Laser Disc digitizing

[djobitwan7]

Sorry for injecting myself, but.....does anyone know of people that actually digitized their Laser Disc movies or TV shows on Domesday (Preferable) or have a good quality capture with commercial equipment?

It would be great if a person could just buy movies released on LD or VHS (those rare movie titles are only on those formats), but outside of that.....it's not easy to know if you can get a good LD player in working order and then try everything out, just to find out that the quality is not great. I'm not expecting DVD quality, but Laser Disc looked good to me back in the 80's when I first saw it, so I know what to expect. Heck, some LD's were in 1080i, so those should look better than all DVD movies, but I think that was PAL movies (I'm not sure anymore with my memory).

Would just love to know if anyone does this or can covert LD's for me. I can buy the movie or buy directly from the converting person doing it, but I am not sure which LD discs have disc rot or other defects. I just want a copy of some titles that were not released on DVD, much less Blu-ray or UHD. Thanks all and hope I hear back soon. I appreciate it.

[dellsam34]

LD is not 1080i, it's slightly better than VHS and inferior to DVD, DVD can be 480p on a good day. LD if digitized correctly it will give you 480i but the actual horizontal resolution is equivalent to 300 samples per scan line, though the output after conversion will be 720 pixels per standard.

Very few LD that did not make it to Blu-ray, but finding those discs is the limiting factor not to mention their high value, digitizing them is another cost that will be added to the equation.

As to the differences in releases, I don't see the need to spend more money so you can watch a deleted scene or an alternative ending, but hey if you find that interesting and worth the money go for it.

[clashradio]

I also live in MI and am able to do DdD captures with laserdisc and vhs. its very time consuming, so it's only worth transferring if the vhs or LD isn't already on dvd or BD.

[dellsam34]

I agree, The doomesday and VHSdecode are very time consuming, Unless someone is converting a very rare tape or LD that has a sentimental value, it is not worth it for mass produced commercial media.

[lordsmurf]

I agree, The doomesday and VHSdecode are very time consuming, Unless someone is converting a very rare tape or LD that has a sentimental value, it is not worth it for mass produced commercial media.

- Yes, ld-decode (Domesday) is quite superior to analog Laserdisc transfer methods.
- No, vhs-decode is not, still quite inferior, lots of problems, especially ringing/halo that did not exist on the original tape.

And yes, both are extremely time consuming, require lots of drive space, gamer computer specs..

[djobitwan7]

LD is not 1080i, it's slightly better than VHS and inferior to DVD, DVD can be 480p on a good day. LD if digitized correctly it will give you 480i but the actual horizontal resolution is equivalent to 300 samples per scan line, though the output after conversion will be 720 pixels per standard.

Very few LD that did not make it to Blu-ray, but finding those discs is the limiting factor not to mention their high value, digitizing them is another cost that will be added to the equation.

As to the differences in releases, I don't see the need to spend more money so you can watch a deleted scene or an alternative ending, but hey if you find that interesting and worth the money go for it.

I only referred to some LD's in Japan that was a pre-cursor to blu-ray. They were only in Japan, but were specialized players and discs. They were near 1080i resolution (1035 visible lines). Heck, there were even HD VHS (known also a D-Theater) as well, but those are probably rare and not sure if those required different hardware as well. From what I have read recently, there were only around 95 titles and those started around 2002. 6 years after DVD's started, but still a good try to keep the VHS format relevant. If the price was reasonable......they could have possibly done it, but......ease of use that DVD's offered were way superior in almost every way. Heck, I remember the original Divx and I saw that before any DVD releases in stores, but......DVD's did come out first. Rant ended, LOL.

One of the movies that I wanted to digitized was called "Watch It! (1993). It was only released on VHS or LD and I figured that LD would be the superior format to choose from. I realize it won't look as good as a DVD version would (if it was released in DVD format), but it is the only way to view whenever I get the inclination. I found there were many of this title on eBay, but knowing the condition of said LD is another factor. I can only purchase this and send it to someone who is willing to digitize it for me & go from there.

My curiosity to figure out Domesday would make this version pristine as possible, but outside of attempting to get ahold of one and find a LD player and not having any soldering skills to get the test point right is another factor as well. I do have plenty of space on my NAS to keep the RAW data on it and then shrink this down to manageable levels of space, but doesn't do anyone doing this for me any good.

I would love to have this movie digitized & if anyone is game...just let me know. I may have found a professional company that says they can do it for $30, but not sure how they go about things. Thank all for any insight.

[dellsam34]

If you have Hi-Vision LD discs the doomsday duplicator may not help you as it is designed to capture composite SD, The Hi-Vision format (MUSE) has a resolution of 1125i lines, This was also recorded on HDVS tape format 1" reel to reel for professional use, A similar analog HD format called W-VHS was made for consumer HDTV recording in Japan. JVC made their own digital HD format called D-VHS to record HD-MPEG-2 1080i TV channels, D-Theatre are commercially recorded HD tapes were only available in North America and Japan I believe.

[clashradio]

A Domesday-captured laserdisc can look as good as if the title was originally released on dvd. I have a few that do. Megadeth Evolver and Warrant Chery Pie come to mind. If you have a company that can do it for $30 be careful; you get what you pay for. The decode time alone would cost more than 30. Not to mention capture time itself, export, deinterlace, restoration, creating menus, rendering, burning to BD. Like I said earlier; extremely time consuming.

[aramkolt]

How laserdiscs are you looking to convert and what are the titles? Agree that if they did have a DVD or bluray release that there wouldn't be really any point in capturing.

I'm also in Michigan, looking to be about 1.5 hours away. I have a domesday V3.1 unit and I have dabbled in laserdiscs before.

The least expensive option would be a traditional capture and a high quality comb filter within the TBC (I have something like 10 different professional TBCs I could try) as laserdisc is natively a composite format and can be done in realtime. There are some laserdisc players that have S-Video output, but that's just using a Doing it that way first would give you a good idea if any significant disc rot is present before going more advanced with the duplicator.

[djobitwan7]

How laserdiscs are you looking to convert and what are the titles? Agree that if they did have a DVD or bluray release that there wouldn't be really any point in capturing.

I'm also in Michigan, looking to be about 1.5 hours away. I have a domesday V3.1 unit and I have dabbled in laserdiscs before.

The least expensive option would be a traditional capture and a high quality comb filter within the TBC (I have something like 10 different professional TBCs I could try) as laserdisc is natively a composite format and can be done in Realtime. There are some laserdisc players that have S-Video output, but that's just using a Doing it that way first would give you a good idea if any significant disc rot is present before going more advanced with the duplicator.

If I could go Domesday Duplicator, I would love to do that (if possible). Heck, I'd love to learn the process (step-by-step). I can visit ya (if that's cool with you) and see how it's done. My main problem is.....I didn't see how I can get ahold of the Domesday Duplicator for the basic price. I saw it for $1k awhile back. I think it started around $250 originally. If that changed...I'd love a link to get it. My 2nd problem is finding a LD player and then soldering it to the test point. My skills with soldering is probably poor. If I am shown how, I can usually do decently well. Knowing where doesn't hurt either. If the price is reasonable, I would just send in the titles to be converted, but I'd love to know what the videos through Domesday are converted to. Is it MP4, MKV? I mean after Domesday and LD-Decoder.

[The 14th Doctor]

If I could go Domesday Duplicator, I would love to do that (if possible). Heck, I'd love to learn the process (step-by-step). I can visit ya (if that's cool with you) and see how it's done. My main problem is.....I didn't see how I can get ahold of the Domesday Duplicator for the basic price. I saw it for $1k awhile back. I think it started around $250 originally. If that changed...I'd love a link to get it. My 2nd problem is finding a LD player and then soldering it to the test point. My skills with soldering is probably poor. If I am shown how, I can usually do decently well. Knowing where doesn't hurt either. If the price is reasonable, I would just send in the titles to be converted, but I'd love to know what the videos through Domesday are converted to. Is it MP4, MKV? I mean after Domesday and LD-Decoder.

If it's anything like some Sony VCRs, you don't need to do any soldering work as it seems like with most pioneer players all you need is a DuPont to BNC cable.

Also if it's anything like how VHS-Decode spits out the files, they'd be spit out as lossless mkvs.

Can't seem to find any listings for the Domesday itself, seems like you have the buy the components then build it yourself. Closest I can find is this listing

[djobitwan7]

So $150 to put the 3 components together or $445 with the "Player Hookup Kit". Not sure what that entails for the Player Hookup Kit, but probably that DuPont to BNC Cable thing. I'm not sure what the Dupont thing is, I've seen a BNC connector though.

[The 14th Doctor]

So $150 to put the 3 components together or $445 with the "Player Hookup Kit". Not sure what that entails for the Player Hookup Kit, but probably that DuPont to BNC Cable thing. I'm not sure what the Dupont thing is, I've seen a BNC connector though.

I mean a cable like this

[djobitwan7]

So is that what the Player Hookup Kit is? or do I need this on top of having all 3 boards? Just want to make sure.

[The 14th Doctor]

That's the cable you plug into the laserdisc player and Domesday Duplicator, the smaller red and black wires go into specific points inside the player and silver end plugs into the Domesday Duplicator from my understanding

[aramkolt]

Yes, that's essentially the domesday duplicator I've got. To actually connect to the player, you really just need any 50 ohm BNC cable (both the cable and the BNC connector should be 50 ohm) to go from the duplicator to the RF test point on the LD player.

From there, it's just getting the software to work.

I would reiterate that you'd need to have something pretty rare to make it worth capturing it that way (something unavailable on DVD or BluRay) because the capture files will still be huge and it'll take quite a while for the RF capture to process into the 10 bit mkv file. You'll also have to capture the audio separately and then add it to the video later.

I'd recommend you watch this video if you haven't that goes over the general process of using Decode, though they do it with VHS, the process is the same for LD: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEzmbw_Y-Tw


Whether you go that route, again, would depend on what the content is and how many discs actually need converting. Further, it kind of depends if you plan to upload to YouTube as that YouTube re-encode may lose much of the benefit gained from Decode.