Video to DVD conversion

[Ed]

I have a bunch of old Laserdisks that I would like to convert to DVD. Some are just not out on DVD (and probably won't be for some time) others I would convert for the hell of it.

The question is how? I think that I need a video capture card which would take the s-video out from my Laserdisk player. Then I would need a DVD burner.

Is that about it? If it works for tape does it necessesarily work for LD?

I don't really want to pull a Spielberg so ornate editing software is not a big deal.

Any thoughts?

 

[Sherman Bay]

If your intention is to merely make a copy of a laser disk video to a DVD, the simpliest, non-technical way is to purchase a standalone DVD recorder (just like a VHS recorder, only it uses DVDs instead of tapes).

Connect the output of the laser disk player to the input of the DVD recorder. Press "Play" on the laser disk unit and "record" on the DVD recorder and wait for it.

AFAIK, laser disks didn't use any copy protection. Someone more familiar with them than I will have to tell us. If they are copy-protected, there will be an additional step, which I won't go into if you don't need it.

One hint -- set your DVD recorder to use the best speed/time. Laser disks are not more than one hour per side, are they? Then set the recorder to the 1 hour mode to get the best quality. On the other hand, the 2-hour (standard) mode isn't too bad, and you can get more than one laser disk side on a single DVD. Depends on how much of a purist you are!

 

[Ed]

If your intention is to merely make a copy of a laser disk video to a DVD, the simpliest, non-technical way is to purchase a standalone DVD recorder (just like a VHS recorder, only it uses DVDs instead of tapes).

Connect the output of the laser disk player to the input of the DVD recorder. Press "Play" on the laser disk unit and "record" on the DVD recorder and wait for it.

AFAIK, laser disks didn't use any copy protection. Someone more familiar with them than I will have to tell us. If they are copy-protected, there will be an additional step, which I won't go into if you don't need it.

One hint -- set your DVD recorder to use the best speed/time. Laser disks are not more than one hour per side, are they? Then set the recorder to the 1 hour mode to get the best quality. On the other hand, the 2-hour (standard) mode isn't too bad, and you can get more than one laser disk side on a single DVD. Depends on how much of a purist you are!

I just want an image. The recording of greatest interest is the movie Becket which the clowns at MPI can't get their act together about a DVD version. As I recall, I could not transfer it to tape (this ages ago) so I suspect that it is copy protected. It seems to me that a card/dvd burner would be cheaper and more flexible than an all in one thingie.

 

[Patricio Elicer]

It seems to me that a card/dvd burner would be cheaper and more flexible than an all in one thingie.

For this you need a "Firewire Card" http://www.ramelectronics.net/html/ieee-1394_host_adapter_card.html to capture digital video to your comp, plus a dvd burner, which combined may cost you one third of a dvd recorder.

But the whole thing can be quite tricky. First, your LD player should have suitable output connections. Second, your computer must meet some minimum requirements.

I'm experiencing with digital video capture (from a digital camcorder), and haven't got good results so far, the captured video is quite messed up. I don't know where the problem lies at this point, maybe it's insufficient RAM memory, although I'm told 256 MB is enough.

The up side of computer capturing is that you have a lot of editing options for your movies, but if you just want to clone them I'd suggest a dvd recorder. The copy protection is an additional issue, but there are cheap ways to circumvent it.

ETA:
With the DVD recorder you can also transfer easily VHS tapes to DVD, and record TV programs.