I don't know if your method of capturing is "primitive", you should be able to easily get pretty good results this way. Never captured LD's myself, but I guess the quality of player, recorder and cables will ultimately decide the outcome, but have you tried to use S-Video instead of composite? heard the results can be better than composite on some players. Maybe there is also some other settings in either the player or the recorder that could improve your results besides the recording mode you described. 

An easy way to spot the blown out white levels I described in the other thread is the snowy mountains when the Falcon fly from Hoth with Luke in the foreground. But this could perhaps be how the LD transfer look and not something in your set-up.

Maybe you're able to find some info regarding your player on this site: http://www.laserdiscarchive.co.uk/default.htm

captainsolo said:

Since you're capturing straight to a DVD recorder, I don't think there's much more you can do to improve things. From what I always understood there's only so much that those can handle.

I think DVD recorders have come a long way since the early players hit the market, some players comb filters can be very good. Look at the captures SilverWook, Jaitea and Nerfherder made of THX 1138, looks pretty damn good to me. All captured on recorders. Some good examples by Moth3r in this thread: http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Laserdisc-players-screenshot-comparison/topic/12907/

In the end you will always need to do some post processing to get LD-captures to look any good, tweak the levels, multi-cap average/median, IVTC and resize etc. The clipped white levels have nothing to do when the transfer was made, there are shitty transfers made today just like there were good ones made in the old days. Could be just that LD pressing as mine doesn't look like that at all, quality of recorder/player. Be sure to turn off all "picture enhancements"-presets on your Laserdisc player if you have any, besides the clipped white levels it looks oversharpened.

Otherwise you could always track down a new copy of that LD (Pioneer-pressing), the SWE LD's are very common and are often up on ebay.

The Aluminum Falcon said:

I actually was thinking of getting another laserdisc pressing of it, but am holding off since I am getting a DVD transfer of the whole Special Widescreen set (including a fixed ANH) in a trade right now. After I get the DVDs, I'll still probably end up getting an LD copy of my own. I'll tell you my findings.

Nice, don't expect to much of the Technidisc-pressing of ANH though, I recently got it captured by a friend of mine on his set up, and what I thought could be a possible problem with my player wasn't actually the case. Even though I am glad that my player is alright, I was dissapointed to discover that this pressing indeed have the "crosstalk". This film really have an home video-curse.

I will post a sample in Mallwalker's thread later...

msycamore said:

captainsolo said:

Since you're capturing straight to a DVD recorder, I don't think there's much more you can do to improve things. From what I always understood there's only so much that those can handle.

I think DVD recorders have come a long way since the early players hit the market, some players comb filters can be very good.

I don't know about the early players, but I think the quality of DVD recorders peaked around 2005-2007. Users then moved on to DVR-type devices (e.g. Sky Plus in the UK) or on-demand (catch-up) services.

What model Toshiba recorder are you using? The RDR-XSxx and RD-KXxx models are reportedly very good.

In the end you will always need to do some post processing to get LD-captures to look any good, tweak the levels, multi-cap average/median, IVTC and resize etc. The clipped white levels have nothing to do when the transfer was made, there are shitty transfers made today just like there were good ones made in the old days.

I agree with the above; you may even find that some of the clipped whites are recoverable (I found this with an LG recorder). I'll take a look at your sample.

The good news is that some of the clipped whites can be recovered (click for full size):

Bad news is that in other shots the clipping is too severe, and some detail is irrevocably lost.

Moth3r said:

I don't know about the early players, but I think the quality of DVD recorders peaked around 2005-2007. Users then moved on to DVR-type devices (e.g. Sky Plus in the UK) or on-demand (catch-up) services.

Interesting, do you happen to know if some of the newer players have worse comb filters/recording quality than the older models of the same brand to cut down on cost or something? I really hate the rainbowing and dot-crawl I'm seeing on most LD captures, and the avisynth filters to reduce those artifacts always destroys the picture in some ways no matter how effective they are.

As with any of these things, the only way to be sure is to carry out tests yourself. For example, the Panasonic DMR-ES10 is supposed to have excellent built-in filters for stabilising wobbly VHS images in pass-through mode, however from my tests I found it blurred high frequency detail coming into its composite input.

This page seems to have some comprehensive advice on DVD recorders. The general consensus is that later models (2007 onwards) tended to drop features, such as built-in tuners, additional recording modes and filters to improve the video signal, in order to reduce costs.

Thanks for that link! :)

The Aluminum Falcon said:

Is it worth capturing my laserdiscs with PCM audio or is it a waste of space?

It is definitely worth it IMO, but be aware that recording in PCM may affect the overall picture quality on your recording on some DVD recorders, in that case you'll have to record it twice to get the most out of it. Something I learned when capturing ANH on a friends recorder recently.

I agree with msycamore. If you do one recording where you set the video quality to high and audio to low and then do another but with the quality settings reversed then all you need to do is sync the two video tracks with each other and you can have the best quality video with the best quality audio. :D

Aluminum Falcon, could you do me a favor and post some more screenshots of your Empire capture, I'm beginning to suspect that the Mitsubishi pressing and perhaps the Technidisc pressing may be superior in the colors compared to the JSC and Pioneer-SWE, going by your screenshots here: http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Smear-free-93/post/517316/#TopicPost517316 the red seems to be red instead of pink and the blue seems to be blue instead of cyan. Some examples of the ugly hues to be found in the Special Collection and SWE (Pioneer pressing):

This can of course be corrected:

But I would like to know if the Mitsubishi pressing is a better starting ground for such a project, so can you please post screenshots of these when you have the time. I'm curious to know how your laser look on these sequences.

msycamore, is your Pioneer made in Japan or USA factory?
I've got one from PVI in California, as well as Technidisc copy.

Now that I think about it, seems I never finished ripping the PCM audio from Technidisc.
IIRC got sides 1&2 then became distracted before finishing side3.
Perhaps I should pull it out again and try some screen grabs...

Darth Mallwalker said:

msycamore, is your Pioneer made in Japan or USA factory?
I've got one from PVI in California, as well as Technidisc copy.

I just double checked, my Pioneer is manufactured and printed in USA, didn't even know there existed Pioneer pressings made in Japan! It's nice we have experts around here.

Darth Mallwalker said:

Now that I think about it, seems I never finished ripping the PCM audio from Technidisc.
IIRC got sides 1&2 then became distracted before finishing side3.
Perhaps I should pull it out again and try some screen grabs...

Please do. The PCM audio ripped would be fantastic :) and I'm also very curious to know if the weird color hues are present in the other pressings.

PVI / Technidisc



PVI / Technidisc


Who the fuck is Magenter ?