Hi all-

I may be dreaming, but I seem to remember maybe renting a Laser Disc player and one or more discs at some point (maybe about 1990-1992, but it could have been before I got my Pioneer CLD-3030 in 1988-89), and the player or its on-screen display had more detail in its time readout from at least one Extended Play disc. Since minutes and seconds are common on most discs since the early 1980s, the only finer detail I can imagine is maybe a frame count, such as 1-30 in each second on the disc. The player being a Yamaha seems pretty specific, I know it was not a Pioneer-branded machine.

On top of this, I think I have seen the vertical interval on a display while playing a newer extended-play disc, and I saw changes in the data potentially in every frame versus once per second. Maybe it was closed-caption data?

Can any of you confirm what I am describing, or tell me that I am definitely wrong? Thank you.

The display of minutes and seconds is the trademark of a CLV/CAA (extended play) encoded discs. The display of frame numbers are always a trademark of CAV discs (standard play) since that is how those discs have always been encoded.

You might be confused about seeing a time count on a CAV disc because most players after around 1990 and later started to incorporate ABS time (not sure what the acronym means) for CAV discs that are encoded with a TOC (table of contents).

Thanks, ldfan. This was definitely not the 0-54000 frame count of a Standard Play disc, and I am pretty sure it was before they started making movies with a CAV last side. I will look up that ABS time (absolute?) item.

Maybe I can find some of the Yamaha player manuals, to see if they describe anything similar.

I think you might be wrong but then again it may have been that disc.
I always thought it was programmed onto the disc, some older discs only run in minutes without seconds.

The only thing I can think of was on some other players, I can't remember what its called now, its on the R7G as that's when I saw it.
It would break down your CAV discs to almost 2 frames per step to remove that jitter and would turn CLV discs almost into CAV.

When you had the on screen and a CAV disc you would see two dots, one for each frame before it went to the next frame number.
There is a name for this and it was on USA players too I just can't remember, is that what you are talking about?

I've never seen the 1-30 unless it was something on certain players that I've never had, I haven't had a lot but enough to think you may be thinking
of DVD?

It is entirely possible that I had some type of bizarre dream after eating too much pizza too close to bed time one night; I will not deny that this could be the explanation for this memory. But if I am -not- remembering a dream, then:

This was definitely on a CLV/CAA laser disc. My comments about frame numbers (1-30 per second for NTSC video) is related to "time code" as used in professional video editing systems, where video is encoded that way (minutes, seconds, frame number within any given second).

In this discussion: Tom Levin compares Pioneer CLD-D701 and Panasonic LX-900

One person mentions seeing a CLV frame count display on a Panasonic LX-900 player, and LDDB member cplusplus mentions the ability of CLV discs to have frame numbers encoded. Also mentioned is the standard IEC 60857, but this seems to be an expensive document, nut something that can be downloaded and read free of charge.

So, it is all a mystery to me still.