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Phil Reid · Feb 20, 2006, 02:03 PM

Does anyone know where I can get some laser disc's burned or where I can find som blanks? 12"

Thanks

Phil

bluedog · Feb 20, 2006, 02:12 PM

Are you talking about the old "Laser Discs" that used to be the hi quality movie discs (about 12 inches in diameter)?

If so, do you want to convert one to another format, or create (burn) a laser disc (12") one?

I know of no way to burn these discs. Anyone else with some info on this possibility? I'd be interested in knowing if its possible.

But, if you want to convert them to another format, you could pay a duplication/conversion service to do so. Their prices will vary widely but usually cost on the length of media you wish to transfer.

Doing the conversion yourself: get a player and send it through an analog to digital converter A MiniDV video camera works nicely if it has 'pass-through' capabilities. Or get a third party box that does the A/D conversion. Having a firewire on the output works really well for bringing in the digital stream.

If not, I have an old player I've never used, and got it from a friend a while back. You're welcome to it for the cost of shipping. PM me if you're interested.

Eriamjh · Feb 21, 2006, 06:20 AM

Originally Posted by Phil Reid

Does anyone know where I can get some laser disc's burned or where I can find som blanks? 12"

Thanks

Phil

HAHHAHAHAHAHA!!!! That's the funniest thing I ever heard!

Spoffo · Feb 22, 2006, 09:44 PM

Nobody ever made a burnable laser disk. Back when LDs were popular (so to speak) around the late 80s, burnable CDs were just getting started. Even if someone had tried to make a big 12" blank and a drive to burn it, there would have been big barriers to burning it off a computer, since LD uses uncompressed analog video.

All laser disks were made via a physical stamping process (like commercial CDs & DVDs) by either Pioneer or 3M.

Seattle · Feb 22, 2006, 10:03 PM

Sony (Sony LVS-6000P) and Pioneer (Pioneer VDR-V1000) made recorders but blank laserdiscs will be very hard to find.

bluedog · Feb 23, 2006, 08:50 AM

Originally Posted by Seattle

Sony (Sony LVS-6000P) and Pioneer (Pioneer VDR-V1000) made recorders but blank laserdiscs will be very hard to find.

Wow. I didn't know that. I can't believe they would be manufactured any longer. I suppose this is what the poster is looking for and probably has one of these recordable units.

Aaah, old tech. Buy why? When you can really just burn DVD-Rs and play them at just about everyone's house.

Eriamjh · Feb 24, 2006, 07:04 AM

Originally Posted by Seattle

Sony (Sony LVS-6000P) and Pioneer (Pioneer VDR-V1000) made recorders but blank laserdiscs will be very hard to find.

Here's what I found:

Pioneer in the U.S. has begun selling the VDR-V1000 "LaserRecorder", a two piece rewritable laserdisc recorder/player. The device functions in CAV in analogue NTSC format with digital audio but offers slightly extended playing time over the current NTSC laserdisc standard. The VDR-V1000 can record and play 57,600 frames or 32 minutes of video from a disc side. The discs are protected in caddies, as is normal for recordable systems.
The product is being targeted at the professional market as an editing or programme making tool. The discs have a claimed erase/record potential of 1,000,000 cycles and the audio can be encoded both separately from the video or simultaneously. Pioneer claims the product is the first device to let producers perform real-time, non-linear editing with absolute accuracy.

Pioneer has also launched a PAL version of its rewritable laserdisc recorder/player aimed at the programme editing market. Editing on laserdisc has been popular for several years, the rapid access of the disc being an ideal way of rehearsing different mixes of scenes that, once finalised, can be imitated when editing the actual videotape, or in the case of movie systems like EditDroid, the film.

The VDR-V1000 makes use of two lasers making it possible to instantly write to any part of the disc. While one laser is reading the other is searching so there need never be a blank screen. The VDR-V1000 sells for around £25,000 and the blank discs for £800.

So it was a commercial device. With blanks at £800 (What is that, $1000?) in 1992, they are probably damn near impossible to find, if they would even still work after all this time.

Sorry, Phil. Even though they did exist, it still makes me laugh. Can I ask why you would need to have a LD made instead of a DVD? I have a big LD collection, but I would never want to copy one except to DVD.

At this point, the only advice is to search ebay and the rest of the internet, but unless you have the recorder or know someone who does, stick to DVD.

olePigeon · Feb 24, 2006, 04:47 PM

I looked into this a while ago to convert the Laserdisc version of Star Wars to DVD. I hate the special edition, and the Laserdisc THX version was the best quality non-special edition.

What I found out is that there're a few models of Pioneer Laserdisc players that have a serial connector. You can actually connect the serial cable to your PC and record the content, but this only work swith a PC and not a Mac, and not with a USB serial converter.

The most realistic option is to find a Mac with an A/V card and just record it onto that.

Spoffo · 08:58 PM

Wow. The news that Pioneer actually made an LD recorder (I'd bet the Sony was just a re-badged Pioneer) is news to me, and I was working with Pioneer on LD marketing at the time. It sounds like the recorder was aimed strictly at the industrial market, which was run out of a different part of Pioneer than consumer.

Be careful on the idea of using the serial connection. Most of the industrial players had a serial port, but it was for control signal *input* so a computer could control LD playback as part of a multimedia presentation. Are you sure it can output video over the serial connection? If it could, that would be a pretty wierd physical setup: You'd have (analog) composite or S-vid NTSC coming in on 2 or 3 pins of a serial plug. Then you'd have to find an A/D converter for your computer that could accept that strange connection insted of RCA or BNC. (Can't imagine why anyone would make such a strange animal.) Or you'd have to cobble together a converter cable without creating an impedance mismatch that would hurt your PQ.

Why not just do it the way I did? Run the S-video output of a good LD player into a decent stand-alone DVD recorder? At SP speed you'll get 2 hours per disk and capture all the video quality LD is capable of. Just be sure you're using a very good LD player, like one of the Elite series or a CLD-D703 The lesser players have quite a bit of video/chroma noise, and the MPEG compression going to DVD seems to accentuate it.

Alternatively, you could run the S-vid out of the LD player into a Mini-DV camcorder, and then dump that onto your computer via Firewire. Again, full speed Mini-DV has higher resolution than LD, so you wouldn't lose anything.

ReggieX · Feb 25, 2006, 01:22 PM

Originally Posted by Spoffo

Alternatively, you could run the S-vid out of the LD player into a Mini-DV camcorder, and then dump that onto your computer via Firewire. Again, full speed Mini-DV has higher resolution than LD, so you wouldn't lose anything.

Eh, when I get the chance I'm going directly from LD->TV tuner card. Mainly because I don't have a camcorder

I did some VHS tapes 2 weeks ago using that method, and they came out pretty decent. Criterion "Blade Runner" here we come!