Hacker News Reader

Comment by acuozzo | Hacker News Reader

FWIW, over the past ten years I've pieced together the largest collection of MCA DiscoVision LDs in the world.

My goal all along has been to digitally preserve it for all.

I have a background which lies at the intersection of embedded programming, broadcast engineering, and video restoration, so I definitely have the technical chops to do so, but what I lack is time since I have three young children at home.

It's somewhat stressful having what would otherwise be a neat retirement project hanging over your head in your 30s, but I feel fortunate enough to possess so many rare pieces.

I just wish I had someone passionate about it to share it with in order to give me drive when my drive is low.

View on HN

I hope you create a mega torrent of it all!

Have you considered contacting the Internet Archive? They might be keen to assist you in your efforts or in at least stably hosting the blobs.

https://archive.org/about/contact.php

In fact, they already have quite the LD compendium:

https://archive.org/details/laserdiscs

Thanks for the trip down memory lane! So many classics from my childhood.

I’m sure you’re aware of the Domesday Duplicator[0] and related projects.

There’s several MegaLD/LDROM² discs that need preservation that I hope I can help with one day.

0 - https://github.com/simoninns/DomesdayDuplicator/wiki/Overvie...

The use of multiple copies to remove dropouts has been interesting there too. Think MAME just added some of the games in a couple of months ago that have been thru this process. So even if they have a copy your copy could be of use.

Not just dropout: the disc stacker will set each pixel to the median (if there are enough copies) or an average (if there are just two) so even slightly off pixels on one disc of three, will be caught/fixed. (You can do the same thing with VHS, but not with their stacker software. You'll need to resort to VapourSynth or Avisynth/Avisynth+.)

how would one get in touch with you regarding this? i worked on a site that never took off archiving DJ mix tapes as I had several professional cassette players. the main reason it didn't take off was from DJs not following through with sending me the cassettes. also, nobody wanted to fund the site, and nobody wanted to deal with potential copyright crap.

we have similar, but different, backgrounds. i was in film/video post house at the transition from film to digital, from analog tapes to digital tapes, built a couple of machine rooms for different companies, made a career for knowing the film-to-video stuff that's no longer taught nor properly understood. being able to code is the kicker

Awesome!

I'm pretty flexible. Do you have a communication platform you prefer?

my username here at the googly email service works for me

E-mail sent!

I'm also interested in talking with you, acuozzo. Do you have an email addr for people to reach you?

I can offer encouragement and a set of attitudes that enable me to do archival/writing on top of parenting + day job duties.

You are awesome!

I already bought my brother his Christmas gift (shhh, don't tell him). It's a Braveheart laserdisc signed by Mel Gibson.

I never had one, but some of my fondest memories from childhood is me at the video store wondering if I would ever have a laserdisc player. Someday.

I can't help you for this, but it feels good to have passionate/crazy people out there doing what they like. My only advice would be to take care of your family first, take your time, and have fun. Never be in a stressful situation because it's not worth it, you're supposed to live your life after all.

Oh man, let's be friends! Hit me up if you wanna nerd out about LaserDiscs — m@rkchristian.ca. I have a pretty decent collection (https://markchristian.org/files/laserdiscs.txt — around 200 or so, no specific theme other than "movies I would like to have a copy of").

Have you got a setup going for digitizing these things? I've got a pitch reel on LaserDisc for a 1991 interactive TV startup that I'd love to preserve before it bitrots.

There's dozens of us. Check out the laserdisc forever group on Facebook.

I'm there. My username here is just [first letter of given name] + [surname] and my surname is pretty unique, so if you search for it there you'll find posts I've made in the past.

I remember them being comically large and making fun of the loading process. Meanwhile we are just throwing VHS tapes across the room to someone else and they plop them into the player.

Yes, but LD was nearly twice the resolution:

> LaserDisc had several advantages over VHS. It featured a far sharper picture with a horizontal resolution of 425 television lines (TVL) for NTSC and 440 TVL for PAL discs, while VHS featured only 240 TVL with NTSC.

Even still, there is no arguing that Laser Discs looked comically large and are an awkward dimension compared to VHS tapes.

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQs29ra...

That's four times the resolution, no?

I meant twice the vertical resolution :) you're correct.

No, the vertical resolution was fixed and imposed by the TV standard: 525 lines for NTSC, 625 lines for PAL and SECAM, interlaced of course. All the analog video recording systems like LaserDisc, VHS or Beta have exactly the same vertical resolution.

What changes from system to system is the horizontal resolution, but as they are analog and use composite encoding, it is difficult to give an exact number.

Analog video resolution is only measured vertically, as lines.

Measuring horizontal resolution gets fuzzy (literally), though it's not hard to believe that the LaserDisc's extra bandwidth gave it more horizontal resolving power than VHS.

ld-decode is such a fascinating piece of software

To save folks the search query:

ld-decode - https://github.com/happycube/ld-decode

Also worth mentioning the fork, vhs-decode - https://github.com/oyvindln/vhs-decode which was discussed here previously.

VHS-Decode – Software defined VHS decoder - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33942490 - September, 2022 (81 comments)

Edit: Thank you @LocalH for the link typo correction.

you left an e off the first link, friend, hope you catch this before you can't edit :)

You _do_ keep it copacetic!

Always. Too bad I'm not Scott, although my name is Scott, my last name is definitely not Lucas :)

I want to do the same sort of thing. I thinking a high quality the laserdisc version of the black & white videos may be as good as it gets.

I have a pretty good mpeg encoding workflow from that era. My ultimate plan is to create a local media archive for an 8 unit apartment building.

I think streaming is pretty inefficient without gaining any real selection advantage.

As a lifelong laserdisc aficionado, I would love to lend a hand here if you’re in the tristate area!

I found it funny to see “tristate area” since I used to hear it growing up so much.

For reference though, the term actually doesn’t refer to anywhere specific, there are many tristate areas, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tri-state_area

I should have said "the tri-state area." :)

Solid, liquid, gas?

It is video related, so plasma could be valid as well

As a European, I'm confused and would love to know more about this specific area.

As an American, I’m equally confused. I will say that based on my experience, the tristate areas I often see referred to are around New York and Philadelphia.

New York: New York, New Jersey, Connecticut.

Philadelphia: Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware.

And if you're from a little-further-south it is (naturally) Washington DC's version of the same thing (Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia)

I guess that’s true if you’re west of DC. Otherwise it’s Delmarva (DELaware, MARyland, VirginiA).

I’ve only heard that called “the DMV,” but I’m not from there.

Tristate is used in things like radio where you are covering 3 states. "Here is the news/weather in the tristate area". They mean specifically the 3 states that the radio signal reaches, which is clear to everyone. Since they reach 3 states there is no other name that can be used for their coverage area. The people in question regularly cross state lines.

It isn't a useful concept to bring up when you are not physically in a tri-state area.

Chicago: Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin

Much like residents of the bay area [0], I'm playfully suggesting there's only one tri-state area of significance [1].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Bay_Area

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_metropolitan_area

California has three regions known as the 'South Bay'.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Bay_(Los_Angeles_County)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Bay_(San_Francisco_Bay_A...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Bay_(San_Diego_County)

Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana?

Oh, you must be talking about the tri-state area with the Tri-State Airport: Kentucy, Ohio, West Virginia.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tri-State_Airport

Everyone being pedantic would change their tune instantly if it were an even money family-feud style bet for the top answer.

I'm in Maryland, but I grew up in NY/NJ, so I almost accidentally replied saying that I am, haha.

Bummer! Fun project to have.

Oregon-Washington-California?

Get in touch with https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkQEobE2RUk ?

From one archivist to another, I hope you are successful in preserving them for generations to come.

passthepopcorn.me has an 'archive team' with a lot of redundant storage available and they also have 'encoding teams' with quite a few passionate, motivated people each with decades of experience in video restoration. They've got the free time that you lack and generally would be quite happy to learn new techniques from you and take critical feedback into account.

I assume this is an invite only torrent site?

Correct. I imagined GP could chat with them over IRC and quickly establish both rapport (with encoding nerds) and value (rare, impossible to find source media) and get an invite.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com