Any advice for transfering a video LaserDisc to DVD or BluRay ??

[eppur_se_muova]

I have an old concert recording that was only released on LaserDisc. There don't seem to be any local services for doing the conversion, only mail-order services that require me to ship the disc to them and pay a substantial fee for the conversion (WalMart is one of them. Ugh.). Also, there are warnings about the sound being higher quality on the LD than on DVD's, but I would guess this is not a concern with BluRay. Any one have any suggestions, based on either technical knowledge or IRL experience ?

Most of the jacket text is in Japanese; only NTSC, LaserDisc, Stereo Digital Sound, CLV, Laser Vision logos and 94 minutes are in English.

[Shellback Squid]

1. do you have a player?

[eppur_se_muova]

2. No. Don't know where to borrow one, and I'm not buying one for only 1-2 discs. nt

[Shellback Squid]

3. which state are you in?

[eppur_se_muova]

4. AL nt

[Shellback Squid]

5. In CO, wish you were closer

[LuvLoogie]

6. As implied it will take few steps, and a few pieces

Of equipment. The laser displayed output to a video capture card on your computer. Then your blueray burner to your DVD.

[CloudWatcher]

7. lots of steps

Yeah, you'll need a player. It will read the digital info off the disk and output an analog signal
designed to go to your tv/sound-system. That'll likely be an S-Video signal for the video and
separate signals for left/right audio.

Then you'll need some kind of computer to re-digitize those signals ... i.e. a video capture
system for a PC or Mac.

Then you'll need a burner to take that data and burn your DVD/BlueRay.

The good news is that there was no copy protection on LaserDiscs, so this process should work
once you have all the pieces.

The bad news is that it involves more than a few steps and software packages.

If you're not willing to acquire a player, you'll need to ship it to someone that has one and
is willing to do this work for you.

[Fiendish Thingy]

8. Any solution requires an LD player

The simplest solution would be to connect the LD player directly to a stand alone DVD recorder (like a VCR, but for DVD’s - I’m guessing they don’t make them anymore). That options requires no computers and minimal technology knowledge.

[hunter]

9. LaserDisc video is essentially analog and was mastered from tape.

With any luck the original recording was made on professional quality gear, but NTSC video at its very best will never look great compared to modern HDTV.

( On edit: Just noticed this is a CLV LaserDisc, which is a "long play" version. That's lower quality than standard NTSC. )

The digital audio on some LaserDisc is better than standard NTSC audio but not enough that I'd bother extracting the digital stream directly.

Finding a LaserDisc player is the hard part. Any good quality usb video capture device will do an acceptable job capturing and digitizing these analog signals. Even a $50 capture device may be overkill. There's no point in trying to capture detail in these analog signals that simply isn't there.

Or maybe you can find another fan who has already digitized this concert.

For academic purposes, of course.