hardware for capturing Laserdisc video

[markosjal]

I am looking at doing Laserdisc captures from Composite video.

I hoped someone may have some advice on what to use. I think DVD recorders and DVD format in feneral produce way too much artifacting. I would also prefer a format better for editing where necessary

Has anyone tested extensively With a DV Firewire capture device?

Thanks

Mark

[bendermac]

If you want to work with the footage afterwards, stay away from DVD recorders, DV capture cards. You need something that allows lossless capture. If you've a desktop PC/MAC, meaning one that can use PCI cards, get yourself a BlackMagic Intensity Pro. They should be reasonably price on eBay as used items.

[spoRv]

Few useful threads:

https://fanrestore.com/thread-2054.html
https://fanrestore.com/thread-83.html
https://fanrestore.com/thread-2720.html

[markosjal]

If you want to work with the footage afterwards, stay away from DVD recorders, DV capture cards. You need something that allows lossless capture. If you've a desktop PC/MAC, meaning one that can use PCI cards, get yourself a BlackMagic Intensity Pro. They should be reasonably price on eBay as used items.

"lossless" is not the issue. 

I am very familiar with DV video vs uncompressed. The space tradeoff and the ability to still edit on any frame are necessary. In any case far better that MPEG DVD artifacting and issues.

Besides I have a limited budget for hard disks and DV stretches that 5x over uncompressed.

[spoRv]

DV is 4:1:1 25Mbps while lossless capture is 4:2:2 around 60/70Mbps (using HuffYUV), so it's less than 3x bigger than DV and retain more chroma info and lossless picture.

[williarob]

If you are capturing NTSC laserdiscs and quality matters to you then stay away from DV:

Here is a frame from an NTSC laserdisc captured as DV 4:1:1:



And here is the same frame captured @ 4:2:2, lossless:



If you are capturing PAL I believe DV isn't so bad, but a lossless capture is always better. I capture lossless using MagicYUV or Lagarith, and most captures are about 40 GB. Really long movies like Bridge on the River Kwai might be 60 GB. But you edit the sides together, render it out as an h264 MKV, make sure it all looks good and then delete the lossless capture and capture your next disc. Even with just a 1 TB drive, you can capture a lot of discs this way.

[Bigrob]

What's the expert opinion on something like this for capturing

https://www.hauppauge.com/pages/products...hdpvr.html

[williarob]

What's the expert opinion on something like this for capturing

https://www.hauppauge.com/pages/products...hdpvr.html

I have one of these and it works just fine. The quality is very good, but the reason I don't use it for laserdisc is that it hardware encodes both audio and video with lossy codecs and there's no way around that. If you have an audio card with a toslink in, you can still record the audio losslessly at the same time, but you'd have to sync it up separately. I wasn't able to get this device to work well with Virtualdub.

Laserdisc video quality can be excellent (though rarely as good as DVD) and even capturing it losslessly with a $300 card, it's not leaps and bounds ahead of the early captures I made with one of these. More expensive cards tend to have better comb filters and Time base correctors, and therefore less rainbowing and other analog video problems, but it's really only 10% better at 3 times the price.

Note: The newer models can also record composite (using the green cable on the component video adapter) or via another adapter that you can buy from their site for about $12 which also includes S-Video.

So, ultimately, it really comes down to what you are hoping to achieve:

- Just looking to capture laserdiscs in very good quality so that you can either burn them to DVDs or watch them as MKVs on your TV without having to keep flipping or swapping discs? Then this is perfect.

- If you're looking to capture bitperfect digital audio to sync to your Blurays, you will also need an audio card with a toslink input (this card has toslink input but will encode it with a lossy codec).

- If you you're looking to capture in the best possible video & audio quality for preservation/restoration type projects, this is a good starter card, but there are better ones out there (for more money).

[Bigrob]

At the moment I would like to capture some VHS tapes that I have and when I either get my Laserdisc working or pick up a new unit then progress onto that so I can have them as MKV and share them here. The audio syncing though I don't think I would have the time for currently even though it's certainly an interest that I have but I would probably need a new laptop as my one is about 10 years old now.

[bronan]

I grabbed one of those Blackmagic Intensity Pro cards off ebay for $30. Interested to check it out!