How to open old SVCD discs

[pilgrim1936]

I have a number of discs made years ago in SVCD format. At present I cannot open these on my Mac. Any suggestions, please, as to how to go about this?

 

[chscag]

The only suggestion I have is to try VLC. Since it's free you've nothing to lose by downloading it and giving it a try.

 

[pilgrim1936]

Thank you, I'll try that.

 

[pilgrim1936]

Sorry, VLC didn't do the job.

 

[Slydude]

This page suggests that VLC can read SVCD disks. When you say it didn't do the job what went wrong?

Let's start with a basic question. Does the disc appear in the Finder at all? Go to Finder preferences and click the General tab. Make sure the setting to show CDs/DVDs is checked

 

[dtravis7]

so far not looking good. People have tried everything and even a PC and the disc does not even show up in Finder or Explorer.

play svcd in sierra? - Apple Community

 

[krs]

@pilgrim1936 - Have you tried googling for this?

I came across a number of options yesterday how to read (and even write) SVDC disks on the Mac.
None were as easy as just using one simple application, but didn't seem overly complicated either.
However, it was mentioned that one could only read SVCD disks using an internal DVD drive, one apparently cannot use a Mac with an external DVD drive for that purpose.

 

[Slydude]

Something about that sounds a bit off to me. I think I’ve had external drives in the past that could have read those discs. Time to do a bit more investigation.

 

[krs]

Something about that sounds a bit off to me. I think I’ve had external drives in the past that could have read those discs. Time to do a bit more investigation.

Makes no logical sense to me either, but I remember years ago I came across something similar where some disk could only be read if the drive was internal - so to me at least, it's not something totally unheard of.
But I have no SVDC disks, I'm just interested in general which old file formats a newer Mac can still read because I keep coming across them while 'cleaning up'

 

[pigoo3]

I have a number of discs made years ago in SVCD format. At present I cannot open these on my Mac. Any suggestions, please, as to how to go about this?

Since some of the suggestions so far haven't worked for you...can you tell us how you've opened/used these SVCD discs in the past?...maybe this will help come up with a solution.

- Nick

 

[pigoo3]

Been doing some searching...and found this regarding the VLC app and playing SVCD:

"SVCDs often do not work in VLC Player. VLC can sometimes play SVCDs using libcdio and libvcdinfo -"

Here's the link:

https://wiki.videolan.org/SVCD/

And another bit of info:

"If you have a CD-DA (audio CD), SVCD, or VCD packaged inside a CD-image, in some cases VLC media player can play this without you having to mount it or extract it. You can simply choose Open file and pick the CD-image. For CD-image support VLC has to be compiled using libcdio (--enable-libcdio) and the various plugins which use libcdio need to be selected (--enable-cddax, --enable-vcdx)."

Link:

https://wiki.videolan.org/What_can_VLC_do?/


- Nick

 

[pigoo3]

Here's a Mac app that's supposed to be able to play VCD's...maybe it works for SVCD's as well:

Free vcd player software - Mac Media Player works as free VCD player software

Compatibility says macOS 10.6 - 10.11. Not 100% sure what OP is running (OP profile says Yosemite, 10.10).

- Nick

 

[ferrarr]

Sorry, VLC didn't do the job.

What steps did you take? Did you double click on the SVCD disc icon? Or right click on it and select Open with?