Dumb ass guide to Laser disc ripping?

[swarez]

To all the "pro's" here. Can anyone tell me if there is a idiot proof guide to Laser disc transfering to DVD-R.
I know that I can make the analog files into SVCD and then burn them to DVD but I need a good splicing program for the two sides and also something to convert the audio. I have downloaded some programs but I can't make head or tails of them.
Anyone? Anyone?

[mkelley]

Um, I think I would just capture DV-AVI at high quality, use an editing program like Premiere (or Movie Maker if you want something free :>) to edit the sides together, and then convert to MPEG however suits your fancy.

The only real trick here is to try and preserve the audio if you can. I've seen lots of posts (look up the Star Wars Conversion post) about this -- obviously if you have a sound card with digital inputs you're in pretty good shape.

I've thought about doing this myself since it's seeming more and more likely I won't see some DVDs of some of my laser disks in my lifetime :<(

[housepig]

the way I do it is the same way I do VHS... only laser looks nicer!

I capture with iuVCR as an avi file, 720x480, 29.97fps, Huffyuv codec, 48khz audio.

I encode with TMPGenc from that source to a dvd compliant mpeg. If the total time is 1 hour or less, I use CBR @8000. If the source is longer, I use VBR and adjust the bitrate accordingly so the material will fit on a dvd-r.

for joining the different sides, the stuff I've ripped from laser starts from a black screen, so I look for the first frame of material in the Source Range section of TMPGenc and start my encoding from that point.

I then join my encoded segments using TMPG's Merge, and import that into DVD Lab to author.

simple.

[swarez]

Thanks a bunch! I'm planing on trying this tomorrow with Night of the Creeps.

[swarez]

Hey again.
My buddies computer has PowerVCR II and it has a pretty good recording feature. We hooked up the LD player to the computer and what we get is a Black and White picture and no sound. The LD is NTSC and we are in PAL territory but I don't think that is the problem (but what do I know). The biggest mistery is the no show of the sound.
Anyone know what the problem is?

[spiderman2k1]

I would capture real time MPEG 2 cap as high as you can in CBR then make your DVD if you big to fit on DVD then use DVD2ONE to make it fit on one DVD-R

[Vejita-sama]

Transcoding with DVD2ONE will not yeild as good results as a striaght VBR encode from an uncompressed source. Generally speaking while it's faster/easier to capture to MPEG2 for best quaility you should capture uncompressed (or with a 'lostless' codec like huffyuv), then edit and encode.

https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=149797

[mkelley]

No, actually NTSC to PAL can indeed cause the B/W problem (and may indeed cause sound problems as well).

I'm no expert on this (I've only read about others experiencing it) so I can't tell you what to do, but I can tell you the easy troubleshooting to make sure that's what your problem is -- just put a PAL laser disc in and see if things don't work properly. If so, then you know where you have to fix.

(Um, after reading this I realized you are hooking the player up to the computer -- that *may* mitigate things somewhat, but I assume your computer capture device is PAL oriented. I also now see -- it's very early here -- that you're probably not going to be able to play a PAL disc in your player, since it's probably NTSC only. Try posting another question on this board about NTSC to PAL conversion and see if you don't get more intelligent information -- more intelligent than *I* can give, at least :>)

[SLK001]

Your problem is you are trying to capture a NTSC disk using a PAL template. Your card should have a "button" to switch formats. You are getting B&W video and no sound, because the color carrier is in a different place as is the sound carrier for NTSC (thus, your capture card is not seeing them).

For the technically inclined,
___________________________NTSC___________PAL
Chroma Carrier Offset (MHz)___3.58___________4.43
Sound Carrier Offset (MHz)____4.50___________6.00 (but varies)

[swarez]

The Player is a Pioneer that can swich from NTSC and PAL. I managed to get color when I figured that out but still there is no sound, plus it seems that PowerVCR II doesn let you chose which format you want to, MPG or AVI.
Would it be possible to get the sound from the headphone socket on the LD player if I connected that to the computer as well?

[mkelley]

It's possible your sound coming from your laser player is DTS, and without a DTS decoder you won't be able to capture it.

Try switching the sound in your laser disk to Dolby Digital 2.0 and you may be okay (and if you can't capture as an AVI -- well, you're not going to get the best quality, but if that'a all you can do, that's all you can do).

[swarez]

The film is not DTS. it's little known 80's horror film so that's not the problem.
I'm going to try again tomorrow.