I was trying to convert a .dat file from VCD to mpeg or avi format.
Linux helps you to do it with ease. I use Ubuntu and all you need is ffmpeg [Is tools/library to record, convert, stream and play multimedia content including libavcodec and libavformat, two libraries used by many other open source projects.]
To install ffmpeg
CMD: sudo apt-get install ffmpeg
To convert .dat to avi using follow the command below
CMD: ffmpeg -i source-file.dat -f avi -vcodec mpeg4 -b 800k -g 300 -bf 2 destination-file.avi