Laserdisc to DVD capture questions

[bmwracer]

Hi all,

I just started the process of copying some of my laserdiscs to DVD-Video format using a DVD recorder and had some questions regarding the conversion.

Hardware:
Pioneer CLD-D502 laserdisc player
Panasonic DMR-ES10 DVD recorder

Video:
One, Two, Three (Widescreen, B&W, James Cagney, director: Billy Wilder)

After recording, the movie, though widescreen (2.35:1, I think), is embedded in a 4:3 frame... Is there a way to alter the frame to 16:9 to fit my 16:9 HDTV without transcoding?

After some searching the forum, I tried using ReStream, but it altered the aspect ratio of the image, making people appear wider than normal... I fiddled with some of the settings, but nothing really worked.

If transcoding is my only choice here, any suggestions as to which program to use that would give me the best results?

Thanks for your help.

[vhelp]

Not for letterbox content. These are analog videos. Your players will stretch them the wrong way.

However, I think the only sw player that might be able to do it properly is kmplayer, by pressing the "7" key, it will "overscan" stretch a lettered box window. See if that gives you the corrected 2.35:1 aspect ratio in your player. "6" will do the 1.78:1, and so on. But it all depends on how you obtain the source, analog vs dvd ripping, will result in different views. So, test and see what works.

To add.. I know this works, because I did this for my blade runner laserdisc, it is 2.35:1 letterbox presentation. When I encoded it to mpeg2 and played it, I pressed the "7" key and is produced the proper aspect ratio. As long as the videos are widescreen letterbox, for 1.78 and 2.35 AR's, the 6 and 7 keys should work in this case.

-vhelp 5338

[bmwracer]

Thanks for your reply.

Unfortunately, my end goal is to author a new DVD using the captured laserdisc video... Being able to view the video on my PC with a software player is only an intermediate step.

[bmwracer]

Okay, it looks like transcoding using TMPGEnc is the way to go: selecting the "No Margins - Keep Aspect Ratio" reproportions the video to 16:9 correctly.

The other thing is, should I de-interlace the source and/or re-encode the video as non-interlaced? Or is there some other filtering or processing I should perform?