Can someone edit a VCD MPEG stream once it is encoded?

The situation: Myself and a group have encoded several VideoCDs for educational use. They are free to distribute, but we want to make sure that nobody tries to turn around and sell them! We have included a "splash screen" (akin to the FBI warning) before the videos start, but we want to make sure that someone can no just open the file in an editor, edit the splash screen out and then burn it back to a new disk.

Question (long version): After we have encoded the MPEG and burned the VCD, is it possible for someone to open the video stream and remove the splash screen so they can burn a new disk to sell?

We relize that someone could just record the VCD and re-encode the data without the splash screen and then burn it. But we figure this is more trouble then 99% would be willing to go through and the quality would just be horrible anyway.

We have also thought of overlaying a "not for sale" disclaimer over the first few seconds of video, but want to avoid this if possible.

Many thanks for any help!!

Nick

-- Nick (nick@rightstep.org), September 01, 2000

Answers

I hate to be the bringer of bad news, but converting the .dat (video content) files to .mpg and cutting out some part that you don't want is fairly easy to do. There are numerous tools out there to convert the video files and there are also plenty of tools out there to edit .mpg streams.

HazyMind

-- HazyMind (hazymind@hotmail.com), September 02, 2000.