Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Converting Laser Disc to DVD

This is topic Converting Laser Disc to DVD in forum The Afterlife at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Phil Blake (Member # 2012) on 02-17-2010, 12:54 AM:

Been trying to convert a laser to DVD via capture card in PC . I am experiencing very bad quality results.

What is the best quality format to save in AVI or MPG2 for conversion to DVD?

Has anyone tried this with good results ?

Phil

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 02-17-2010, 01:56 AM:

Try a Pinnacle/Dazzle capturing device since you're doing analog transfer to digital and you need such a device to aid for the capture.

(Course,I cheated: I have a DVD recorder and connected the two via RCA cabling. Laserdisc copies on DVD via this way turned out great!)

Good luck - Monte

Posted by Darryl Spicer (Member # 711) on 02-17-2010, 10:08 AM:

quote: Monte L Fullmer
Try a Pinnacle/Dazzle capturing device since you're doing analog transfer to digital and you need such a device to aid for the capture.

The only problem with that choice is there is the possibility that the audio will be out of sync with the picture the larger the file gets.

Posted by Sean Weitzel (Member # 244) on 02-17-2010, 01:00 PM:

What software are you using? Can you describe what "poor results" means?

I would recommend capturing to an uncompressed AVI (presuming you have enough hard drive space) then go back and encode an MPG-2 compliant file for authoring to DVD.

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 02-17-2010, 03:51 PM:

Just get a recordable DVD player unless you want to edit the side changes to make them absolutely seamless.

Posted by Bruce Hansen (Member # 281) on 02-17-2010, 06:20 PM:

I have done the LD to stand alone DVD recorder dub with very good results. LDs never had copy guard. There is info in the vertical blanking that the player needs to play the disc, so macro-vision could not be put onto a LD (I think that this is the reason that LD was "killed off" so fast when DVD came out, even though it took a while before DVD finaly took off). If you preview where the side change is, you can pause the DVD recorder ar the right place.

Posted by Phil Blake (Member # 2012) on 02-18-2010, 04:49 AM:

well i do have a really good DVD recorder but the problem is the DVD recorder is PAL only and the Laser disc I want to convert is NTSC , so i had to go back to the PC to do the transfer.

I have pinnacle 10 which resulted in the final capture being very much out of sync. I also have AVS video capture suite which works quite well but i can only make a mpg2 file at 352 x 240 which is crappy.
when i take it up to 720 x 480 it bombs out telling me my P4 3.4Gig processor cannot handle the workload.

The original laser disc is of a very high quality so I am quite surprised the copying is not turning out well.

Posted by Sean Weitzel (Member # 244) on 02-18-2010, 11:05 AM:

P4 3.4 should be waay more than enough to capture an uncompressed AVI, it should even work compressing mpg2 on the fly. Have you tried 720X480 AVI with no compression? PM me and I might have a piece of software that may help you.
What is the title of the laserdisc if you don't mind my asking?

Posted by Jeremy Weigel (Member # 4208) on 02-18-2010, 11:08 AM:

I used a Leadtek PVR 2000 with their PVR sofware to transfer about 30 VHS(4 to 6 hr long) home videos to DVD with no problems with lip-sync. It has its own hardware encoder so it uses very little CPU power. Their software has many different encoding settings to choose from. I used their "DVD(Hardware) setting. It is also a very good TV tuner as it is in real-time and it also changed channels very quickly. I use it to watch/record cable TV.

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 02-18-2010, 11:53 AM:

Why do so many Windows programs lose "lip sync" as the file gets larger? I simply do not understand this. 5 minutes of video and 5 minutes of audio should match up perfectly. Why is it slowing one of those aspects down? I see this A LOT on Youtube videos.

Posted by Sean Weitzel (Member # 244) on 02-18-2010, 11:59 AM:

Short answer: dropped frames
Long answer: look at this link:
http://www.digitalfaq.com/guides/video/capture-dropped-frames.htm

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 02-18-2010, 12:56 PM:

Excellent link .. thx and it all makes sense on how to make excellent video.

-Monte

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 02-18-2010, 09:33 PM:

Hmmm doesn't this work on the "Shrinky Dink" principle? Just pop the Laserdisc in the oven...it then will shrink down to a DVD!

Posted by Phil Blake (Member # 2012) on 02-19-2010, 04:59 AM:

quote: Sean Weitzel
What is the title of the laserdisc if you don't mind my asking?

the title is Roaring Glory war birds , it is a documentary of restored ww2 aircraft that are still flying today, really great footage in surround.

Posted by Geena Phillips (Member # 3726) on 02-26-2010, 04:36 PM:

Also, Phil, make sure you use the Composite cable to hook the player up (PAL has those, right?), NOT the S-Video.

Posted by Cameron Glendinning (Member # 3516) on 02-26-2010, 10:42 PM:

Phil, I think your biggest problem is the ntsc to pal conversion. When I made corperate videos I had some terrible results. Not all converters are equal.

Posted by Phil Blake (Member # 2012) on 03-02-2010, 10:45 PM:

well i have since had sort of a breakthrough.

I just bought one of those USB capture devices , came with Ulead video studio software.

The capture results were the best yet, however my 50 minutes transfer went wrong when it had about 8 minutes to go started dropping hundreds of frames.

I am wondering if it is hardware or software doing this ?

Posted by Tom Petrov (Member # 1534) on 01-30-2011, 08:41 AM:

Why would anyone want to do this?

The beauty of a laserdisc is just that....it's a laserdisc.

Posted by Vern Dias (Member # 5241) on 01-30-2011, 06:48 PM:

Transfer it in 2 (or more) sessions with each session in it's own file, then use editing software to merge the sessions. It sounds like the PC is running low on some resource as the capture progresses, possibly virtual memory.

Vern

Posted by System Notices (Member # 2357) on 01-10-2017, 05:20 AM:

It has been 2171 days since the last post.

Posted by Justin Hamaker (Member # 2165) on 01-10-2017, 05:20 AM:

I came into laserdiscs for the 1995 release of Star Wars and Empire Strikes Back. This is the last original theatrical version and contains the Leonard Martin interview with Lucas. I don't currently own a laserdisc player, so I was wondering if any FT members have the equipment and know how to do a transfer to DVD. Obviously I would be willing to pay for the service.

I also have this set on VHS, but my understanding is laserdisc is much higher quality.

Posted by Bill Brandenstein (Member # 7758) on 01-10-2017, 11:11 AM:

Justin, I have access to everything needed, though it's not particularly convenient. The quality might be better than VHS but only by a chunk. I've had to use visual noise reduction or temporal smoothing to make my previous attempts at LD transfers look "watchable." Well, that would be true of much VHS too. DVD is just so much cleaner and twice as sharp.

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 01-10-2017, 11:44 AM:

I have a high end S/VHS player (Panasonic AG-S555) that had a professional service in 2014 before I used it to make uncompressed AVI files for archival preservation from some VHS camcorder tapes via a cheap USB capture dongle (Diamond VC500) and an old version of Adobe Premiere that was able to see the driver.

I don't have an NTSC laserdisc player. I did have a PAL one, but I gave it away before leaving the UK (I only ever owned around 10 discs), figuring that the chances of ever being called upon to play a PAL disc again were so close to zero as to make it not worth the shipping. It could play NTSC discs on a PAL TV, but it didn't read and output a true NTSC signal, and nor did it do a full and genuine signal conversion to PAL-I (so you couldn't record the pseudo-PAL output): I think it just used some form of drop frame processing to f*** with the frame rate and make it work on a PAL TV when hooked up via the built in UHF modulator and an antenna cord. Using a Y/C or composite connection, my PAL TV couldn't play its output from an NTSC disc.

As has been noted above, the large files (about 1.2 GB per minute of running time) created by my VHS transfers did cause a sync problem with the longer tapes (one was of a memorial service that lasted nearly two hours), so much so that I ended up needing to capture the video and audio in separate passes and then resync them.

Laserdisc did have a basic resolution advantage over VHS (425 television lines vs. 240), but a lot of the final, perceived image quality to the end viewer was determined by other factors: the source material used to master the disc or tape, the quality of the mastering itself, and the signal processing in the playback machines. Both formats recorded a composite signal.

Posted by Sean Weitzel (Member # 244) on 01-10-2017, 03:43 PM:

Justin I sent you a PM through this forum. Please let me know if you get it.

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 01-10-2017, 05:53 PM:

Ive done LD to DVD copies many times since I've got a DVD recorder. Works great.

Posted by Geoff Jones (Member # 3668) on 01-10-2017, 07:07 PM:

Google "Harmy."