Laser disc S-video into my iMac to transfer to DVDs?

[iAlice]

Hi,

Could someone please help me figure out how to get laser disc S-video-out into my 2007 iMac so I can transfer my movies and record to burn DVDs?

My 12-year-old laser disc player is going to stop working one of these days soon, and I have a few cherished movies I would like to transfer to DVD before it bites the dust.

Thanks in advance,
Alice

 

[FX120]

You're going to need something like this:

http://www.elgato.com/elgato/na/mainmenu/products/Video-Capture/product1.en.html

Or this:

http://www.blackmagic-design.com/products/videorecorder/

 

[RedTomato]

I didn't know it was possible to put home movies on laser disk.

Do you want the transfer to DVD done as high quality as possible or quick and cheap?

Many cheap camcorders have analog-digital pass-through, which basically means you can connect your laser-disk player to the camcorder, via s-video, and the camcorder to your mac, via firewire, and play the laserdisk, recording it in iMovie or FCP on your mac. You can then edit and burn to DVD.

If you want the best quality, especially if you only have a few movies, maybe worth sending it off to a professional company.

 

[huntercr]

I didn't know it was possible to put home movies on laser disk.

Do you want the transfer to DVD done as high quality as possible or quick and cheap?

Many cheap camcorders have analog-digital pass-through, which basically means you can connect your laser-disk player to the camcorder, via s-video, and the camcorder to your mac, via firewire, and play the laserdisk, recording it in iMovie or FCP on your mac. You can then edit and burn to DVD.

If you want the best quality, especially if you only have a few movies, maybe worth sending it off to a professional company.

He's not talking about home movies. He's talking about regular laser discs. Not only is failing players a problem, but laserdisc bitrot is a big problem for early discs now days.

I still have my laserdisc collection and have been thinking of doing the same thing ( though I already have a Datavideo DAC-100 to do this )

When I bring out the LD player, people are amazed at the quality of it. And even the smoothness when shuttling through CAV videos catches people's eyes. ( the distinct lack of ads, previews, forced menus, etc are also very eye catching )

 

[RedTomato]

He's not talking about home movies. He's talking about regular laser discs. Not only is failing players a problem, but laserdisc bitrot is a big problem for early discs now days.

I still have my laserdisc collection and have been thinking of doing the same thing ( though I already have a Datavideo DAC-100 to do this )

When I bring out the LD player, people are amazed at the quality of it. And even the smoothness when shuttling through CAV videos catches people's eyes. ( the distinct lack of ads, previews, forced menus, etc are also very eye catching )

This must be an old question, but if they're regular films, then why not just buy / acquire them on DVD / BR? If they're on LD, then must be quite old, and probably cheap to get on DVD from Amazon.

VLC will play your DVDs and happily skip over any copyright warnings etc.

Given that you already own the LD and thus have a licence to own / watch the film, you could just download the files. For strict correctness, turn off uploading on your BT client.

Getting the DVD would probably give better quality than transferring the LD output through an analog S-video lead, converting to DV, and reconverting / reburning in DVD format.

 

[FX120]

This must be an old question, but if they're regular films, then why not just buy / acquire them on DVD / BR? If they're on LD, then must be quite old, and probably cheap to get on DVD from Amazon.

VLC will play your DVDs and happily skip over any copyright warnings etc.

Given that you already own the LD and thus have a licence to own / watch the film, you could just download the files. For strict correctness, turn off uploading on your BT client.

Getting the DVD would probably give better quality than transferring the LD output through an analog S-video lead, converting to DV, and reconverting / reburning in DVD format.

Many films that were released on LD have not been released on DVD or Blu Ray, and the LD versions can be quite rare and expensive if they're in good condition.

Some titles that have been re-released up to DVD were done very poorly, the Animated version of The Hobbit comes to mind, where many elements of the sound track were flat out missing, and the picture quality was quite poor compared to the LD version.

 

[iAlice]

Yes, some of my favorite laser disc movies (like foreign movies) are not even available on DVD (yet), so I want to get them into my mac and burn DVDs of them.

While I'm at it, I'd like to digitize some VHS tapes, too.

Thanks for reminding me that my old Canon camcorder has an analog-to-digital pass-through; guess I'll try that first.

I also see that Elgato's Video Capture hardware and software should work, for $100. Wonder if the results would be better than camcorder pass-through...

Appreciate all your thoughts and/or experience with this,
Alice

 

[huntercr]

Yes, some of my favorite laser disc movies (like foreign movies) are not even available on DVD (yet), so I want to get them into my mac and burn DVDs of them.

While I'm at it, I'd like to digitize some VHS tapes, too.

Thanks for reminding me that my old Canon camcorder has an analog-to-digital pass-through; guess I'll try that first.

I also see that Elgato's Video Capture hardware and software should work, for $100. Wonder if the results would be better than camcorder pass-through...

Appreciate all your thoughts and/or experience with this,
Alice

If you want to burn to DVD, the Canon will be much better.. that will be DV video codec, which is far less compressed. The Elgato can't output DV video IIRC.

If you still have iMovieHD, use that instead of iMovie 08 or 09.... these is a known bug in the latter two for the quality of decoding DV video ( the way it handles interlacing I believe )

*** DO NOT deinterlace your video if you are going to be putting this back to DVD.

hope this helps!

 

[OrganMusic]

While I'm at it, I'd like to digitize some VHS tapes, too.

Thanks for reminding me that my old Canon camcorder has an analog-to-digital pass-through; guess I'll try that first.

I also see that Elgato's Video Capture hardware and software should work, for $100. Wonder if the results would be better than camcorder pass-through...

You are correct, the eyeTV outputs MPEG2 only. However this comes in handy if you have a lot of stuff to do and only need limited editing. You can burn the MPEG2 files right onto DVDs in toast with no further transcoding so it's pretty quick and since you're only compressing once the quality is quite good. Just make sure you pay attention to the compression settings before you record so your stuff fits on the disc without recompressing.

The compression is hardware (most models) so there's almost no processor load so you're free to do other stuff while it's recording without fear of dropped frames.

I had a thread about this a while back, scroll down to post #12

But if you want to do more precise editing in iMovie or FC (etc.) you're better off using the DV camera.

I saw a laserdisc player at a garage sale the other day. Now you're making me wish I had picked it up