Video CD playback in OS X


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The Mac OS X Feature Comparison at http://www.apple.com/macosx/upgrade/compare.html mentions Video CD playback in QuickTime as one of the new features in Panther. The question is how am I supposed to achieve that, because the only way for me to access a Video CD content is to manually open the .dat files--a method that doesn't quite deserve the 'feature' tag. Any idas?

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The Mac OS X Feature Comparison at http://www.apple.com/macosx/upgrade/compare.html mentions Video CD playback in QuickTime as one of the new features in Panther. The question is how am I supposed to achieve that, because the only way for me to access a Video CD content is to manually open the .dat files--a method that doesn't quite deserve the 'feature' tag. Any idas?

Im guessing the Apple DVD player should let you play the VCD"s but I haven't tried that so I don't know. Also you might wanna try VLC (www.videolan.org) and use the open disc option to see if VLC can play it.

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DVD Player is of no use here, either. It seems Apple intended to implement Video CD playback into Panther, but forgot to.

Anyways, thanks for your tips.

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Yeah, I use VLC to play VCDs but I'm gonna have to look into this more. I wanna use DVD player :D

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Im guessing the Apple DVD player should let you play the VCD"s but I haven't tried that so I don't know.

Nope, it doesn't, which in my opinion is completely stupid, since EVERY software DVD player on Windows plays them just fine. What was Apple thinking when they limited their DVD player to not play VCD's? :blink:

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I dont know how you would use QT/Panther to play them, I didnt know you could.

Simply open the .dat file in Quicktime, it will treat it just like an MPG file (which is logical, since that's what it is).

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LOL, it works. I was trying it with a SVCD before. If you have the mpeg2 decoder it would probably work with SVCDs as well...

Yep, it does. It's just annoying that you have to resort to manually opening the .dat file. The DVD player SHOULD, by all logic, play them, even SVCD's (since it's essentially the same format as DVD, just a different resolution). Which makes me wonder WHY Apple makes you BUY the MPEG2 decoder software for Quicktime when they include software on the system (DVD player) that already decodes MPEG2! I thought Quicktime was the basis for all of Apple's multimedia code, but obviously DVD player does not depend on it.

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