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Topic: Laser Disc Conversion? (Read 4916 times) previous topic - next topic
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Laser Disc Conversion?

I have a collection of about 120 laser discs.  Although I still own two laser disc players, I was wondering if I might be able to copy them and burn them to standard DVD format so that I wouldn't have to keep the players.  What would be needed to do this with maximum quality and minimal expense?  I think I'd probably need a video card with an S-Video input for video capture, but I really don't know all that would be involved.  If you can describe the process, including what software I would need, that would be great!  Thanks.

Laser Disc Conversion?

Reply #1 –
The faster way is to connect a DVD-recorder to your LD player.

If you wanna digitize (LD is analog) the movie by a PC you should get a capture card or you can also use your camcorder (if you have and it has AV in) with a firewire port.

The other method in mp.
Hybrid Multimedia Production Suite will be a platform-indipendent open source suite for advanced audio/video contents production.
Official git: https://www.forart.it/HyMPS/

Laser Disc Conversion?

Reply #2 –
There are 2 steps, which may require different software:

1. Audio/Video Capture (digitizing & recording)
2. DVD Authoring

As forart.eu suggested, if you have a DV camcorder with "passthrough" and a Firewire connection, that's one of the BEST capture methods.  It will give you high quality AVI/DV video and high quality LPCM audio.  (The video will need to be convered to MPEG-2.  The audio can be left as LPCM or converted to AC3...  Your DVD authoring program can usually take care of the conversions.)

A set-top DVD recorder would be the EASIEST way to do it, but your ability to make menus & chapters is limited.  (Although, you can read the DVD into your DVD authoring software and re-author & re-burn the DVD.)

Video capture cards/devices run from super cheap (I've seem them from less than $10 USD) to very expensive.    The cheap USB capture devices seem to cause a lot of people trouble, and you will have a limited choice of audio/video formats.   

For example, I have a mid-price Hauppauge capture card and it works great but it captures to MPEG-2 audio & video.  MPEG-2 video is the video format required for DVD, but MPEG-2 audio is only valid for PAL DVDs.  To make a NTSC DVD (the North American standard) I have to convert the audio to AC3 or LPCM. 

You can simply burn audio/video files onto a DVD, but if you want to make a "Video-DVD" that plays on all* standard DVD players, you need DVD-Authoring software.  This will create the normal VIDEO_TS folder with VOB files, etc., and will allow you to create a menu.  If you buy a video capture card/device it will come with capture software and it may come with DVD authoring software, or you may need to get a separate program for that.

Some helpful websites:
DigitalFAQ.com[/color]
VideoHelp.com[/color]
List of DVD Authoring Programs (Wikipedia)[/color]
ATI [/color] (Video capture products)
Pinnacle[/color] (Video capture products)
Hauppauge[/color] (Video capture products)



* Some DVD players have trouble with homemade "burned" DVDs.