Home Video Transfer

[stickmaker]

There's a movie I really like which was never released on tape and has yet to be released on DVD, but which *was* released on Laserdisc. I recently acquired a Mint condition copy of the Laserdisc. I want to copy this to DVD so I can show it to folks who don't have a Laserdisc player.

Unfortunately, it looks like the best quality DVD transfer from Laserdisc I can get with my current setup is S-Video with stereo RCA audio.

The limitation is the input jacks on my three DVD recorders. All of them have Component output, two have HDMI out, and two have digital sound out. None have better than S-Video and RCA stereo for input. (Well, one has digital sound input, but the Laserdisc player won't output sound for that format to that jack.)

Argh...

Is this pretty much a universal situation? I really don't want to buy any more machines just now, but when one goes out eventually I'd definitely consider a machine with better quality input format jacks. Does anyone know if this is here, or coming? My newest machine is less than two years old and doesn't have this.

Is this lack due to pre-recorded DVD sellers not wanting people to copy them at full resolution?

Comments

[kengr]

What "better" *output* does the laserdisc player have?

[stickmaker.livejournal.com]

This one has Component Out and digital audio out jacks.

[alinsa.livejournal.com]

The "component" from a laserdisc player is an artificially created signal, it's not actually any better quality than the svideo output -- The signal is stored on disc as (basically) chroma and luma, which is what svideo transmits. (IIRC)

The digital audio out is definitely better than analog, though, at least for any disc with AC-3 audio on it.

[stickmaker.livejournal.com]

The movie, by the way, is George Pal's _The Power_. Which won some Academy Awards, including for soundtrack.

I did not know that about the Component.

Okay, on the back of the album it says "Digital Sound: This LaserDisc is encoded with both digital and analog sound tracks..." Digital audio out is PCM by either wire or fiber optic. Don't see anything about AC-3.

I'm particularly interested in the sound on this one, because the soundtrack CD doesn't use the original audio tapes, which were too deteriorated. It doesn't even have all of the tracks used in the movie. So if I can get good audio, that may be the only way to hear high quality recordings of some of the soundtracks.

The movie is 2.35:1 letterbox, which looks okay on my wide plasma, but would be kinda small on a square TV. It is also Extended Play, reducing the number of functions available.

This particular machine is a fairly new multi-format unit. It plays Laserdiscs, DVDs of various sizes and CDs.

[kengr]

If I was trying to do this, I think I'd run the digital audio and the S-video into a computer with decent A/V capturing capability, then convert the resulting file to DVD.

Just not sure what software/hardware you'd want/need for that.