Why is my Laserdisc to DV losing so much quality?

[Z.Sath]

I am currently trying to capture from my NTSC Laserdisc player to my Laptop via the Canopus DVC-100 Analogue to digital converter (via firewire).

With it being laserdisc and a quality A-D Converter, I expected to have to look pretty hard to see the difference in quality from the original.

As such I was somewhat dissapointed with the capture which looks overly pixelated, and in some places pretty crappy e.g. the FBI Warning (red & white text on black) is shockingly bad.

Am I expecting too much from my equipment, and if so, could I expect better results recording directly from Laserdisc to a DVD Recorder?

Many thanks - Paul.

[indolikaa]

You definitely have a problem!

I use DV for transferring LaserDiscs, among other things. The quality is such that I have a hard time telling the difference between the LaserDisc and the DVD I created from it. While I don't use the Canopus (I use a D8 camcorder passthru) I have read nothing but rave reviews from other users.

Stay tuned, I'm sure other Canopus users will come to the rescue...

[spiderman2k1]

Are you capturing highest bitrate? use CBR

[The village idiot]

Are you capturing highest bitrate? use CBR

He's doing DV, there is no bitrate to set.

Sounds like the video level coming out of the laserdisc player is too high. I had the same problem with red colored objects and text until I turned the video level down. There is no easy way to talk you through such an adjustment, sorry.

Or you have some other freaky problem. Does anything you "capture" look good?

[Z.Sath]

Interestingly, I opened the file in TMPEGEnc to have a go at encoding, and the actual quality of each individual frame doesn't look too bad. It's just when the thing plays it just looks 'noisy'.

I'm begining to wonder if it is indeed the player itself which is causing the problems - maybe I should try geting a cheap CLD-925 off ebay and see if that does any better.

Regards - Paul.

[vhelp]

hi Z.Sath,

It could also be your DV codec in your system.

I recall hearing that MSDV codec doesn't do well in some systems, and
defaults to 320x240 resolution (and then you app resized it, and looks
terrible)
if memory serves to that extent or something. Anyways..

Sometimes, you have uninstall your curent DV codec (if you can) and then
to re-install another DV codec (canopus ie) and the problems seems to go
away in most cases. You'll just have to try, but someone, please correct
me on this issue :P

-vhelp

[Faceman101]

Export the DV or encode the DV to MPG2 and export to TV. I bet the results will be 100% better than your preview on the computer.

If not, then there is a problem somewhere.