. This will extract track 01 only, which will be on your Home Directory. For track 02, just rename as follows

mencoder vcd://2 -o track2.mpeg -oac copy -ovc copy and push the Enter Button

It is a bit tiring to keep extracting one by one, but I do not know another way, and besides, as long as you get your tracks then there is no problem, and still, it is quite fast.

For track 03,

mencoder vcd://3 -o track3.mpeg -oac copy -ovc copy

And so on.

But remember: Remember to rename as instructed or you will be copying and overwriting the tracks. You can have a pen and sheet of paper to avoid copying the same file twice, so as you can tick the file you copied. If you would then afterwards like to change the files into .mp3, I suggest you also install WinFF. Good luck.