Best way from Laser Disk to VCD?

Posted:
in Genius Bar edited January 2014
Hey everyone,



Back in the day, when I was an undergrad, I spent... well... way too much money on import Laser Disks. I bought them, translated them, threw subtitles over them via an old Amiga with a genlock, and exported them out to video tape. That was a few years ago.



I want to do the same thing again, but I want to keep the digital quality of the laser disks (or keep as much quality as possible). Thus, I want to import the laser disk video directly to my Mac (Cube 500, 768 MB RAM, OS X); add basic, non-fading subtitles (unlike those available in iMovie); and output the video to a VCD. I'm hoping that you folks can give me some advice as to the best/most efficient hardware and software I can buy or find to do this project.



Here's what I have to work with:

Cube 500 (as mentioned above)

Toast Titanium

Quicktime Pro

iMovie (Obviously)



What type of bridge should I use? The Hollywood DV bridge looks nice, but I heard that there are ones that get rid of the Macrovision protection. If I'm going to shell out the cash for a DV bridge, I might as well get one with more features. What else might I need? Any good, free or cheap shareware products out there that do timing and provide character generation (subtitles) as well as iMovie (I'm not willing to shell out $1000 for software; this is a hobby)? Any suggestions? What are you using to put your analogue/old digital footage on modern digital disks? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.



Thanks in advance, everyone,

Gamrin

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 1
    There is no Macrovision on laserdiscs, so if you're really just wanting to copy LD movies and not VHS or DVD, then that won't matter.



    I purchased a cheap DV camcorder with analog video inputs, and I use that as an analog-to-DV converter for transferring SVHS & Hi8 tapes, and it would work for LD too.
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