Software lets you play VCDs on Mac OS X

The Mireth Technology Corp. has released version 2.5 of MacVCD X, a Mac OS X version of their software video CD Player that you can use to play VCDs on your Mac.

Video CD, or VCD, is a movie format that hasn’t caught on too much in North America, but is popular in Europe and Asia.

MacVCD supports large screens and multiple video CDs (if you have more than one CD drive). In addition to automatic Video CD format recognition and playback, MacVCD can also be used with standard QuickTime movies. MacVCD also allows you to save a VCD — or your favorite scenes from a VCD — as either a QuickTime movie or a self-contained QuickTime movie, according to Robert Wiebe of Mireth.

Because Mac OS X doesn’t support the Video CD format, you’ll need to make Mac formatted copies of your VCDs for use with the next generation operating system. You can do this using MacVCD and a CD burner. Once you have created these new CDs you can use MacVCD X just like MacVCD.

To convert the Video CD into a format than can be read by Mac OS X and played using MacVCD X, use these steps:

Using MacVCD on Mac OS 9, insert the VCD and then select it from the VCD menu.

From the File menu, select Save As Self Contained Movie.

If the VCD has more than one track, select the next track from the Track menu and repeat step 2.

Do this for each track.

Using your CD burner, burn a CD that contains the tracks you just saved in a folder called MPEGAV.

You can now use this new CD on Mac OS X with MacVCD X. The cost is US$10 for individual users, $25 for small business users, and $20 per corporate user. For details, go to the Mireth Web site.