LaserDisks: The forgotten format.

[Mephij]

I was recently lucky enough to aquire a mint set of star wars LDs. I am wonderig if there is any cheap hardware out there for ripping these things (they certainly don't fit in my cdrom tray!). If not, can someone recomomend a way to capture these with my ati radeon 128 pro that will give me minimal droped frames while maintaing good quality?

Thanks
-Mephij

[thxkid]

well don't know much about your ATI card, but since I have owned laser Discs since 1986 I would hope you have a good laser disc player, like a pioneer or sony and one that can flip the head over at the end of the disc and one with a TBC and or Digital Y/C, these will give you that perfect picture output you need to get a great stable picture, to bad you don't have access to a DVD burner or DVD Recorder cause my Enhanced Star Wars Triology Laser Discs looks fantastic on DVD-R.
If your ATI card can capture directly to MPEG2, I would try at 480x480 at around 2000 bitrate so you can get them on 2 SVCD's. It would be a waste of good Movie material to transfer these over to a VCD.

[Mephij]

It just so happens that I do have a DVD burner. a pioneer-AO4. Essentially what I want is to get my lds onto DVD-R. How did you capture yours? I am not very experienced with capturing, especially from LDs.

[monoxide77]

How did you capture yours? I am not very experienced with capturing, especially from LDs.

I have the same question!

[Thorn]

SW LDs... Cool. SW DVDs.. Even cooler.

The process depends on how much free HD space you have (and your processor). I capture to raw Huffyuv (lossless) but that takes about 30-35GB/hour depending on how noisy it is. I'd definitely recommend that over ANY other format, because Star Wars is worth only the very best .

There are links to the left about capturing but in reality the only way to get the optimal capture is to experiment and improve your process.

Some notes: Virtualdub is excellent for capture (and is free) but some people say they have less framedrops with AVI_IO.

Always capture at 740x480 if your target is NTSC DVD. Audio at 48KHz.

Dropped frames can be a result of slow hard drives, background programs, slow CPU (made worse by excessive noise) or a lot of other things. Do youserlf a favor by playing around a bit before this capture, since you probably won't want to do it again after fininishing (even though you'll know how to do it better).

It looks like monoxide's thread is here:
http://www.vcdhelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=118231

[obiwan176]

I would be willing totransfer those for you using my dmr-e20. I have done so with my star wars laserdiscs and indiana jones trilogy madereal dvd covers for them as well. and the quality is identicle to the original.

[cchitson11]

I got a suggestion to save time and hassle. Why don't you order the trilogy from Malaysia already on dvd. (No Joke) The quality is excellent it is actually on Dual layer discs (You've got to make sure you get the 5 star collection). Very high bitrate on the encode. Actually pressed discs not dvd-r. Motion menu, Dts and Dolby digital sound, original trailers. And the best part all this for around $40. You can also get the Indy series. btw, It is a laser disc rip.

[MITSUI_1]

Here's a link to the review of the disc's you're talking about.

http://www.pulpfilm.com/reviews/swbootlegs.html


I'm waiting for my copy to be deliered.

The only thing is, the damn thing is the "Special Edition" abomination.

I've got the 1995 THX versions (both wide screen and regular) on VHS and will probably try a conversion one of these days. Ideally, I want to use a DMR e-20 to do it, as I've seen great results with that system. But, we'll see!

Frankly, I will always prefer the original version of the films. I resent George Lucas for refusing to issue it on a format that will survive the tests of time. (And no, laser disc doesn't count in my book).

Regards, Mits.

[SLK001]

The quality is excellent it is actually on Dual layer discs

Hummm... Are you sure that these are dual layer disks? As of 6 months ago, the pirates in Asia did not have the ability to create the dual layer disks. However, they "fake" it by using a gold colored plastic. I know, because I have 6 of them. The package says that they are dual layer disks, but feed them into Smartripper and it returns a disk that is less than 4.7GB. But if you didn't know what to look for, you would swear that this disk was put out by Hollywood.

Quality for the Star Wars Trilogy isn't difficult on a single layer disk - the longest film (Jedi) is only 134 minutes. I am in the process of converting my laserdisks (they are in the queue!).

[Mephij]

Talk about aggrivation...

My 10 year old LD player i pulled from the attic last night does not work anymore! what a beast! Maybe I'll just try these malasian things. I only wish they were original edition. Greedo shoots first, my DERRIERE!

[musher70]

gee wizz...i feel like im back in the 80's again...i got hundreds of
those damn shiny record like things....i should start capturing em

[cchitson11]

I promise you these are dual layer disk. I wanted to back the disks up to dvd-r. I ripped A New Hope and it was over 6gb (like I said a really high bitrate on the encode) . that was just the movie with one audio track. I would also suggest if you back this up don't try Rempeg( the video is interlaced and rempeg said it would take 120hrs for the re-encode). I had to learn how to use CCE which handles interlaced video really well. By the way all the movies in the trilogy are over 6gb, and I know how to use smartripper also

[cchitson11]

Talk about aggrivation...

My 10 year old LD player i pulled from the attic last night does not work anymore! what a beast! Maybe I'll just try these malasian things. I only wish they were original edition. Greedo shoots first, my DERRIERE!

You can check the site mentioned in the review above they had the non-se trilogy for sale also. I can't comment on these though, I do know some of the first bootlegs released was hit and miss as for as quality is concerned.

[SLK001]

Laserdisks are usually TELECINED very well, so you should use an INVERSE TELECINE process to bring your captures back to FILM. This allows you to immediately pickup about a 20% bitrate improvement.

[monoxide77]

what is a dmr-e20?
&
what is TELECINED?
(man I must be dumb...)

[obiwan176]

a dmr-e20 is a tabletop dvd recorder from panasonic that is just incredible.

[SLK001]

TELECINEing is the process the studios use to convert FILM (at 24FPS) to NTSC (at 30FPS) by adding an additional frame (2 fields) every fourth frame. A normal FILM sequence is like this:
A B C D (top fields)
A B C D (bottom fields).

TELECINEing converts this to NTSC by adding the additional frame by combining two fields like this:
A A B C D (top fields)
A B C C D (bottom fields).

Inverse TELECINEing (or IVTC) reconstructs the original 24 fps FILM from the 30fps NTSC stream. During transmission, the 30fps is changed to 29.97fps by dropping one frame out of every 1000.

[DualXeonEncoder]

I have the first digitally remastered LD "The Definative Collection" that i have wanted to put on DVD-R. Does dual layer DVD-R require special a burner or can my pioneer A-04 burn this media. If so where can I find it. Might be a dumb question, but..

[crahak]

This card don't seem to be overly sharp (slight blurryness), but it isn't bad either. The best capture method? Try this once and never look back: with virtualdub and either huffYUV or a mjpeg codec, and the highest quality setting you can use (HD space wise) and reencode to whichever format you want. If SVCD, well, try VBR and 2500kbps, or whatever your DVD will play. TMPGEnc or CCE can convert it. Good luck.

[crahak]

Oh. Forgot to say, SLK001 is right about that. It will help your rips a lot, however, your source must have been shot on film. Also referred to as "IVTC" Good luck again.

[cchitson11]

I have the first digitally remastered LD "The Definative Collection" that i have wanted to put on DVD-R. Does dual layer DVD-R require special a burner or can my pioneer A-04 burn this media. If so where can I find it. Might be a dumb question, but..

It is impossible to burn dual layer. Those discs have to be pressed. You can only burn 4.3 on Dvd-r media

[thxkid]

Somebody ask a few days ago how I captured my Star Wars, or my other LD's also like Song of the south, Lion King to name a few, I use my DMR-E20 DVD set top recorder is the easiest, I also have a Happuage PVR card that I get great results with also if I want to capture to my computer and then burn them as a SVCD. I prefer the E-20 DVD-R is soooo much better over SVCD. I bought every Disney animated Film LD put out in the 80's I bet I got 50 of those suckers, its a long haul to transfer 125 LD's over to DVD-R, but hey you can't get them on DVD, what can I say. Even have the Rare WOW! LD and the letters from Kenwood President and George lucas when they sent it to me (got one free when you purchased Kenwoods $2000 THX receiver).

[SingSing]

It is impossible to burn dual layer. Those discs have to be pressed. You can only burn 4.3 on Dvd-r media

Most people don't know that both DVD disc layer face the same direction.
The laser change it's angle( modulation ) to pick each disc.

LP and LD have the layers face top and bottom.