ripping karaoke vcd (.dat) and karaoke hosting system

calvinrocks · Post by **calvinrocks** » Sat Aug 19, 2006 7:03 am

I've been looking around for quite sometime but I've yet to find a solution to this problem.

I have old karaoke VCD discs, those of file format .DAT. Since it is becoming a hassle to search for the disc with that particular song, eject disc tray, and insert disc and all those nonsense, it makes more sense to simply rip all of these .DAT karaoke tracks into my computer and archive them for easy play back.

However, I can't find a software that does that. Can anyone help me with this?

Post by **wiseguy** » Sat Aug 19, 2006 12:41 pm

The .DAT files on the VCD disc are actually MPEG-1 files. Try copying the DAT files to a folder on your hard drive and renaming the .dat file extension to .mpg or simply add .mpg directly after the .dat extension. This should allow you to play the files in most software video players.

If this doesn't work you will need to convert the DAT files to MPEG or AVI with a program like VCDGear (freeware).

calvinrocks · Post by **calvinrocks** » Sun Aug 20, 2006 12:09 am

ok but afer i've taken all those dat files out and made them into mpgs, what hosting software can i use for playback. i tried CompuHost, but it doesn't seem to support old vcd karaoke formats, as in, there is no toggle to turn vocal guide on/off. (i know, it's simply just stereo, left channel and right channel). But i can't just turn the balance all the way to 1 end.

Post by **wiseguy** » Sun Aug 20, 2006 1:21 am

The only program I know of that might do this is Hoster. You can download the demo version and try it.

calvinrocks · Post by **calvinrocks** » Fri Aug 25, 2006 10:51 am

ok i'll give it a try. thank you so much.

calvinrocks · Post by **calvinrocks** » Sun Sep 03, 2006 4:58 am

i can't run it. gives me a activeX runtime error or something.

can i ask why is it that vcd/dvd karaoke discs are widely sold and with many commercial players supporting karaoke (not cdg), but it's so hard to find a computer programme to host these discs?

I saw in one of the lounge i visit a computer with plenty of video karaoke tracks ripped and stored. all i have to do is to put them on the playlist. (it even has song titles and that sort. and mpeg-1 doesn't allow id3 tag or anything of that sort, so i'm really trying to find out how it works). i only manage know the software goes by the name "mk ver 1.5". but googling this doesn't give me any results.

so, enlightened me please. thank you.

Post by **wiseguy** » Sun Sep 03, 2006 5:48 am

i can't run it. gives me a activeX runtime error or something.

Possibly your computer does not meet the software requirements. You must be using Windows 2000 SP4 or XP Home or Pro SP2.

can i ask why is it that vcd/dvd karaoke discs are widely sold and with many commercial players supporting karaoke (not cdg), but it's so hard to find a computer programme to host these discs?

The main reason is because of hard drive space usage. A CD+G song track, compressed to the MP3+G format, is about one eighth the size of the original averaging 4 to 5 MB per track. Video files average roughly 10 MB per minute or 30 to 50 MB per song track.

Video karaoke files can be played with virtually any video playing software. If you really want to use video karaoke tracks, and your hosting software does not support them, you could always use a separate video player.

I have no idea what the "mk ver 1.5" software is. May be non-commercial.

DanG2006 · Post by **DanG2006** » Mon Sep 04, 2006 5:42 pm

calvinrocks wrote:ok but afer i've taken all those dat files out and made them into mpgs, what hosting software can i use for playback. i tried CompuHost, but it doesn't seem to support old vcd karaoke formats, as in, there is no toggle to turn vocal guide on/off. (i know, it's simply just stereo, left channel and right channel). But i can't just turn the balance all the way to 1 end.

With the right plugin winamp will play the songs from vcd's from the hard drive, no need to rename the file extensions.
If you temporrarily change the extension you can change the name for use in programs like ROxBox and Sax & Dotties for rotation purposes. Winamp[ and RoxBox will work on lower end computers such my 333 mhz laptop whic is running windows 98SE.