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Extracting Digital Video from LaserDiscs?
americanatavist asks: "I was wondering how feasible it would be to digitally copy LaserDisc movies to DVD. Clearly this would require the standard suite of tools to make a DVD. What method would yield the maximum level of quality? Is it worth the effort to find a means of extracting the digital information using an LD-ROM drive, or would the S-video from a regular LD player suffice?"
Those LD-Rom drives, and standard laserdisc players in general, are so big, you'd throw a disc out trying to move one of those.
Laser discs are actually analog. So you can't copy them to DVD directly.
LaserDisks have always been analog video. Later versions of them added Digital Audio tracks (including a very few with DTS), but the video has remained analog.
If you've gone to enough trouble to buy LDs, you should be looking at the price of DVDs these days and realizing that its cheaper/easier just to replace your entire collection (or the ones you really want) with DVDs and then rip those losslessly onto your HD using a $20 DVD-ROM drive.
Aren't laserdiscs actually analogue?
The best option would be to find a player with RGB output and then hook it into a capture card that accepts RGB.
You've got a set of those THX Original-Edition Star Wars LaserDiscs, don't you?
Whatever works. If a cheap $2 cable works just as well as a $200 LD-ROM, I personally would go for the $2 cable.
Frink: Nice try floyd, but you were designed for scrubbing, and scrubbing is what you shall do.
Laserdiscs video is analog so you cannot digitally extract it. If you would rather have DVDs then sell your laserdiscs and buy the DVDs. Though I know some movies were released on laserdisc but not on DVD(Johnny Got His Gun comes to mind).
Isn't that a bit harsh? :-)
Americanatavist mentions possibly using a simple s-video transfer as the solution; not only can this cause sub-par quality compared to a digital extraction rip, the extraction would not be digital due to the fact that s-video is analog.
Patrick "Diablo-D3" McFarland || http://AdTerrasPerAspera.com
Even though you mention this in a somewhat rude way, you're right. In addition to this, the method of using an s-video cable wouldn't help much either, s-video is also analog.
Patrick "Diablo-D3" McFarland || http://AdTerrasPerAspera.com
Damn! Apparently I'm not the only one. Actually I know someone who already has all the discs and is going to transfer over to DVD.
Yeah, I know, but it's just so god damn fun. Come on, you know that every now and then, you rip off an unholy flame and check that little "post anonymously button." We all do it...
I don't.
""I was wondering how feasible it would be to digitally copy LaserDisc movies to DVD. Clearly this would require the standard suite of tools to make a DVD. What method would yield the maximum level of quality? Is it worth the effort to find a means of extracting the digital information using an LD-ROM drive, or would the S-video from a regular LD player suffice?""
Apparently the majority are playing "village idiot" today so I'll answer. First as they said it's analog. However it's better analog than say standard VHS, and comparable to S-VHS (some say better). Most capture cards have a composite/S-Video input. Treat your source in a similiar manner to the way you'd treat any analog source, and make certain you get a decent capture card, that'll do the source justice. You also may have to make a couple run throughs to get everything if you have a "special edition" disc. i.e. extra sound tracks, picture archives.
LD is an analog format, that means that weather the DAC is in the LD-ROM drive (what ever that is) or in your capture card, you'll get similar quality. this is the exact same thing as VHS -> DVD, just with a different medium holding the analog data. (that doesn't break down with use)
unless this guy is planning on having a DVD of the true StarWars Trilogy (not this crap that lucas(s) put out in the 1990's) it just isn't worth the effort, and he should just buy the DVD releases of his LD films.
Don't call me back. Give me a call back. Bye. So yeah. But bye our, well, but alright we are on a shirt this chill.
you should...it's fun. That's what the internet is all about: insulting random strangers anonymously.
It should be evident that there is a high quality way to do this since the star wars ld's have already been ripped to dvd and released on the internet for some time. i would suggest checking out the usual dvd/vcd help sites such as dvdrhelp and doom9 for some tutorials
"Analog: (n & adj) variant of analogue" (American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Ed)
Yes, we tend to use the variant spelling when talking about circuits, but that doesn't change the fact that it is, indeed, a variant and not the preferred spelling.
As many others have pointed out, LaserDiscs have analog video. Also of note is that they store composite video, so a LaserDisc player with an S-Video connector is not necessarily better than one without, as your capture card may do a better job than the player of converting composite to S.
The audio on LDs is (except for the very old discs) digital: 16-bit 44KHz PCM, just like CDs. Many newer discs contain AC3 audio (16-bit 48KHz multichannel Dolby Digital) or dts audio, but in either case you'd need a player that supports it.
For convenience, you can't beat hooking the player up to a FireWire DV media converter box. But for the best quality transfer, I recommend:
Video: raw analog capture card; WinTV dbx or preferably PixelView X-Capture, an incredible card for ~$40.
Audio: get an audio card based off of the CMI8738 chipset that has digital in/out. These can capture an externally-clocked digital signal without altering it at all. I've used one of these to capture the 5.1 Dolby Digital stream off of a LaserDisc and (with some slight massaging of the stream) put it on a DVD without recompression. Even if you're just dealing with the 44KHz stereo PCM that's on most LDs, this will get you a cleaner signal that other options. If you're planning on grabbing the AC3 audio, you'll need an AC3-RF demodulator, or a preamp that will take an AC3-RF signal and output SPDIF or TOSLink to the soundcard.
I've successfully used this to get top-notch transfers of my own LaserDiscs to DVDs. Good luck!
LD uses frequency modulation to store an analogue signal on an optical disc. The lengths of the pits and lands correspond to the wavelength and by varying that length (modulating) you can store an analogue signal on an optical disc. LD was originally shown in the early 70's and commercially appeared in the late 70's. Originally it had a high quality analogue stereo sound track to go with the analogue video. Later a 16 bit 44.1Khz PCM sound track was added. On NTSC discs this could co-exist with the old analogue sound but for PAL discs the video signal takes up too much bandwidth to allow this and so the analogue audio was dropped in favour of the PCM audio. Quality wise, there wasn't that much in it, LD analogue audio is very good, much better than VHS Hifi sound. Discs also come in two flavours, Constant Linear Velocity (CLV) and Constant Angular Velocity (CAV). CLV discs play for roughly twice as long per side (about 1 hour) but lose the trick play features of CAV (slow motion and pause) unless there is a digital field buffer in the player. The trick play CLV digital effects are not as nice as a true CAV disc though.
Now, there has been talk of s-video being better to capture from the LD. Others have suggested RGB. Well, the answer is that neither is best. LD video is stored as composite video and any LD player with an s-video or RGB output is extracting that from the composite signal. Depending on the quality of the player you may be better just using the composite signal and using a high quality demodulator. The most modern LD players included advanced 3 line or 3D comb filters to separate the chroma and luma and give an s-video output that looked better than the quality of consumer TVs. Where digital field effects are available it may not be possible to get at the true composite video signal depending on the design of the player as some recombine the internal digital signal extracted from the disc for these effects back into analogue s-video and composite signals. Some players even offer the output as RGB but the picture quality is pretty poor.
Another problem with LDs is that they suffer from chroma noise. Generally the picture quality is very good, way better than SVHS. Resolution is 425 lines (NTSC) or 440 lines (PAL). Remember this has little to do with scanlines. Lines of resolution is a measure of how many lines you can resolve for example on a test card like those provided on Video Essentials. SVHS maxes out around 400 lines so is almost as good and VHS sits at 240 lines. DVD manages around 480 lines so looks a little clearer depending on the transfer. LD looks much better than VHS or SVHS because it has more bandwidth for the chroma (colour) portion of the signal than the VHS formats. The difference is apparent when you make an SVHS tape of an LD, it looks muddier and less colour rich. Betamax recordings look significantly better in this respect. However, some LDs were not great transfers and suffered noise in the colour signal and this appears particularly in the blues which sometimes flicker badly. The Aladdin CAV LD set for instance is very bad for this. Conversely the THX CAV LDs of the Star Wars Trilogy are amazingly clean. The noise levels will affect your ability to get a good digital transfer.
The highest quality LD players were notable for increasing detail through the use of high quality video processing to reduce chroma noise. The Pioneer Elite series LD players were very good in this respect and if you are going to do a transfer you need to get one of those. Budget LD players still look good but may be more noisy.
Ordinary computer capture cards (things like WinTV PCI) are poor at best for this. You may be better getting your hands on a stand-alone DVD recorder and going with that. Of course, you also have the issue of getting the audio. Some LDs contain Dolby Digital or DTS sound. DTS sound is available on the standard optical digitial audio out but DD sound comes from an RF modulated connection that you can't just stuff into a d
"I have the attention span of a strobe lit goldfish, please get to the point quickly!"
Nah, I've never seen the appeal of it. I seem to be in the minority though.
What kind of sociopathic, sock fucking, jism breathing nutcocker would say something like that?
you know, before Lucas and Co. decided to ruin the origional franchise, people had LD copies of SW. I want to find a few and put them on DVD as well... you know.. becase my tape copies are almost 20+ years old. There's only so much you can do with a 20+ year old tape.
/rant
I WANT MY LD AND MAKE SOME DVD ISO'S FOR PEOPLE OF THE BEST VERSION OF STARWARS EVER!
that being said, if anyone has an LD of StarWars, I'll do the conversion for free. email me for details if you're interested!
-zoloto
per my post here: http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=116371&cid =9851456
/rant
you know, before Lucas and Co. decided to ruin the origional franchise, people had LD copies of SW. I want to find a few and put them on DVD as well... you know.. becase my tape copies are almost 20+ years old. There's only so much you can do with a 20+ year old tape.
I WANT MY LD AND MAKE SOME DVD ISO'S FOR PEOPLE OF THE BEST VERSION OF STARWARS EVER!
that being said, if anyone has an LD of StarWars, I'll do the conversion for free. email me for details if you're interested!
-zoloto
where in the world can in find these? i sure want them so i can replace my decades old tapes!
http://www.prillaman.net/starwarsdvdreviews.html
It seems the best ones are the Definitive versions - I have Version B and it's pretty average, but it IS original trilogy, not bastardised special edition.
I have a friend on permanent lookout for the Definitive Edition set whenever he travels via Bangkok...
Visceral Psyche Films
You must not have heard of a DAC then?
A laser disk has pits on the disk that vary in length and position in the sequence. So essentially you have a time and amplitude domain that generates a analog waveform. Why would it not be possible to construct a special apparatus that reads the length of the pits as accurately as possible and store that information in a data file with a 64 bit number for each pit with a time? Once you have this the data you have captured is digital and can use the necessary analysis to generate the image information from that data? It seems a lot better than dealing with disk players that are taking this information doing various filtering on the information and working with the generated analog frequency waveform.
I have over 1000 Laserdiscs, and two very good players (one brand new in the box, waiting for the day my main one dies). However, a couple of the rare discs that I really like have started to exhibit some speckling, so I've transferred those to DVD.
As others have pointed out, the video track on LDs are actually analog, so the setup is very simple (assuming you don't want to extract the digital audio from the disc). Here's how I do it:
- S-Video and analog R/L outputs of the player connect to the inputs of a Sony DVMC-DA2 Analog-to-DV Firewire bridge.
- The Sony DVMC-DA2 is set for 16-bit audio and the Firewire output of DA2 is connected to my Apple G5.
That's pretty much it. Now, you just start recording in whatever app you use to capture DV, and start the player.Note that you should be sure to select the correct audio mode on the LD player if you're capturing a disc with Dolby Digital audio. One of the major failings of DD on LD (which DTS didn't have) was that they sacrificed one of the audio channels to contain the DD bitstream.
You may also want de-interlace the footage in your capture app before transcoding for DVD.
-David
* As is generally the case, my opinions do not reflect those of my employer.
Also of note is that they store composite video, so a LaserDisc player with an S-Video connector is not necessarily better than one without, as your capture card may do a better job than the player of converting composite to S.
Though in some cases - certainly for Pioneer players - the S-Video output would be preferable to the composite output on the same player. The D/A converters for these outputs are usually superior to the composite ones.
Even though the video is stored as composite, the S-Video output jack is not exactly an affectation for these old and wonderful high-end players.
zWhat would an EWOULDBLOCK block, if an EWOULDBLOCK could block would? -- me
I think the guy was actually parodying this attitude. I really truly hope that nobody is really as full of themselves as the granparent.
Imagine the size of the pc case needed to mount one of these LD drives. ;-)
I use the Hauppauge PVR-250 to record mine to DVD. You can find out more about it on BYOPVR.com.
I have the VCR cassette tapes.
Can I qualify for a DVD iso at all?