[benareeno]

Has anyone been able to rip a dvd and sync it up with the uncompressed pcm laserdisc soundtrack?? I can think of many titles that have a far better pcm track than the dvd dolby digital track.....anyone???


Ben

 

[djdrock]

Wow, now that could be quite an undertaking. Is the laserdisc soundtrack better because of being PCM, or is it just the mix. Because...if you were to take uncompressed PCM (2 hours would be around 1.3gigabytes of data

 

[benareeno]

I didn't realize that it would be that much. How did LD accomplish this then?? LD was able to store an uncompressed pcm as well as video, with DVD having a much greater storage capacity, I would have thought that it could be done....anyone??


As for why they sound better...it's really tough to say, but in a lot of cases they do sound better. Could be the mix, could be the transport.


Ben

 

[djdrock]

As I said earlier, I could be off on my numbers. Nonetheless, PCM is huge compared to compressed PCM. The improved sound perception could be:


1. The fact that PCM just sounds better than compressed PCM.

2. As you said, the transport.

3. DD soundtracks usually sound quieter compared to PCM, which may give the perception that it does not sound as good.

4. etc...


I really have no idea how laserdisc works, except I know that the video is analog and the audio is digital.

 

[Sergei Esenin]

People have captured laserdisc PCM or demodulated AC-3 before, but usually to go with the original laserdisc video for titles that don't have better DVD versions. Resynchronization to a DVD's video stream would be a fairly simple, though potentially time-consuming, matter of trial-and-error to find a visually acceptabble offset--provided that the laserdisc and DVD cuts of the film are identical.

Quote:

if you were to take uncompressed PCM (2 hours would be around 1.3gigabytes of data

 

[djdrock]

Quote:

This is the HTPC forum. Why bother with craptastically outdated DVDs?

Huh?

 

[milky way]

Most of laser disc I've watched were matered by Pioneer Japan. In my exprience, even Japan mastered CD sounds more natural and pleasant. Just my 2 cents.

 

[Sergei Esenin]

Quote:

Originally posted by djdrock Huh?

I mean, there's no reason to be constrained by the tiny storage constraints of writable DVD. Hard drives can be easily had for

 

[djdrock]

Gotcha! I was wondering if you knew which forum you were in!


HTPC is a great option. I would be recording high def to hard drives if it were easy, or even possible with some of the copy protection. Although I think tape is fine, it just feels old!

 

[benareeno]

I'd love to try a movie like "The Professional", to my memory the pcm track on the laserdisc sounds superior to either of the digital versions on dvd.


I've heard similar things about the pcm tracks on some or the Star Wars LD's being better than any of the digital ones too....something to explore anyhow. I'm actually a bit shocked that this hasn't been done yet. If anyone has or is considering doing this, please pm so we can discuss how and or what to do...


Thanks,


Ben

 

[dirk1843]

What was the capacity of LD??

 

[Frode]

LD is an analog medium (think LP) so you can't really think in terms of capacity. PCM is stored as an FM modulated analog signal, and you need a demodulator to convert it to digital data a receiver can understand. CAV discs have a runtime of 30 mins, and CLV 60 mins. Check the LD faq for more information:

http://www.cs.tut.fi/~leopold/Ld/FAQ/


EDIT: If you really want do to the math for theoretical storage however LDs used the same physical characteristcs as CDs. So do the area calculation for CD data, and then do the same for LDs, and use the CD capacity (730MB for audio) as the base number. The result is about 3.3GB per side. It's not really relevant to the discussion at hand though, as MPEG2 compression on DVDs has a compression ratio of 12:1-30:1 (uncompressed video is 124Mbps). On LDs the video is stored as bandwidth reduced composite video signal, which still takes up way more "space" at a lower quality than the equivalent mpeg2 would.

 

[dirk1843]

Was just wondering man..................lol

 

[Sergei Esenin]

Quote:

If you really want do to the math for theoretical storage however LDs used the same physical characteristcs as CDs. So do the area calculation for CD data, and then do the same for LDs, and use the CD capacity (730MB for audio) as the base number. The result is about 3.3GB per side.

Hmm, I think the capacity of my *Back to the Future* laserdisc was listed as "1.21 jiggawatts".

 

[Frode]

I always figured that was a mangled pronunciation of gigawatts, but then I guess that's just me .