Making DVD from Laserdiscs

[moviebuff2]

Hello:

I have a collection of laserdiscs which I want to transfer onto DVDs before my laserdisc player stops working. I have never done this type of tranfer before.

Should I buy a stand-alone DVD recorder or should I transfer my LDs to my computer first then author them on DVDs?

I intend to put each of my movies (2 hours or less) on 1 DVD. This means if I choose to use a DVD recorder, I will have to record at SP mode for a 4.7-GB disc. The best recording mode is 1 hour per disc, I think.

Thanks

[MysticE]

You might find a standalone recorder to be the easiest solution. They are nice to have (as a VCR replacement) anyway. You'll also find there is no copy protection on LD's. I did a few for a friend and ran the disc through DVDShrink to clean up the start and end points.

[moviebuff2]

Thanks, MysticE.

[Bud]

I am currently doing just that with my Panasonic E85 and so far it's working great, I also use DVD Shrink after creating the standard VOB's with Tsunami DVD Author Pro. Also have some Laserdisc Karakoe that present a bit of a challenge in that I have to record each track and then create a menu with DVD Author Pro for each track, so far it's working.

Bu

[moviebuff2]

Hi

I just transfered one of my laserdiscs onto a DVD at SP speed (2hr. recording). The picture and sound are as good as the original laserdisc.

My question is: if recording at SP produces a copy that is as good as the original, what is HQ recording (1hr. recording) for? In fact, the manufacturer even indicates SP recording to be DVD-quality recording. Isn't HQ recording overkill?

Thanks

[jagabo]

Things to consider:

Was your source letterboxed widescreen? The big black bars consume very little bitrate so you're getting much more bitrate for the picture that is there.

Noisy sources (VHS for example) will give be more of a problem.

Shakey, noisey handheld camcorder footage will also be harder to compress.

Off-air recordings will also be noisier than laserdisc.

[moviebuff2]

Hi jagabo:

Thanks for the advices.

My question is that if SP recording produces an identical copy from the source (laserdisc, VHS, off-air shows, etc.), then what is HQ for.

Unless, of course, during the recording HQ has improvement features that SP does not.

[jagabo]

If you look at enlarged still frames from your SP recording you'll probably see that it's got some macroblocks. Using HQ instead would show less macroblocks.

I listed several cases where SP would likely perform noticeably worse than HQ.

[jman98]

If SP is working for you, that's great, but quality is subjective. My idea of "excellent quality" may not be the same as yours or someone else's. It's all up to individual preference. The guy who helped me the most in getting started recording TV shows to a PC was making VCDs at the time (this was 6 years ago) and he was convinced that his VCDs were "almost as good as DVD". I saw some examples and they had macroblocks all over the place and looked as bad as bad VCD can look. Yet he was convinced they were great. If you don't need HQ, that's fine, but it may be useful to you in the future for different types of recording or maybe someone else would think your SP recordings aren't as good as you do and want to do them in HQ.

[dphirschler]

I am converting my LDs on the PC. One thing I am able to do on the PC that you can't do with a standalone is restore the progressive frames. But oftentimes it is a painstaking process. I wrote a script that manually IVTCs the frames. It oftentimes works for the whole disc, but sometimes I have to go in and make adjustments. On "Battle for the Planet of the Apes" I had to go frame by frame and make many adjustments! "Star Wars", on the other hand only had a handful of adjustments. I believe they were only at the disc flips. On "Styx Caught in the Act" I found it was shot on film, but edited on video equipment. So IVTC was not an option.

I am a stickler for quality, so I just have to use the PC for my LD transfers. I use 2-pass VBR encoding and calculate the maximum bitrate per movie.

I also match the LD chapters to the frame. This is a pain too, but it's worth it for me.

Doing it on the PC also allows me to make nice menus for the DVD. Lastly, I scan the LD (and sometimes the VHS) artwork and make all-new DVD artwork. I also include that in the DVD.


Darryl

[Noahtuck]

Doing it on the PC also allows me to make nice menus for the DVD. Lastly, I scan the LD (and sometimes the VHS) artwork and make all-new DVD artwork. I also include that in the DVD.


Darryl

You can do that via a standalone also, you just transfer the capture to your pc via a dvd-ram/dvdrw and author. I've made many custom & intricate motion menu's for my LD transfer's this way.

Usually an entire LD with extras will pretty much fill up a dvdr in sp mode (2 hour) & look's excellent. I use a high(er) end pioneer LD player with an S-vhs video out.

And XP mode (1 hour) on my standalone just records in a higher bitrate but it really does not make any diff. except allowing less space when transfering thing's like LD or VHS.

[ntscuser]

The latest Panasonic standalones can record up to one hour in XP mode with PCM audio which is useful for transferring music titles from LD to DVD.

A problem a friend had was with the side-change on movie laserdiscs. He has never quite managed to edit out the unwanted segment completely.

[jagabo]

A while back I had a Panasonic ES15 DVD recorder to play with. I recorded some DV footage (s-video out from my DV camcorder) to DVD-R in each of the different modes. Here's a crop from the 1-hour (left) and 2-hour (right) recordings:



enlarged 4x (nearest neighbor) so you can see the individual pixels more clearly:

[moviebuff2]

Thanks for all inputs.

Thank you jagabo for the pictures. I think by watching my copy (only one so far) on a 20-inch TV monitor, I could not tell the difference between SP and HQ recordings. If I had a plasma or something similar, the difference would be visible.

Anyway, this is another case of misleading specification from the manufacturer. By labeling SP recording as "DVD quality", the manufacturer made me believe that my DVD will be as good as a factory-made DVD. Hm...I think the manufacturer should just give the resolution number for each recording mode and let the consumers decide which resolution appears most desirable to them.

After all, what the heck is "DVD quality"? HQ, SP, EXP, blah blah blah, aren't these recordings done on the same media, namely DVD? Hence, shouldn't they all qualify to be called "DVD quality"? LOL

[gshelley61]

The way I handle LD to DVD transfers is to record all the sides consecutively with my DVD recorder to DVD-RW in DVD-Video format (not VR), edit and join the sides seamlessly using my PC with MPEG Video Wizard (a frame accurate MPEG2 editor), then author the resulting MPG file to a finished DVD with TMPGenc DVD Author. This completely eliminates the side changes and the movie runs straight through uninterrupted and glitch-free.

[moviebuff2]

Hi gshelley61:

I understand what you said. Recording the subsequent sides to side 1 of a laserdisc movie can be quite challenging. I don't want interruptions of any kinds, even if it is only a brief black screen.

However, unless you record directly onto a computer hard drive, then edit your video file in the computer, you will be looking at using at least 2 DVD discs per 2-hr movie, at SP speed. This can present a costly problem if you have a large collection of laserdiscs to transfer.

Here's what I do to avoid wasting a disc.

I record the whole laserdisc, including the logos, the ads, etc. as one single title onto my DVD disc. Then I edit my DVD disc before finalizing it. By editing, I mean recreating the chapters (delete the olds & marking the news) of the title. Then, I hide the unwanted chapters like the dark screen between sides, the ads, etc. Before finalizing my disc, I watch its entirety to make sure that it is eaxctly what I want.

Once satisfied with what I see, I finalize the disc. Voila! my perfect (legal & artistic) copy of my video (laserdisc, VHS and Beta and CED too ).

Keep in mind that the chapters may not be recognized by other DVD players. The hidden chapters will show up. But I am making copies of my legally purchased videos for myself, not for anyone else. So the incompatibility is not my problem.

[gshelley61]

I don't waste any discs... I use rewritable DVD-RW to record (capture) the entire laserdisc, warts and all, using whatever FR mode fits the length of the movie. If they are 2.5 hours or less, I only need to use one disc.

Then I extract what's on the DVD-RW into my PC, where I use a frame accurate MPEG2 editor to remove the LD side changes (and other crap) and join them together without so much as a single blank frame in between. It becomes one large MPEG2 file of the entire movie, seamlessly edited together with no way of telling that it was once three or four different sides of a laserdisc set.

That newly edited MPEG2 file is authored into a finished DVD-R, and the DVD-RW I used to record the laserdiscs to start with with can be re-used again and again for other projects. The finished DVD-R, having been created with an authoring program, is compliant and compatible with virtually any DVD player, and does not contain any hidden "junk" chapters or files.

[moviebuff2]

Hi:

I don't use re-writeable DVD discs. So, I don't know much about bout this type of disc for DVD. My understanding from re-writeable CD is that although the disc can be erased (data rendered unreadable), it does not mean the used space on the disc can be used again.

For example, if I erase 250 MB already recorded on a 750-MB CD, I will still have only 500 MB of disc space that is recordable. The 250 MB of recorded data will still be there on the disc, unreadable, but you cannot record data over that. Please see picture below.

[LadyLiete]

As I stated in the thread that I posted I just merge the halves together using dvd shrinks reauthor mode, it also has a frame by frame editor which can be used to merge them together. But yeah, SP is fine for LD conversion, thats what I usually use.

If im going to try to make it look professional I record each side on HQ on 2 different DVD's, then upload them to the computer and professionally recompress it myself.

I cant recommend the blanks inbetween the content though... its best it looks as original as possible, iow try to make it look like it wasn't originally on a laserdisc.

[moviebuff2]

This is a little off-topic. Moderators, please move it if you find it necessary.

Using a stand-alone DVD recorder, I can now make an audio DVD in one step. Connect the "video in" to a separate video source (a blank screen, for example) and connect the "audio ins" to an audio source ( a cassette, a reel-to-reel, etc.). Play a song and record the DVD. You will have an audio DVD with separate title for each song.

Vive la technologie!

[jagabo]

I don't use re-writeable DVD discs. So, I don't know much about bout this type of disc for DVD. My understanding from re-writeable CD is that although the disc can be erased (data rendered unreadable), it does not mean the used space on the disc can be used again.

For example, if I erase 250 MB already recorded on a 750-MB CD, I will still have only 500 MB of disc space that is recordable. The 250 MB of recorded data will still be there on the disc, unreadable, but you cannot record data over that. Please see picture below.

No, you have it backwards. It's DVD R that can only be written once as you describe. DVD RW can be writen, erase, and rewritten, hundreds, even thousands of times. In my experience I usually end up dropping and scratching the disk long before it wears out. With packet writing software you can treat a DVD RW like a big floppy disk.

The quick erase option you refer to is like earsing the table of contents of a book. All the chapters are still there. With a RW disk you can overwrite the data (chapters) any time you want. Note that that option is available for hard drives and floppy disks too.

[gshelley61]

As I stated in the thread that I posted I just merge the halves together using dvd shrinks reauthor mode, it also has a frame by frame editor which can be used to merge them together. But yeah, SP is fine for LD conversion, thats what I usually use.

Actually, the editing function in DVD Shrink is not single frame accurate... it works like other basic freeware MPEG2 editors and authoring applications. It can only cut and join at I frames (every 15 frames). For editing MPEG2 at any I, P or B frame you need something like MPEG Video Wizard, which can re-encode at the edit point to allow single frame accuracy in cutting and joining.

[moviebuff2]

Thanks, jagabo.

I misunderstood that message from Nero, and I just stopped erasing the disc. Now the term "re-writable" makes sense to me.

[LadyLiete]

As I stated in the thread that I posted I just merge the halves together using dvd shrinks reauthor mode, it also has a frame by frame editor which can be used to merge them together. But yeah, SP is fine for LD conversion, thats what I usually use.

Actually, the editing function in DVD Shrink is not single frame accurate... it works like other basic freeware MPEG2 editors and authoring applications. It can only cut and join at I frames (every 15 frames). For editing MPEG2 at any I, P or B frame you need something like MPEG Video Wizard, which can re-encode at the edit point to allow single frame accuracy in cutting and joining.

I usually use Mpeg Video Wizard Dvd if I intend to add a menu to the converted disc.

[moviebuff2]

Hello everyone:

I just finished transfering my last laserdisc onto a DVD. My laserdisc player is still "alive". I will keep it with players of other formats (8-track, Betamax). I think my VHS will soon join these machines, too.

Thanks to all of you for taking your time to help me.