I have a question about preserving the SE laserdiscs. Last year when the announcement came out that the original versions of Star Wars were NOT coming to DVD, I ended up buying the faces collection and my first LD player. Now it's turned into a full-blown hobby with over 70 laserdiscs (including the SE trilogy), two players, an RF demodulator for AC-3, and a need to now burn these to DVD.

However, I've got a problem that I'm unable to find a solution for on the internet. How do you preserve the original 5.1 soundtrack? I'm not sure if anyone has actually tried this. I've seen workarounds where people convert the sound to two channel audio, then reprocess it on their PC to 5.1, but this does not interest me as I will be losing the original AC-3. I'm also unaware of any audio capture card with a 5.1 input.

I've come up with one idea, but as I'm a total noob this may either be impossible or (hopefully) there's a better/easier solution. What I propose is to essentially record the laserdisc three times on my DVD recorder. The first will contain the left and right front channels in the stereo track. The second will contain the left and right rear channels. The third will contain the center and LFE channels.

Next, I will move to my PC, save the first recording to my hard drive and, using a DD 5.1 creator program (I'm not sure which one will work best however), add the soundtrack from the second recording. Of course, I will have to make sure all four of these tracks are perfectly synchronized. (I'm not sure how difficult that will be, or if it will even be possible.) Then, I'll add the soundtrack from the third recording, again ensuring it is synchronized and hoping I don't lose too much hair in the process.

Is this possible?