LD-Decode - LaserDisc Conversion Tools

[@TheRealHarrypm]

1:55 Slight but somewhat major issue TBC files are not custom they are 4fsc sampled like D2 video tape, and as such can be piped back to analog via a dac its the full CVBS signal stream on file, same for tape decoding of colour-under formats being S-Video on file (GREY16 headerless streams to be exact in terms of data format on file, the JSON is just for ld-tools to read it). TBC is basically 1135x624 / 17727262 Hz PAL & 910x524 / 14318181 Hz NTSC 3:11 Well Apple silicone is the fastest you can get decoding speeds out of due to raw single core bais currently, same for all but hifi-decode which can run realtime with enough single/multicore tossed at it. (ware as RTLSDR decode will run realtime on anything 2008 high end or better) (chroma decoder is realtime but ram hungry though). 15:25 Some good points are made here, but you missed the fact that well FFV1 and V210 is what 90% of people who are doing this sort of archiving will touch not compressed codecs, but also the 4k/2160p upscale bracket has to be mentioned for use on YT due to SD being useless and HD being crunched, and outher platforms I cant name being better due to using the orignal file allowing for SD streaming with web optimised files, like those profiles made inside the tbc-video-export tool.

[@JuanHerrero]

>outher platforms I cant name ...pleaaase?

[@TheRealHarrypm]

@@JuanHerrero O // dy // see // its direct file stream platform, but if you mention its name on YT 9/10 you comments get auto purged, same as links these days.

[@Tatsh2DX]

I've been using the VHS fork of this project for over a year. It's incredible stuff and despite the huge file sizes, the home videos are preserved in a way where I can feel comfortable knowing the VHS tapes will die soon but I have as good of a backup as I can get.

[@TheRealHarrypm]

@@Tatsh2DX I have 42 dB snr tapes from 1987 ones that had mold on them, taps don't die there SNR slowly degrades if not stored proper, but I think its a matter of quality of tape and the conditions of orignal recording heads that truly defines there lifespan all things being equal climate wise. Btw new updates to the CX Card workflow/method now which streamlines vhs capture a bit.

[@button-puncher]

What if you captured the RF from an actual D-2 deck? Would the processing recognize that It's a digital signal after the demodulation step? I have a D-2 deck and being able to archive them this way would be really cool. I know I can just capture the SDI stream, but still.

[@UntouchedWagons]

18:05 "Through the power of buying four of them!" Alec and Gravis would be proud

[@Browningate]

The Cathode Ray Dude too.

[@arbayer2]

@@BrowningateCRD also goes by the handle Gravis, for reference

[@CoffeeOnRails]

It’s funny how even though you’re in the electronic and (now) digital realm, the time factor of preservation just doesn’t go away. I was an intern at a museum and was tasked with auditing and helping to preserve their photography collection (from the late 1800s-1940s). I am not joking when I say each photograph could take up half an hour to inspect and take preventative action on, let alone the measuring and cataloging that goes along with it. Hats off to the folks who are doing this stuff for free as a passion project.

[@lachlanlau]

please, elaborate more on these preservation techniques

[@stevenclark2188]

Heck just with film scanning of fresh negatives I used to spend about 30 minutes scanning, cropping, adjusting-curves, spotting dust, and sharpening for output.

[@TheRealHarrypm]

2:1 resolving of the grain for archival is a fun task for film stocks, consumers are lucky to have 61mp full frames like the A7RIV/A7RV that can make a massive amount of stacked data today thanks to pixel shift etc, getting near drum scan levels of information, but it wont ever compare to 16-bit full RGB TIFF files from a wet mounted drum scanner really. FM RF is a fun method but its too easy for LD/Video8/Hi8, compared to film scanning workload wise.

[@bs_blackscout]

Me not owning a single laserdisc: "Ah yes, LD decode, tell me more"

[@jimcabezola3051]

Been a LaserDIsc snob (no VCRs, please!) since 1983. Stubbornly, I still have over 100 LaserDiscs which is a drastic reduction from my original collection! Mahalo for this guide.

[@ReetinEntertainment]

I started getting Laserdiscs a few years ago and I am up to around 80 discs. I went to Japan in October and found some Laserdiscs at a Hard Off there (thrift store). They were 100 yen a piece! That's like 60 cents!

[@jimcabezola3051]

@@ReetinEntertainmentYou know? I wonder if that "Hard Off" store you mention is tangentially related to the used electronics, used books and use media store called "Book Off" here on O'ahu in Hawai'i. Anyway... I don't know how keen you are on these LaserDiscs, but, coincidentally, the Tech Tangents KZbin channel JUST released TODAY the second in a series of videos about the fascinating...and supremely technical...process of truly preserving and archiving LaserDiscs. Even though I'm just a coffin-dodger with one foot in his grave, I love the nostalgia whenever I break out my player and spin up one of my discs. I'm too old and too tired to try the amazing techniques I see displayed on Tech Tangents' channel. However, you might want to see how Tech Tangents has a go at this task. The two videos are these: Domesday Duplicator - Ultimate LaserDisc Preservation kzbin.info/www/bejne/h3XPk6qiaMtmb7M and LD-Decode - LaserDisc Conversion Tools kzbin.info/www/bejne/iJXYdqN_nqxjhZI Give those a watch, and you may find out even more than you may have wanted to learn, lol! Aloha!

[@andruwxx]

I have one left. Star Trek the wrath of Khan. T2 was my first and 93. Sold most of them to half price books maybe 15 years ago.

[@jet9385]

What percentage of them have suffered from disc rot to a noticeable degree?

[@iyatemu]

​@@jimcabezola3051Yes, Book-Off and Hard-Off are both outlets for the same Japanese company.

[@DarkKnight32768]

That casual introduction to interlacing doesn't prepare the uninitiated for the horrors they will discover. Telecine sequences can jump randomly at each cut, leaving unmatched fields hanging in the air. Interlaced film content can be blended with interlaced video content (like computer-generated credits) during transitions only or during the whole cut. That computer-generated video can have 30 state changes per second or 60 state changes per second, and correspond to 480 pixel high frame or 240 pixel high frame. Dealing with video mastered from interlaced sources is a great way to say goodbye to your sanity. As others said, it might be better to leave interlaced video as it is, and let the player perform as much blending+upscaling magic as user wants, but the problem is that almost nothing (and almost no one) today is expected to work with interlaced video properly.

[@chrisfratz]

And then there's shows like SpongeBob that (while not often) mix 24FPS animation with live action segments. Honestly what I end up doing with my DVD rips is either deinterlacing to 30 FPS or 60 FPS depending on the content. I have yet to tackle the interlacing my rips of SpongeBob but those are going to be deinterlaced to 60fps.

[@Ice_Karma]

A mutual friend of Shelby and I has been working on archiving the Laserdisc edition of _The Wizard of Speed and Time,_ and the de-interlacing was so vexing they went as far as contacting Mike Jittlov himself to pick his brain about which bits came from film and which from video, how it was assembled, etc., and, surprisingly, all these years later, he actually remembered some useful bits. I'm eagerly awaiting a copy of the final edit! ♥

[@peshozmiata]

The thing i love about this channel, and what makes it stand out from most other "retro tech" channels, is that priority is put into projects that are of much greater importance as a whole than purely the entertainment value of the video. This is not just something to make a show-and-tell about, it's about first building a useful pipeline and then showing how to use it for anyone else out there who wants to do data preservation.

[@SantaClause-m9h]

this video shows me how much I take MakeMKV for granted. we love you MAKEMKV.

[@CompComp]

This is a super cool project. I'm glad to see LDs being reserved.

[@kei_nishimaru]

These 2 videos are going to become historical for their technical knowledge- and also for being a convenience in archiving vintage anime and underrated works

[@DJDTHTRP]

Example, the Salamander OVAs. Konami would like us to NOT know they happened, but they're a GOOD product of the time.

[@The_Mister_E]

Oh if only space and bandwidth were infinite... Imagine if there was one central archive where everybody uploaded their copies of a given disk, merging all that remains into a pristine amalgamation of the media.

[@HrLBolle]

You mean like the 🧠 sphere from Futurama?

[@TheRealHarrypm]

*cough* on the wiki there is a google shared drive with 9.5TB of data, oh and there is a lot more on the internet archive!

[@rommix0]

7:32 For people deinterlacing, don't ever use yadif unless you want a lower quality picture. use bwdif (bob weaving de-interlacer) with a parity of 0 (0 for top field first, 1 for bottom field first for DV video). bwdif also outputs double the frame-rate (29.97i becomes 59.94p).

[@Zcooger]

That's why I used bwdif when writing tbc export scripts - best quality with good performance.

[@fffmpeg]

-vf yadif=1 also doubles the framerate

[@rommix0]

@@fffmpeg yeah but might give out bad quality. Yadif and bwdif do the same job a bit differently.

[@fffmpeg]

or just use QTGMC with avisynth

[@rommix0]

@@fffmpeg you could but ffmpeg is easier to install and use. For people who want the ffmpeg front-end, Handbrake is the go to.

[@CantankerousDave]

Hah, the OG Tenchi Muyou LDs from Pioneer. I have a full set of those, too. I’ve been encoding a bunch DVDs lately - I’ll have to give that doubling trick a try.

[@eddievhfan1984]

9:02 For further context, he's talking about Dolby Surround/Dolby Stereo, which is basically mixing 4-channel surround into 2-channel stereo with a matrix encoder for storage/transmission, then decoding back into 4-channel. Since that's inherent to the stereo audio tracks (analog and digital) if encoded with Dolby Surround, there's no real point in "decoding" it to discrete surround sound-matrix decoders are super-common in playback hardware/software, and if you have a discrete 5.1 mix to begin with, it's way better results anyways.

[@Cory_]

SUPER impressed by the disc stacking feature.

[@bjwoodruff]

4 copies? You must have went to both Bookmans and every Zia in the valley to get those 😂

[@airwolf1337]

The "Contact" part of the video got me :D. Excellent work!!! :)

[@StompySan]

As someone who personally never saw the purpose of archiving LD, this has been an absolute ride. I knew of some of the technical aspects of LD, but never knew just how in-depth it really went. Given the level of detail these videos and guides have covered, this is definitely going to help boost the efforts. I wish the LD archival community nothing but the best.

[@denormative]

In relation to the graphics data in the subtitles, I saw the Tenchi Muyo capture and had the thought that maybe they were using it to write the names of uncommonly used kanji with it. Sometimes kanji in people's or place's names aren't in the commonly used set, or are using the old form of a kanji that was simplified, so especially with the limited memory/etc of the time just drawing it might be the only option.

[@KarlBaron]

Yeah if the disc is Japanese then I bet this would be it, this is why Japan used LD+G for their subtitles, so they could mix in graphics for kanji that wouldn't fit in the default character set. The same idea is used on modern day Japanese TV broadcasts (ISDB) using the DRCS feature of ARIB B24. In the beautifully-rendered closed captions on your 4K TV, suddenly one Kanji will be a super low-res pixelated character because it's not in a default broadcast charset so the closed captions include the pixel values to draw it. It's also often used for icons, like showing an icon of a phone to indicate that the closed caption is for the person talking on the other end of a phone, etc.

[@Xsiondu]

FFMPEG! "It supports what you want to do, i couldn't get it to work but it's supported"😅

[@HeadsetGuy]

It's... IT'S POSSIBLE WITH VHS?? Dude, I am extremely looking forward to seeing a video about that...

[@TheRealHarrypm]

More and more tape formats supported by "vhs-decode" every year its the modern tape archival standard 😉

[@Zcooger]

I have some clips from VHS .tbc files.

[@methical__]

This is so nerdy, I love it! Thank you! You are also really good at presenting.

[@KRAFTWERK2K6]

The great thing about DTS Laserdiscs is the DTS Mix is FULL RATE. Unlike DVDs that more or less always had half-rate DTS. So the Laserdiscs with DTS bascically have the same fullrate bitrate like the DTS CDs that were sync'd to the 35mm film projectors in theaters that showed the movies with DTS. Some few early DVDs had fullrate DTS too but they were very very rare. One of the few i can think of were the Codefree NTSC releases of "Daylight", "Liar Liar" and "Dante's Peak". Other than that most DVDs only had halfrate to make room for the videobitrate as well as more languages and Dolby Digital.

[@jeremiefaucher-goulet3365]

16:48 "The first rule of government spending is why build one, when you can have two at twice the price" *while holding the LD for the movie "Contact"* It's such an iconic line from that movie­ that I always loved. I just died of laughter... Gawd that was good and the ultimate nerd moment ;)

[@synthmage00]

This is such a fascinating topic that I didn't even notice the hat until over 8 minutes into the video. Cool hat!

[@andrestartrek]

One of the most awesome project in years. A Pitty the cost a so high to get in to, but maybe in the future the cost go down.

[@rommix0]

Correction. Most awesome project of the decade. LD-Decode had been going strong for a while before Tech Tangents covered it.

[@satsuke]

The stop commands bit is almost funny sometimes. I had a DVD player very early in its lifespan. I think this disk was Virtsuocity. They took the Laserdisc special features and just dumped them onto the DVD. The special features were a bunch of still images from the production. Once transferred, this had the net effect of a 30 seconds video with one new progressive image per frame .. so it played as a very very fast slideshow when you pushed play. Almost like a blipvert from Max Headroom the TV series. (IBP frames on DVD being what they are, this did nothing good for the image quality of the stills.

[@donatj]

H264 is usually way better than H265 at low resolution videos.

[@samuraidriver4x4]

Must say that this was a very interesting endeavor. Can't imagine how much time you spent researching and experimenting to actually accomplish good results that can be archived.

[@StephenHoldaway]

This is super neat. Is the VHS process you hinted at the same deal of capturing a signal and decoding to video in software, or more along the lines of extracting encoded data from a regular video capture? I have about 500 hours of VHS captured in FFV1 through a BlackMagic device, but it struggles to get a lock on Hi8 tapes, so I'm still looking for a solution for that

[@TechTangents]

It's pretty much the same as the laserdisc setup from what I understand, you just read after the head amplification I think. I do know there are some more complicated problems with VHS though due to it using multiple heads for the tape. I still need to research it more to get a better understanding of it myself.

[@TheRealHarrypm]

VHS-Decode has multible RF points if you want to do FM HiFi audio too so 2 signals, as you already have refrance copys on file, I would say get an CX Card and a new external timing setup its all detailed on the wiki. Betacam etc is 2 seprate video RF signals alongside audio, ware as SMPTE-C is basically the same as laserdisc but bigger and better and with linear audio (as it was used to master media that was going onto LDs for a few years)

[@ennexthefox]

Thank you so much for making these Domesday Duplicator videos. I've been collecting LaserDiscs for a while and have a few in my collection that I'd love to preserve for one reason or another, and after following this guide I'm starting to wade into it - I'm working with my first captured disc right now. These videos have to be the single most accessible collection of information on this project that exists. Information about this hardware and the associated tools is fragmented all over the place, across random Reddit threads and across multiple Github pages, so being able to refer to this video at least as a starting point has been an absolute godsend. I hope to be able to contribute to the effort to preserve LaserDiscs, and also plan to use the Duplicator to capture a whole pile of home movies on VHS I have waiting for me in the basement!

[@kote315]

Surely many people already know this, but I still want to note that when working with large video files, it is a good idea to have the source and destination files on physically different disks. This can significantly improve speed. Personally, I prefer to compress PCM to FLAC (and use mkv container that supports it) to save some space. Of course, this is not the most compatible format, but most modern players can play it.

[@VinnyCThatWhoIBe]

lol the slow reveal of four copies of Contact got me

[@awesomeferret]

I'm looking forward to the VHS one.

[@wraithcadmus]

1) That integer scale trick feels like cheating but works so well, I found it myself integer scaling emulator footage to 4:3 2) Stacking is so cool 3) Your hat is rendering with the wrong colour gamut

[@johnpetruna8888]

At that moment when you dropped the Hadden line and revealed the second "Contact" disc, I laughed so hard I scared the *neighbor's* dog. 😂

[@ExplosiveAction]

This is fascinating stuff. For me, the last bastion of Laserdisc is Hong Kong films that came out on VCD and Laserdisc and there are still many that didn't make it to DVD (let alone Blu-ray) in any country. They often used the audio tracks to have Mandarin on one and Caontenese on the other, with burned in subtitles to the image.

[@Dreadfultime]

When will we get a new studio tour? You were doing a lot of videos about the studio (Some people deservedly complained that it was too much, but I was into it anyway) and then they totally stopped. I'd like to know what has been changed, maybe in the second channel. Also has Shelby ever explained what his background is? Why do you have such a vast knowledge of all of this stuff? Is it something you studied or something else?

[@TheRealRaddicalReggie-o9l]

Wikipedia bro

[@steverogers8163]

even on modern DVD/Bluray splitting combined TV show episodes (15 minute Cartoon Network mostly) is a royal pain. Sometimes whoever did it was kind enough to leave a solid 1-2 seconds of black in-between episodes. Other times they were just a**holes and the sound track from one episode bleeds into the lead in to the next episode with maybe just a single frame of black. Completely manual process. Which is why torrents of these shows never bother to actually break the episodes out into their individual components.

[@_irdc]

I laughed out loud when you mentioned the two copies of Contact at twice the price

[@dwindeyer]

Best quote from the movie

[@artofnoise5013]

You put an incredible amount of research into this. Really impressive.

[@worldgate989]

Imagine the CEO's over at WD wondering why 20TB drives are flying off the shelf right now.

[@bpelectric]

God; de-interlacing telecine'd video. When I used to capture and encode music videos, occasionally you'd run into a very frustrating situation: They'd done 3:2 pulldown on 24fps footage /before/ they started the edit, which they did on native 29.97fps equipment. This occasionally resulted in cuts that had only only had one of the two sets of fields for frames on either sides of the cut, meaning it was impossible to fully fix. Utterly rage-inducing.

[@clashblaster]

Why did you stop uploading Twitch VODs to your KZbin channel? I apologize if you've answered this before but I only just realized that you stopped uploading them. I can understand if it was a hassle, but it's a shame since Twitch deletes old broadcasts after a couple of months and KZbin was a better place to preserve them.

[@JohnDlugosz]

re DTS sounds better than AC-3: I wonder if the situation is identical to if not similar to that with DVDs. I'm familiar with the situation on DVDs. People argue that the AC-3 (Dolby Digital) format is better. But the DTS is held to be the premo sound track. I think the difference is in the way they are used. When the AC-3 soundtrack is the base level mandatory sound, it has a lower bitrate and it's mixed to sound good on basic equipment. The secondary "advanced" sound track is a much larger bitrate, and is mixed for home theater setups and audiophiles. And it happens to use the DTS format. You could save space and have a high bitrate sound track for the primary encoded as AC-3. But it has to play well on low-end sound equipment. And, I wonder if the situation is inherited from LD, where, perhaps, the place they put the AC-3 data has a limited capacity, and the later advancement was able to store _more_ digital data, which got used for DTS.

[@InsertBuffSoundingNameHere]

When you mentioned karaoke LaserDiscs were a thing, one of the many facts I learned, I remarked to myself "that's one of the most esoteric pieces of media I've ever heard of, probably mostly adopted in Japan" 😂. It's one of those proud to be a nerd moments, as should be the creation of this video. Considering how technical the subject (and well done for warning people, nice touch) it's really clearly explained.

[@JessicaFEREM]

pixel doubling actually solves alot of issues in general. if you use a 4k screen, it can easily and seamlessly scale to 1080p, if you're sealing with 480p video it may be wise to invest in a 1440p monitor since it's a perfect 3x scale.

[@nooneinpart]

Wouldn't the image contain the pixelation from unfiltered pixel doubling if you're viewing it at any resolution higher than the original native resolution? I mean, the explanation from the video makes sense solely from a storage perspective if you're at a space premium and can't do lossless FFV1, but no smoothening means unless you undo the Pixel doubling, it will always look blocky on a Hi-Res monitor.

[@davidmcgill1000]

I'd take pixelated integer scaling over smoothed blurry messes with bleeding colors any day.

[@nooneinpart]

@@davidmcgill1000 Clearly you haven’t seen how good Lanczos upscaling can look. We’re far past the world of Bilinear.

[@MVVblog]

Very interesting, but does it make sense? Given the low quality of the masters used for the vast majority of produced laserdiscs, and considering that the signal contained in the laserdisc is the worst possible, namely composite video, a professional capture card like an AJA Kona LHE that captures uncompressed video in 4:4:4 (PAL and NTSC) paired with a high-quality laserdisc player should produce a more than accurate result without going any further.

[@itogi]

1. Composite is far from the worst possible signal, you can get great quality from composite signal 2. Professional cards won't fix problems of machine's internal composite video processing. 3. You cannot get anything more accurate than capturing signals directly from laser pickup.

[@MrBregolin]

Looking forward for the VHS episode as I'm doing some of that myself

[@GoldenPickaxe]

.scc is a broadcast standard for closed captions especially with .MXF (material exchange format)

[@mav2k5000]

I love the reference to Blade Runner! ❤

[@a_f_a_b]

Hats off to all that are involved with the preservation process! Speaking on hats by the way. Where I can find ballcap like this? Seems I would not be able to sleep until I find out.

[@Capturing-Memories]

About upscaling before encoding, This is why I upscale my captures, especially VHS, to 1440x1080 before uploading to YT even with some sort of smoothing filter built in the resizer, The compression will be much less harsh than uploading the SD version, Thanks for confirming that it's the same concept for any kind of lossy encoding not just YT compression.

[@PaulFisher]

They are, to an extent, two different phenomena. The video KZbin delivers will look better when upscaled from (say) 480p to 2160p mostly because KZbin is willing to throw way more bits at the video when encoding at higher resolution, since at a product level, resolution is used as the mechanism for ABR/data saving. It would be neat if there were a way to have lower-resolution videos get additional higher-bitrate encodes corresponding to the higher resolutions that don’t exist (e.g. a video topping out at 480p could get “480p+/++” encodes at the 720p and 1080p bitrates) to make this hack unnecessary, but it’s a super niche use case. I would also be interested to learn how the quality on non-pixel-doubled laserdisc rips would compare if they were given those 30% more bits that the pixel double ended up taking, to untangle the difference between what is the source material playing nice with the compression algorithms versus just they have more bits to work with.

[@Capturing-Memories]

@@PaulFisher In the YT case, they paint all SD videos with the same brush, While I agree the majority of 480 YT uploads came from crop quality, and people who upload them are clueless when it comes to video quality, there are uploads that originated from nice and clean SD materials that don't deserve the punishment. It is not a fair game but I can understand YT goal to save on bandwidth and storage. I'm pretty sure they will come up in the future with a smart algorithm that detects upscaled SD materials and treat them just as SD versions.

[@TheRealHarrypm]

1080p bracket is no longer viable for properly repesenting analog pretty much decode projects only recommend the 4k/8k bracket now due to the black bais macroblocking getting worse since they kicked down standard 1080p, funny enough V,imeo is actaully decent for handling SD, not as good as O//D//Ysee but anything direct file stream is more ideal.

[@Capturing-Memories]

@@TheRealHarrypm I actually started experimenting with 4k, In my last CocaCola samples I uploaded a 4k version and a HD version, both upscaled from SD and uploaded to YT in lossless HuffUYV codec. I wish someone can download them and do some analysis.

[@electrofreak0]

I've never owned, nor viewed a laserdisc in my life. Why did I watch this whole video?

[@belstar1128]

how old are you? i never had one too i grew up at the end of the vhs age i saw a laserdisc once in a movie but i didn't know the name i just knew it as "that giant cd that plays movies" .but now i want to see what it was about

[@thomcd-rom]

I have a LD capture workflow involving a Panasonic DVD recorder for de-combing, a DVDO iScan Duo, and then into an Alliance Pro box. I totally appreciate the fellow research you've put into this craft! To see the meta-data from some of these discs is my current fantasy.

[@subwayfox]

I just wanted to say, as a huge old school laserdisc fan back from the very end of the format (when it was clear it was going away, but suddenly cheap enough for me to collect), I love everything about this little mini-series. The technical details of LDs have always been amazing, and it's great to see them presented not just in terms of how they work, but in an effort to preserve them from the unfortunate bitrot. Just amazing stuff. Keep up the great work, Shelby!

[@GYTCommnts]

Thank God that people like you exist! This is awesome and a preservationist win!

[@stgigamovement]

Does this support MUSE Hi-Vision LaserDiscs?

[@sambushman6089]

How compatible is this capture pipeline with LDs for the Laseractive platform? I have a couple of those LD games and lack the means to attempt archiving them myself

[@sambushman6089]

Lol, as i watch the end of the video i see this topic mentioned briefly :p

[@Stoney3K]

Somehow I'm glad that we don't have to worry about 3:2 pulldown in PAL land. But we do have to contend with our movies being 4% shorter.

[@Foobar_The_Fat_Penguin]

Never try to help the turtle, it's too much of a headache. Got it. 👍 😉

[@br3nd4n]

Where did you say the torrents for the rips will be hosted? :P

[@jasejj]

You could probably improve stacking performance by capturing the same disc on two or more players as well - there will always be slight differences in the calibration of different machines that may deal with errors differently. I've done this in the past with damaged CDs, where different drives could read different bits of the disc correctly.

[@charmedx3219]

I thought this was a direct feed from the laser? Would you actually get different error correction methods?

[@jasejj]

@@charmedx3219 No, you'd likely get different errors.

[@JohnSmith-ss8ij]

Hey did we just get the Voight-Kampff test lol

[@imranahmad2733]

Would different disc transport captures make a difference when using the disc stacking feature, since it's an analogue signal would different mechanisms make a different sample/read of the disc

[@Zcooger]

Yes, different mechanisms but also laser pickups and random dust that may fly inside - that's something I suggested in the community.

[@imranahmad2733]

So having more samples of the same disc in the same and different machines where the data can be cross checked in stacker mode could make for a very pure signal, close enough to the mastering data, I wonder if changing the laser to one with a narrower wavelength if the pickup would allow it to be read would work better in preserving the information on the disc.

[@Zcooger]

@@imranahmad2733 There were also talks about using bluray blue laser for LD pickup, it didn't go anywhere yet but there's an idea.

[@imranahmad2733]

@@Zcooger I wonder what the roadblock would be for using the Blu-ray laser, the pickup diode would probably need a different filter on it, maybe the lense would also have to be different because the blue/violet laser lights wavelength or maybe the focus can be adjusted in the laser block, there's probably quite a few factors involved to get it to work but I bet it would pay off

[@JuanHerrero]

I am told the later laserdisc players were better at playing discs with disc rot because they had a narrower red laser beam. Would be interesting to see a comparison of different players for the same disks.

[@happycube]

Only the Japanese MUSE players have the narrower beam - the DVL combination players do technically have one, *but* only for the DVD's... for anything else it switched to the same IR CD/LD pickup the later LD-only models used, with it's own motor assembly and everything.

[@andydelle4509]

The Doomsday Duplicator looks like three stacked boards. I know where to get the middle RF sampler board but what are the other two and where do I get them. I assume the connection to a host PC is USB2?

[@TheRealHarrypm]

FX3 Exploer board USB 3.0 Type-B (PC interface) DE0 Nano FPGA (buffer) Its all on the DomesDay Duplicator wiki.

[@dlarge6502]

I've been following the archival of the original Domesday project for a while now. Data from across my country saved to disc when I was just a toddler. I've seen some of the data relating to my own county town where I live, the descriptions of schools and the town centre by the kids at the schools takes me right back and earlier. Optical media is a brilliant choice for such an archive, but the LD technology was too new and primitive to last long enough unlike today's optical media and the biggest problem was at the time it was a world with very little optical media hardware so they ended up designing a bespoke system that relied on very specific bits of hardware. It was an idea before it's time but it did work in the end as although it's not going to describe 1980's British life and culture to people 1000 years from now, it's still a treasure trove of information that proves without a doubt that us 80's and 90's kids actually did exist before the internet lol. 😂

[@TheTalkWatcher]

I would go with PAL discs exclusively. They have slightly better resolution.

[@_00FF00]

Never thought someone would want to preserve a Tenchi laserdisc lol. Good choice 👍

[@TheTalkWatcher]

Can you use this tool to make a frankenstein Video Disc? Combining the better resolution of PAL with the superior sound options DTS etc of NTSC?

[@pig1800]

Finally, A definitive method for ripping LD discs. As an old-school ripper, interlace and digital audio tracks are least concern to me, TDeint+EEDI3 can deal with most 60i content, and for post-edited pulled down content, I can always use YATTA for manual IVTC. I don't know if EAC3TO can deal with those AC3 and DTS tracks, but I don't think there will be any big obstacle.

[@happycube]

AC3 is a totally different encoding on the Laserdisc and is a relatively new feature of ld-decode, hence the extra logging. (Staffan Ulfberg figured out how to actually do the decoding in 2021-2022, then Leighton and Ian Smallshire implemented it in C++ for rev7.)

[@pig1800]

@@happycube That's very interesting, does it have compatibility with today's ac3 encoding? Like convert to standard ac3 stream losslessly. And what about DTS? Well maybe it's all answered in related projects already? If so, can I have some links guide me to these answers?

[@ObsoleteVodkaYT]

Kenny Lauderdale would love this.

[@mjmeans7983]

Looking forward to the vhs-decode from a domesday.

[@ReetinEntertainment]

My copy of Back to the future is basically ruined at this point.

[@tomcarlson3913]

It occurred to me after watching the video that the Domesday hardware appears to be basically a custom made SDR. It makes me wonder if a more affordable SDR (there's ones as cheap as $25 out there) could be used to capture the disc RF output at sufficient quality to be used with the software.

[@happycube]

The $25 RTL-SDR's don't have nearly enough bandwidth. There's another capture board in development which will take advantage of improved FX3 firmware and (hopefully) not need the FPGA board. For a cheaper option look at cxadc... Chinese companies are upcycling the only PCI chip known that could be put into an ADC mode into PCI Express cards, and there are quite a few people who have done all sorts of interesting work on them (higher clocks, new filters, etc)

[@coondogtheman]

Just an idea. On a frame with dropouts could you take part of a previous frame that has no dropouts and paste it onto the affected frame that has the dropouts?

[@happycube]

It's possible if there isn't motion between them... perhaps it could be pulled into the 3D comb filter?

[@halcyondaystunes]

This was amazing. Totally over my head but I've collected Laserdiscs for years and found it so interesting. It's what You Tube is made for 😂

[@LaserDisc-Rarities]

I wish I could afford a Doomsday Dup.

[@maikmueller]

Okay, this is nuts and yeah, kinda like a dream come true. A bit late, but still very interesting. Wish the hardware were more affordable. VHS is also extremely interesting (i hope there's a way to expand this to stuff like hi8). Oh btw is anyone crazy enough to try decoding hi-vision laserdiscs?😅

[@happycube]

There've been some experiments but the DdD board's default filters and sampling rate don't capture quite enough to do MUSE captures properly.

[@8bitkid408]

How do you capture Laseractive discs and Palcom?

[@mxbunnycatter]

... My very much curious cat brain now wonders if there's something like this to preserve obscure betamax tapes, or even vcc (video compact cassette) tapes, because... that would be just insanely cool

[@TheRealHarrypm]

Its all inside the vhs-decode project alongside many outher tape formats RF archival is a universal and final preservation method.

[@mxbunnycatter]

@@TheRealHarrypm that's pretty flippin' cool! I'd honestly would love to fiddle around with some of these things🥰

[@TheRealHarrypm]

@mxbunnycatter Welcome the future😉

[@PimpinBassie2]

Is there already a agreement in de community what counts as an "archive quality" copy? 163GB doesn't sound very portable..

[@TheRealHarrypm]

FLAC compressed LD RF caps fit on 100GB BD discs with some EEC data and self contained decoding and export tools.

[@dlarge6502]

If I were to archive the original bitstream I would compress it and store it on bd-xl or LTO tape. I'd certainly use the tapes as they store way much more.

[@Nielk1]

From watching the first video I was hoping stacking would be a thing, and it is! There are ways to make further improvements to the combiner but it would take a lot of work, would be easier to do parts of the different pressing alignment manually.

[@KeyJ_trbl]

I love everything about this video, but the way the multiple copies of Contact have been introduced was just sheer and utter perfection. You couldn't have picked a better movie and a better line for the stacking topic than this.

[@deplinenoise]

When you slide out that fourth copy

[@Spillerrec]

What is the name of the similar project for VHS so I can look it up? I have speculated what kind of image restoration algorithms I could make for our old family recordings if I had the analog signal to work with, but having limited knowledge of the electronics side of things to capture the signal has put a damper on that project.

[@TheRealHarrypm]

Littorally vhs-decode, also supports more then just vhs and there is hifi-decode and cvbs-decode too.

[@Spillerrec]

@@TheRealHarrypm Thank you

[@systemchris]

Odd question, where is this media being archived to?

[@WiltshireTutorials]

This is fascinating stuff! I never thought there would be a high quality way of preserving an LD. Hats off to all that are involved with the preservation process! This makes me want attempt to preserve my Studio Ghibli LD Collection I have. It has different dubbing than the North American DVD releases, which I find to be really cool!

[@Knightmessenger]

I'm curious if someone has done that already. I also find the color grading to look better on the regular Whisper of the Heart LD (haven't viewed the one in the boxset) than either the GKids or Disney bluray. The 2006 Disney dvd appears closer to the LD.

[@MegaManNeo]

I can't even tell if there were LaserDiscs in Germany back then but I love watching your content regarding that topic. Covering VHS is something that's more in line with what I am used 👀

[@belstar1128]

i am sure they came out but most people stuck to vhs especially after 1990 and the format wars had been settled .

[@repatch43]

Love your videos! The amount of dedication to such a dead format is incredible, love it!

[@TradieTrev]

He's good at it! I would binned the job lol!

[@GoogleDoesEvil]

I'd rather use H.264 for anything that isn't 4K or better. H.265 takes much longer to encode than H.264 and H.264 works better at lower resolutions.

[@DarkKnight32768]

Wikipedia is going to add an article on Redundant Arrays of Expensive LaserDiscs, and reference this video.

[@RyanSchweitzer77]

I'm guessing the "TBC" video file output by LD Decode from a raw LDS file, is referred to as a "TBC" file, because LD Decode performs a form of software timebase correction on the video frame data? As a Laserdisc collector and overall video enthusiast, this method of direct FM carrier & subcarrier capture from laserdiscs (and videotape as well, which also stores video in an FM carrier directly recorded to tape) to digital form fascinates me. I'd love to modify one of my players to fit in a Domesday Device (or CX Card) to it, and try my hand at capturing & digitizing my LD collection this way.

[@JonTheGeek]

Mr Tangents, As someone who grew up on VHS, I must say, I NEED YOU TO COVER THE VHS ARCHIVING METHOD LIKE NOW. Thank You -Jon

[@SFtheGreat]

VHS, you got my interest. Whe quesition is how to get digital 1:1 copy of PAL D-VHS.

[@ThexthSurvivor]

Excellent video. Very well explained. I've been wanting to know for while how to back up LDs. This is a LOT of work, even more so than VHS. I thought it would have been easier and faster just because it's on an optical disc, as easy as a VCD or DVD, but boy was I wrong. You know, you mentioning closed captions format, would you happen to know what the CC format for VCDs are and how to make them? The very little info on this on the net is very vague and doesn't explain much.

[@orange_light_pictures]

Saw this on EBay: Sony LDP-1500 Laservision Videodisc Player LASERMAX, $80 looked interesting in terms of connections and your archiving process perhaps.

[@jamesburke2759]

Very awesome to see anything laserdisc. I have a SCART sony LD player with upscale im keen to see how it comes out when i can get it fixed :( My sony DVD recorder gets rid of alot of interlacing issues.