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Hello all, recently I acquired a Toshiba DVD Recorder, so I've started transferring Laserdiscs to DVDs like crazy, and am curious about certain aspects of doing this.
First of all, before I explain my process, I do want to recognize that, yes this is a very low tech way of transferring laserdiscs to DVDs. Unfortunately, I am a 14 year old on a low budget and can't really afford time to capture to my computer and author snazzy DVDs. I simply want to preserve my old laserdiscs for personal viewing on DVD; unfortunately, unlike others on this forum, I'd prefer not to have to exchange discs during the movie. So, to make it clear, I'm asking help on improving with the equipment I have; please try not to riddle this thread with comments like "get better equipment" or "you're lazy". I just want to have (aproximately) the same quality as my laserdisc onto DVD, no better, perhaps slightly worse if need be.
Now that I've gone through that. Here's what I do: I connect my Pioneer LD-V850 laserdisc player to my Toshiba DVD recorder via the composite cables I received with my OPPO DVD player. I capture each side on XP Mode (1 hour) with PCM audio to a DVD-R. After capturing everything, I rip all the DVDs' VIDEO_TS files to my computer and use DVDShrink's Re-Author Mode to merge them onto a single disc. While doing this, I use the editor in DVDShrink to cut off the blue screens at the end and beginning of each side; I also disable any compression modes. If it's too large, then I use DVDRebuilder to shrink it down to a single-layer DVD and burn it to a Verbatim DVD-R. Finito.
Having said that part, here are the questions I have:
- How good is my laserdisc player? I don't really know anything about it since I inherited it from a deceased relative. It is the Pioneer LD-V850; is it related to the Pioneer LD-V800 that Arnie.d. used in his V8 transfer?
- Are my cables high quality enough? Since I got these composite cables from OPPO, I assumed that they were relatively good quality.
- Is it worth capturing my laserdiscs with PCM audio or is it a waste of space?
- Would capturing in this way introduce edge enhancement, blown-out whites, or excess film-like dirt? I ask this because when msycamore saw a transfer of my ESB SWE Mitsubishi pressing, he commented that it had these. I personally thought they were like this on the laserdisc, but his SWE (a Pioneer pressing) isn't this dirty but his is also missing some scan lines.
Any help on these questions would indeed be much appreciated. By the way, here is a sample DVD showing my setup in action:
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=YJCSDH93
I originally made it to show msycamore the difference in scan line patterns with my copy. It has two titles. The first is the ESB SWE, which was what seems to have EE and blown out whites. The second is a transfer of the reference quality ESB 1997SE. I made this to show the overall quality of my set-up. It runs about 10 minutes total.
So, far, I've transferred three laserdiscs: my Empire Strikes Back Special Widescreen Edition Mitsubishi Pressing (which I'll soon start a thread about), my 1997SE ANH LD, my open matte Terminator 2 laserdisc, and my Star Wars 1982 Rental VHS with results that seem to look like the original laserdisc/VHS. These were meant to be personal transfers but if anyone's interested...