capture laser disk

[rayne]

The search feature seems to be offline right now. I want to capture a laserdisk and burn to dvd. The laserdisk is widescreen, "theatrical release" aspect ratio. What aspect ratio is this? I am capturing in Premiere 6.5 using the widescreen option (16:9) Is this the closest I can get to "theatrical release" aspect ratio? When I view the final dvd on my tv, I have two bands of black at the top and bottom of the screen. One I saw when capturing (the difference between theatrical release and sidescreen aspect ratio) and the other I guess is just the difference between widescreen and tv aspect ratio. Is this how it is supposed to be?
Thanks for any help
--Rayne

[flaninacupboard]

"theatrical aspect ratio" means the aspect ratio it was shown, in theatres. so the theatrical aspect ratio of say, star wars is 2.35:1 wheras the theatrical aspect ratio of say tomb raider, is 1.85:1
That's all that means, the actual image will be in the 1.33 aspect ratio (or 4:3 as it's often known) meaning you get black bars at the top and bottom of the screen. the best thing to do is to capture in 4:3 mode, and crop the black bars you are capturing. if you want to make the disc anamorphic, reply and i'll explain, or check the guides.

[tjdavis1138]

I'd like to know how to make my laserdisc captures anamorphic.

[rayne]

Thanks for the reply. The laserdisk jacket just says "theatrical aspect ratio". It was released in the 1970's (in the US), was there a popular theatrical aspect ratio back then? If I capture at 4:3 and crop off the black, will that mess up the 740x480 frame size needed for dvd?

Thanks for offering to explain how to make the disc anamorphic...I would appreciate the explanation.

--Rayne

[rayne]

One more thing, I have been researching this topic. Is letterbox the same thing as widescreen? Or does letterbox refer to widewcreen on TV?
--Rayne

[flaninacupboard]

rayne, there's lots of different ways of describing a wide image. some say wide screen, some say letterbox, some say cropped, it varies a lot. the things you need to know: a standard TV is 1.33:1 a widescreen TV (or HDTV) is 1.77:1 (commonly known as 16:9) which means a widescreen set will still show thin black bars when displaying the most common film ratio 1.85:1 and thicker bars when displaying 2.35:1
there's plenty of info about this out there, get searching!
right, to make the disc anamorphic, we'll us TMPGenc (go get it if you haven't already!)
first load up your .avi file.
go to the advanced tab and set your source range (to cut the beggining and end, and the side change in the middle) then in the clip frame box do as i said, croping all of the black bar, leaving just the image. now you need to set your source aspect (still in advanced) as 4:3 525 line NTSC (i'm guessing you're in the states?) and the video arrange method as "full screen: keep aspect ratio" and then in the video tab, set the output aspect ratio to 16:9 and the output resolution to 720X480. encode with whatever bitrate method you prefer.
make sure when authoring the disc you let your authoring proggie know the movie is 16:9 and not 4:3
the disc will now be anamorphic on a widescreen set.
N.B.
making the disc anamorphic will not improve the image quality, as the extra resolution is interpolated (made up) but it will look an awful lot better on a wide screen set, because the TV no longer has to do any messing around to get the image on the screen properly. again, there's plenty of info around if you're interested....

[flaninacupboard]

here's a good place to start!

http://gregl.net/videophile/anamorphic.htm