Laser disc capture - newbie

[rhegedus]

OK, so I've found a rare laser disc film on e-bay that isn't on DVD.

I'm considering buying a LD player just for the purpose of capturing the LD film and puting it on DVD.

Now I know absolutely nothing about LD so, are LD players region specific (the disc is NTSC, so I'm assuming R1) and if so does this mean I can't play R2 discs? And what's the quality of LD like in comparison to DVD and how much quality can I expect to lose by capturing?

[gshelley61]

Laserdiscs are either NTSC or PAL. The image quality is similar to S-VHS or Hi8 videotape (higher resolution and bandwidth than VHS), but not as good as commercial DVD. The audio tracks in the later generation LD's are uncompressed PCM digital, so the soundtracks can sound better in many cases than the DVD version (which is highly compressed AC3). The video signal on LD's is composite analog, not digital (even though the storage method is on a large optical disc).

Some LD players that were sold in Europe and the UK can play both PAL and NTSC laserdiscs. The easiest and generally the best method (IMHO) of transferring LD to DVD is with a standalone DVD recorder. The transfer quality is virtually identical to the original up to about 2 hours 30 minutes on most machines.

I think you will need an LD player that puts out the native NTSC laserdisc video signal, and a DVD recorder (or computer capture card, if that's the way you want to transfer to DVD) that records in NTSC. flaninacupboard is a UK forum member that has lots of experience capturing laserdiscs across the pond... look for some of his posts regarding the subject (perhaps PM him, as well).

[flaninacupboard]

Hi,

Sorry if i've missed the boat on this one - or the ebay auction...

There's no region limiting, just NTSC or PAL discs. the majority of players you find in the UK market play both NTSC and PAL. They come up pretty often on ebay, if you grab the model number you can check for details at http://www.laserdiscarchive.co.uk/

Generally the two models to look for are the CLD-2950 and the DVL-919, the latter being an LD/DVD combi.

If you don't want to outlay for a player but want the transfer done we can set something up. I use an ADVC-50 and see you use an ADVC-100, and i have a CLD-2950 player. probably thing to do is capture, .rar the DV onto DVD-Rs and post them.

It's also possible i have the film already

Post back or PM me again, once more sorry for the delay!

[vhelp]

My laserdisc player is by Pioneer. They pretty much made the best units
around (as far as quality goes) Actually, I have two models.

* CLD-V2600
* CLD-D701

Both put out same great quality. But the D701 has feature to play both
sides of the LD disk, which is a comfort if your *whole* movie is on one
disk

I capture from it using my ADVC-100 device. I don't use any TBC's (case
that would be your next question) because LD's don't need any. Nor do they
need any de-Macrovision in-between either

I've put out a few samples already, from my Star Wars disks, and latest one
I have for D/L is here:

You need to use winRAR v2.90 to extract the MPEG file.
--> 1123.1 - it a few seconds in the opening scene that a user requested.

Its short because of the bitrate I used. I feel that anything below 9000 is
just not going to be enough (*if* quality is your concirn, as it is mine)
My next DVD Writer purchase will be for a DL one. So, at 9000 bitrate, is not
a big deal for a 2 hour movie.

@ flan..

I didn't realize they made multi-region players for LD's.

-vhelp

[junkmalle]

vhelp, I took a look at your LD capture -- nice work. I see you inverse telecined back to the original 23.976 film frames.

I'm curious about how well this works with LD captures. Do you find many breaks in the telecine pattern? Do you use the manual setting in VirtualDub or TMPGEnc? I find the auto settings usually end up making mistakes -- sometimes letting interlaced frames through and giving jerky results.

I IVTC recordings from digital cable and VHS all the time. I always use VirtualDub's manual IVTC setting (I'm usually making mpeg4 files). I can sometimes get through an entire movie without any breaks. But often have to IVTC in two or more sections to avoid errors. Sometimes I just give up because there are too many breaks in the telecine pattern -- almost every camera shot.

[rhegedus]

Thanks for the help, guys

It's a 10 day auction and there's 4 days left - the sticky thing is that I'm of to the US for the next 10 or so days so I hope there will be internet access in the places I'm staying.

Thanks for the offer flan, I might take you up on the offer if I win the disc.

[vhelp]

@ junkmalle (and others) ...

It works very well w/ Laserdisc media (movies) but the problem (w/ IVTC
miss-haps) happen only when the film was cut/edited inaccurately in the
transfer to LaserDisc.. and not the user's IVTC !!

For example. As I was doing my Star Wars (Empire Strikes Back) I noticed
that in the scene where it fades into the Lord Vader's space-ships, and you
see the astorieds collide, *that last astorid* has a glitch in the IVTC/3:2
pattern that throws off the IVTC. People often think or blaim it on the
IVTC Plugin or other Method used. It's not the so. Here are a few good
reasons why IVTC fails:

1 * Frames were dropped during capturing (DV or Analog)
2 * Film source is not perfectly Telecined - (as in your case, if Star Wars,
.... for instance)
3 * Audio goes out of sync

Lines 1 and 2 are the most likely, and the cause of failed IVTC patterns.
.
In my case w/ the Star Wars LD's, it was the film's Telecine that broke my IVTC.
There are a number of these "broken" Telecine patterns throughout my Star Wars
Laserdisc collection. (I know this from after many debugging and researching)
And you're right in that your only alternative is to "sectionize" your
encoding projects. Later, let the DVD Authoring Software pacake "merge"
or "join" them together. Hopefuly, w/in the bounderies of Chaptering and
so on and so forth.
.
There is nothing wrong with "sectionizing" your encoding projects. That is
the mark of *true* video editing. That's what editing is all about. People
are mislead into thinking that they *MUST* capture straight 2 or 3 hours of
the source in question.. (ie, your laserdisc set) Thats just not so. You can
capture whatever you desires are, or you limits govern. In my case, it's
4 gig limit under my Windows 98 Gold using FAT32. However, I can capture
using AVI_IO or WinDV ect. Lately though, I've ben using winDV, to help
guide me through those areas that I know who's telecine pattern is broken.
However, I don't have to do this either. It's only if I have no other choice.
I usually capture to whatever my external USB-2 hardrive's enclosure kit
will allow. In my case, it's a 40gig hard drive. Anyways.

I'm using TMPG's (verion 2.520 I think) built-in IVTC. Its the fastest one
around, based on my process. I want to eliminate any more color space loss
in my encodes.

Also, remember this.. that the source you are capturing from *is already*
in 4:2:0 color space.., and that is what you are capturing. Weather it be
in DV or Analog, it's still 4:2:0 color space. Then, your encoder will be
encoding it (re-converting again) to 4:2:0 space, making the source look
a little more lighter. That's where people make the mistake, and use other
filtering (using color filtering) to jack up the brightness/darkness, and
they do this incorrectly.

(ie, when you saw my sample clip - thanks.. you said it was nice work. It may
look on the bright side or something, but in all honesty, that's how it should
look. When you burn it on DVD disks, and play it on your TV set, it will look fine)

So, don't worry about why it looks dark or light. Dependign upon your capture
card and codec you used, and your source that you are capturing from, will dictake
what your final source will look like. Filtering w/ color filters results will
vary, from source to source, as well as equipment to equipment, and skills, etc.
.
Some capture devices are not as good for certain sources, like VHS. I have found
this out through many tests. My advc-100 is a good example. Not very good w/
VHS sources, but my TRV22 is. Go figure. So, I use my TRV22 for VHS instead.
.
The ADVC-100 is great w/ LD sources. That sample you D/L'ed is a good example..
couple that w/ my skills/knowledge/technique, and the sky is the limit.. or some
thing like that

So, the next time you're ready for another encoding project that requires an
IVTC step, factor the above exaplanation into this. As I said, in most cases,
it's either Frame Drops or broken/poorly done Telecine patterns that mess up
a good IVTC method/process.

Cheers,
-vhelp

[louthewiz]

I have a panasonic LD player sitting around so if you want to buy it I am willing to depart with it and it works and looks great,it has auto flip optical out and is very easy to use. So if you want to pm me and I will answer right away,by the way I am in NY.

[junkmalle]

Vhelp, thanks for the thoughtful reply. I sometime suggest that people attempt to IVTC their LD caps so I wanted to be sure it can be done without too many problems!

I capture with a Hauppauge WinTV PVR 250 so I'm usually converting from MPEG to AVI. As far as I can tell the card has NEVER dropped a frame. I can run video conversions, file transfers, even play 3d games while capturing and there are no problem with the captures. Almost every telecine pattern break has been on a scene change -- so clearly this is an editing (at the studio) issue not a capture problem.

I would say about 10 percent of the movies I've recorded will IVTC in one piece. Another 20 percent require 2 pieces (probably because the movie is on two tapes at the broadcaster). 60 percent end up requiring 3 to 20 pieces. The last 10 percent is so badly mangled I just don't bother.

I looked again at your sample MPEG file. The black level looks good but the bright parts do look a bit over bright. I exported a few frames and examined them in a paint program. When the small ship explodes near the end of the clip the explosion is full 255,255,255 brightness over a large area. This implies it has washed out. I'm pretty sure that's not even a legal color in NTSC video. It would be interesting to capture with a little less contrast and see if there is any more detail in that washed out area.

[junkmalle]

Vhelp, Here's a sample of what I'm talking about. I grabbed a frame from your mpeg file, replaced all pixels of color 255,255,255 (white) with red:



As you can see the main body of the explosion was full white.

[tedkunich]

I looked again at your sample MPEG file. The black level looks good but the bright parts do look a bit over bright. I exported a few frames and examined them in a paint program. When the small ship explodes near the end of the clip the explosion is full 255,255,255 brightness over a large area. This implies it has washed out. I'm pretty sure that's not even a legal color in NTSC video. It would be interesting to capture with a little less contrast and see if there is any more detail in that washed out area.

This is the problem with analog capturing - there must be a "calibration" process performed on the setup prior to capturing to prevent this very thing. IMO looking at the capture on the PC monitor is worthless and not accurate at all. If you can get your hands on the Video Essentials LD and perform the calibration routine for bright/contrast and saturation/hue your caps will be very close to the nominal video system you are using. I did this and used DScaler's automatic calibration mode, noted the registers settings for the capture chip when it was done. Now I can return the device to the saved settings whenever I try to capture anything.

T