Can you play VCDs on a Mac?

Posted:
in Genius Bar edited January 2014
If yes, in what App? None of the files have any icons when I select them. I am asked to choose an Application to Open With. ('X 10.2.8; tried QT, Real and WMP)



Is that £15 down the drain?

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 9
    paulpaul Posts: 5,278member
  • Reply 2 of 9
    If you like, you can grab the latest VLC beta here: http://www.videolan.org/pub/testing/....7.0-test1.dmg



  • Reply 3 of 9
    der kopfder kopf Posts: 2,275member
    If you do run into problems with VLC (which, if my toils are to judge, you will), you may want to look at MPlayer and, particularly at MacVCD X. The last one is to be bought and payed for though. But it does play more and better (at least in the vcd department) than both VLC and MPlayer combined.



    All apps are to be found on www.versiontracker.com, or www.macupdate.com (I still prefer the first one).
  • Reply 4 of 9
    Thanks Paul and Dale Sorel



    Quote:

    Originally posted by der Kopf

    All apps are to be found on www.versiontracker.com, or www.macupdate.com (I still prefer the first one).



    What do you mean der kopf? Do you mean you prefer MPlayer to MacVCD X, or using VersionTracker to MacUpdate? (Why?)



    Danke Schon
  • Reply 5 of 9
    PS. Reviews on neither VersionTracker nor MacUpdate are very good for MacVCD X or the latest version of MPlayer. If you have these Apps, what are your experiences?
  • Reply 6 of 9
    ebbyebby Posts: 3,110member
    I have both MPlayer and VLC. I prefer MPlayer because it crashes less often. But the only times I use them is if Quicktime can't open a file which is rare in my case. I use it less than once a week.
  • Reply 7 of 9
    stunnedstunned Posts: 1,096member
    VLC version 0.4.4 is much more reliable and less crash free when playing VCDs.



    I would recommend getting this older build. However, it plays less file types. So what I do is I use the newer versions to play other movie files and this older version to play VCDs only.



    So far so good!
  • Reply 8 of 9
    One more vote here for MPlayer mostly because its interface doesn't look entirely like a twelve year old designed it.
  • Reply 9 of 9
    If you can boot into OS 9 then you can use QuickTime player to view the files. Just poke around the folders on the VCD till you find some ending in .dat that are around 300MB.



    Once you open them in OS 9 with QT Player you can save them to the hard drive. Choose save as and select a folder on your HD. Make sure to check the box for saving movie as a self contained movie.



    Once you do this you can play the same file from OS X with QT Player.



    I haven't tried but I assume that you could also copy off these files in windows, move them to OS X and play them. It is odd that OS X has yet to gain the ability to read VCDs.
Sign In or Register to comment.