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Graphics Software

Copying LaserDiscs To DVD? 22

Posted by Cliff from the everything-is-starting-to-look-like-a-cd dept.
SBECK asks: "Now that DVD writers are on the market (and are actually becoming affordable), I've been thinking of getting one with the hopes of 'backing up' all my LaserDiscs. I've got quite a collection of LaserDiscs and would like to make sure that I'll always be able to play them in case LaserDiscs go the way of the betamax and I'm not able to replace my LaserDisc player. So, I get a huge hard disk, a video capture card, a DVD RAM, and some software to MPEG encode the video. Am I going to be able to burn a DVD with approximately the same video quality as the original laserdisc? Will I have any problems creating a DVD that I can then play in any standard DVD player? Any suggestions on hardware/software combinations? Any gotchas I should know about?"
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Copying LaserDiscs to DVD? More

Copying LaserDiscs to DVD?

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  • You will most likely loose some quality in the LD->DVD translation, but not enough to be seriously worried about.

    You need to be careful with the DVD-RAM disks. Many DVD players won't read them. This will hopefully change in the future.

    You might have some problems creating a correctly formatted DVD disk, but I think that some people have been working on that problem.

    I mean, worst case, you'll have an MPEG-2 video stream that you have to view on your computer until the digital video market stabilizes. Still beats having nothing if your Laserdisk deck dies.

  • DVD creation (Score:3)

    by sid crimson ( 46823 ) on Thursday December 21, 2000 @05:06PM (#544162)
    Check out this website... [dvddemystified.com] and especially the FAQ section... [dvddemystified.com]

    It should answer most questions. It's liable to cost upwards of $10,000 (probably more like $15,000) to purchase all the hardware and software to take your LDs and transfer them to DVDs.

    Laserdisc players are not gone yet -- maybe it's cheaper to get a couple backup players and forget the transfers?

    The Pioneer DVL-919 [pioneerelectronics.com] is an excellent combo player.... streets for ~$1,000.

    -sid
  • .

    Okay, I realized this isn't going to be particularly helpful, but . . . . .

    With the time, trouble, and effort this is going to take, wouldn't you be better off just rebuying the movies on DVD? DVD prices are also coming down, and you get extra features (okay, some are lame, but many are worth the money).

    You didn't mention how many LaserDiscs you have, so I can't do a breakdown on the price of the equipment you're planning on getting vs replacing your collection on DVDs -- you've probably already done this and been happy with the results. But the equipment you mentioned is probably going to run you about $1,000, even at the new "affordable" prices -- that's about 40 to 50 movies on DVD, which (on top of the money) is about 80 to 100 hours out of your life, minimum.

    Cool idea, but is it really worth it?

  • It may be more trouble than it's worth...

    But good luck getting the Criterion LD of BladeRunner in DVD format...

    Worldcom [worldcom.com] - Generation Duh!
  • What you will want to use is a DVD-R system, not a DVD-RAM drive. From what I understand, they use different media (the DVD-R has a higher density), and can be played back on normal DVD players.

    However, they aren't cheap. About a year back they hovered at around $10,000. Today you should be able to get one (a cheap one) for around $8000. I have no idea how much media costs, or where you can get it.

    I also don't know how these devices handle region encoding, CSS, etc - whether they force you to use one region (probably), or if you can select the region/use CSS/macrovision (maybe on high end models).

    If you can get the money together on this, and buy the equipment, you might be able to set up a niche business of doing LD backups. Return the LD and DVD-R back to the client - there shouldn't be any legal hassles (consult an IP lawyer, most definitely). You might be able to make your backups, and gain your investment back as well.

    Worldcom [worldcom.com] - Generation Duh!
  • No Particular problem doing this. Just get hold of a decent capture card and MPEG encoder software. There's several about. However, without a hardware encoder it will be slooooow. From my own programming experience I doubt it is possible to MPEG good interlaced full resolution TV at more than about 3 frames/sec on a current CPU.

    Also, don't expect the quality to be the same as a properly mastered DVD. The problem is the low signal/noise ratio of consumer sources like laserdisc - it interferes with compression. You either need to bump up the data-rate or filter or take a quality hit.
  • Note that all he needs is the DVD Formatting app and maybe the AC-3 formatting app. He's got the rest already.
  • STAR WARS
    V (I have the first few episodes on LD and the last few ina LD box set)
    Moon Shot (from the Turner Network)
    Split Second (Rutger Hauer)
    Do they have any Rush concerts or videos on DVD yet?
    I still have Exit Stage Left on Beta! :-)
    I have all the concerts and the "video" compilation on LD.
    Windham Hill Live LD (Michael Hedges!)

    I can name MANY MANY more that I cannot find on DVD yet.... I own well over 300 LD's...
  • Try looking for some older equipment. Recently at my place of employment, we throug out some old equipment. One of the device was supposedly able to read these disks and place them onto a hard drive. The hard drive was on a stand alone system connected to the device. Once you got the data off though, you could make as many copies as you wanted without losing further quality. I can't recall the manufacturer, but it was quite a large beast. (By today's standards anyhow)
  • If you don't need encryption, Adaptec's Toast DVD [adaptec.com] (formerly from Astarte) is $198. It was bought by Apple, so it'll probably be bundled with an iMac in the near future.
  • NTSC video gives about 3 megabits per second. Call it 400 Kbps for fudge factor. There are 3,600 seconds in an hour. This adds to about 1.4 gigabytes per hour, meaning a 4.5+gig DVD should be able to store over 3 hours of video -- without compression.

    For about $200 you can now buy 20 gigabyte hard drives that will accept data much faster than 400 Kbps. I don't see what the big deal is. You play the laserdisc into the video card, record it as one big fat file, do whatever format conversion is necessary (a second hard drive would reduce HD wear here), and write it to the DVD. Then erase and start over.

    Where's the difficult or expensive part?

  • It should be possible to burn a CDV with a normal CD-R drive, and some DVD players can play CDVs. The quality isn't as good though.

  • Why would you want to do this? (Score:3)

    by ikekrull ( 59661 ) on Friday December 22, 2000 @01:53AM (#544173) Homepage
    Since you'll have to re-encode to MPEG-2 to put the contents of a laserdisc onto DVD, it probably won't make a huge difference if you just capture from a component out on an LD player, rather than attempting to scan the contents of the LD bit-by-bit.

    Then its no more difficult to put the contents of an LD on a DVD than it is to put the contents of any other video/film medium.

    Ideally, you'd either want to take the component out of an LD player and put it straight into a hardware MPEG-2 encoder, or capture at full-res, uncompressed with audio to a big RAID array before software encoding the resulting frames to MPEG-2.

    Either way, its going to cost you a lot of money, so unless youve got an extensive library of laserdiscs you really badly need on DVD, i just plain wouldn't bother.
  • Trivially compressed full-frame PAL/NTSC video uses over 10MB (thats MegaBytes) per second.

    There are very few single drives that can handle a sustained 10MB/s of data being written to them, hence the need for RAID arrays.

    Most broadcast houses use expensive Discreet/SGI equipment with big, fast RAID arrays to handle uncompressed footage.

    You might think you can do the same job with a BT848 card and a US$200 ATA-100 drive, but if you need to to work, work properly, and keep working for more than a few minutes at a time, you quickly learn you need to spend the cash to get quality results.

    Sure, the cost-of-entry for high quality desktop video is dropping like a stone, but ripping uncompressed video to hard disks is not something you can do without additional hardware and very fast disk subsystems.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • It's my understanding that since the MPAA completely controls the DVD, they're charging huge fees for the 'sdk' of DVD creation -- the platform to create movie DVDs. Is this incorrect?

    Also, I don't think that DVDRAM will play in regular DVD players, but I could be way off on this too.
  • Laserdiscs are encoded like CDs - pits and flats on an optically sensitive substrate. pit for 0, flat for 1 (it may be the other way around).

    With CDs (essentially analog recodings digitized at 44.1khHz), to obtain the the best quality copy, you ideally want to rip the digital data direct from the CD, instead of playing it through your soundcard - With a high quality soundcard, distortion is minimal, but present, just as it is with the D/A converters in a Laserdisc player.

    Unfortunately, i know of no laserdisc players with an IDE, SCSI or IEEE 1394 interface so recorind from component video out is your best option.
  • Err... As far as I know, it is not possible to copy laserdiscs 'bit by bit', since a laserdisc is analogue - you'll have no other choice than to use a good video capture card, preferrably in combination with a slew of SCSI disks in RAID 0 :-)


    Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.

  • CSS/region encoding isn't a requrement for DVDs. Many anime DVDs aren't region encoded so they can be easily sold around the world. I would be surprized if they let you use CSS on discs you burned yourself.
  • Sorta - the audio is digital on newer LDs, but the video is actually analog... That's why things such as laser rot are seen as speckles rather than digital artifacts, and also gives LDs the advantage of near-infinite horizontal resolution.
  • No, he doesn't have a DVD-R. He has a DVD-RAM drive. What's he going to do with that?
  • You could probably split it onto 2 cds in vcd format, your dvd player should read them fine. Alot cheaper then all that hardware, all you need is some way to read the laser disc in, then rencode it to mpeg2 and grab a vcd tool.

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