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Mac Forum / General / Hardware / January 2008Copying my LDs
Googling hasn't helped me much. I have a Pioneer LD player that I'm retiring as it is getting old, but I want to copy my laserdisks to DVD so I can play them in the future. On the back I see a bunch of plugs, video out, s video out, component video out, two channels of audio out, control in & out, PCM 1, PCM/dolby 2, PCM dolby 3, dolby rf out. I have a USB device that accepts audio, and was wondering if there is something similar (affordable) that I can use to copy my laserdisks to my iMac and then burn the movie to DVD. > Googling hasn't helped me much. I have a Pioneer LD player that I'm > retiring as it is getting old, but I want to copy my laserdisks to DVD > so I can play them in the future. I can tell you from experience you probably won't be very happy with the results. But the process goes something like this: 1) Get a video capture device, as good as you can afford. I recommend a Canopus model with time-base correction. You can also use an EyeTV or some camcorders but the results won't be as good. Whatever you use, get something with firewire output. 2) Connect the video+audio outputs of the LV player to the capture device and the firewire output of the capture device to your Mac. 3) Start iMovie. It should detect the capture device as if it were a camera. 4) Play the disc, grab the content in iMovie. Obviously you'll have to pause iMovie when you flip the laserdisc. You'll end up with one segment per disc side. 5) Use iMovie editing features to connect the segments as cleanly as you can. 6) Use iDVD as usual to burn a dvd from the iMovie project. > On the back I see a bunch of plugs, video out, s video out, component > video out, My guess is you mean composite video, no not component video. The former is one rca jack, the latter is three. Assuming so, use the s-video. If you really do have component video outputs, use those. > two channels of audio out, control in & out, PCM 1, > PCM/dolby 2, PCM dolby 3, dolby rf out. The choice of outputs here depends on the capture device, but most likely you'll have to use the two-channel analog outputs rather than the digital (pcm) outputs. > > Googling hasn't helped me much. I have a Pioneer LD player that I'm > > retiring as it is getting old, but I want to copy my laserdisks to DVD [quoted text clipped - 13 lines] > 3) Start iMovie. It should detect the capture device as if it were a > camera. ... What exactly was unsatisfactory? quality of the video conversion? (e.g., is it just that S-VHS is lower quality than the LD, or is it somehow worse than that implies?) > > > Googling hasn't helped me much. I have a Pioneer LD player that I'm > > > retiring as it is getting old, but I want to copy my laserdisks to DVD [quoted text clipped - 6 lines] > (e.g., is it just that S-VHS is lower quality than the LD, or is > it somehow worse than that implies?) The quality of picture, especially on high def screens. LD movies were frequently letter-boxed, so from the roughly 480 vertical lines visible of 525 scans of an NTSC frame, you lose about 80-100 lines for the black areas above and below the picture. Then, converting them to digital, the images will be very blocky and/or blurry (can vary as to hardware and software used to sample up). Even if the recorded image is only taken to SD, the area expansion will still not be as detailed as a DVD taken from the master. This is an inherent factor of transferring anything from an analog source and then digitally expanding to fill the screen on the computer. That said, turning to the OP, after you do the transfers, how are you planning to dispose of the LVDs? I might be interested in some of them. jt >That said, turning to the OP, after you do the transfers, how are you >planning to dispose of the LVDs? I might be interested in some of them. I was planning on keeping them, although some of them were very expensive back when. Hopefully my LD player will last longer if I don't use it, and I can get it out for special occasions. > The quality of picture, especially on high def screens. > [good summary deleted] I should have made clear that the picture quality issues I mentioned in passing are particularly noticeable on a wide-screen lcd/plasma tv. > That said, turning to the OP, after you do the transfers, how are you > planning to dispose of the LVDs? I might be interested in some of them. You can have all of mine for the cost of shipping (or for free if you happen to live in the Boston area and want to pick them up). Lots of Criterion. They're just taking up space I need for other things at this point. If that's your real email address I can send you a detailed list. > What exactly was unsatisfactory? quality of the video conversion? Another poster has described more details but essentially the problem is inherent to digitizing ntsc analog video into compressed digital video. There's just not enough information available to start with, and the subsequent mpeg compression for dvd makes it significantly worse. As the other poster points out, letterboxed laser discs will be worse yet if you try to expand the mpeg video to fill a wide-screen tv. Using a very high quality capture device helps, using less compression with dual-layer dvd helps some, using the best output jacks helps a little (component video in the OP's case). But there's only so much to be done here. The raw dv coming out of the capture device doesn't look _too_ much worse than the LV. If the OP has huge amounts of disk space available, or only a handful of LV's to convert, and if he's willing to use the his Mac to play back the movies, that might be an option. Figure 11GB/hour for storage of the dv data. Or just keep the laser player and watch the discs that way. > (e.g., is it just that S-VHS is lower quality than the LD, or is Laser video (it's usually called 'LV' by the way, not 'LD') looked good relative to vhs but only because vhs was always atrocious (beta marginally less so). It's still conventional analog video, with far less information than the original film. In this context the difference between using the component outputs and the s-video output is observable but small. >My guess is you mean composite video, no not component video. The >former is one rca jack, the latter is three. Assuming so, use the >s-video. If you really do have component video outputs, use those. It says "Component video out", with a Y, Cb, & Cr jack. > It says "Component video out", with a Y, Cb, & Cr jack. If you can use this you should, but my guess is you won't find this form of component video on a modern capture device. This is different from what's usually referred to as component video on modern TVs, dvd players, and DVRs. I don't _think_ there's any direct conversion from the former to the latter, but I could be wrong about that. >If you can use this you should, but my guess is you won't find this >form of component video on a modern capture device. This is different >from what's usually referred to as component video on modern TVs, dvd >players, and DVRs. I don't _think_ there's any direct conversion from >the former to the latter, but I could be wrong about that. Do you have any recommendations on what (and where) I should look for in a capture device? Money is an important consideration. > Do you have any recommendations on what (and where) I should look for > in a capture device? Money is an important consideration. I would avoid anything device that does its own mpeg compression on the fly. Movies on LV are at least two sides of a disc and could easily be four sides or more if it's CAV. You need to be able to join these segments cleanly and there's really no way to do that unless you're working with uncompressed DV data. To get DV in, you can use some digital camcorders. But for better quality I would recommend a Canopus. You will definitely see the difference between a capture device that does time-base correction and one that doesn't. These are not cheap though. Maybe you can borrow one or rent one or pick up a used one on ebay. The specific model I own is the ADVC 300. I bought it some years ago; I don't know whether or not this specific model is made anymore. I forget exactly what I paid, but it was several hundred dollars. >To get DV in, you can use some digital camcorders. But for better >quality I would recommend a Canopus. You will definitely see the [quoted text clipped - 4 lines] >or not this specific model is made anymore. I forget exactly what I >paid, but it was several hundred dollars. I might have to wait a year then. Buying my Mac blew my budget for this year, and I need to squeeze out an external drive and get a keyboard suited for touch typing. My allowance also pays for gasoline, gifts and other toys (golf season is about ready to start). |
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