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Posted: 03 Mar 2018, 17:34 

I haven't said anything here in the last month, but I've been busy. I found the new TBC app like the old one failed pretty badly at a lot of real-world signals I tried to throw at it. Originally I started working on improving the code, but I found it seemed to be entirely based around expected values from the NTSC signal specs, and was quite rigid and hard to adapt from that point to be more tolerant of other signals that didn't conform to its expectations. I ended up heading in a different direction and writing something new from scratch. It's still early days, and there isn't any repair process in place yet for really badly damaged sync events, but I've got a workable program now that can take raw composite video signals (such as the one output by lddecode.py) and identify sync events, group into frames, and synchronise lines. There's no colour decoding yet, but here's the kind of raw frame output I get right now on the Fantasia sample I used before:
http://preview.ibb.co/eVVrYS/image.png

And here's a frame of progressive video from Sonic 2, which I couldn't decode previously:
http://preview.ibb.co/jXWgYS/image.png

The next big thing is adding colour decoding, which I'm not really looking forward to, but I'll give it a shot sometime soon. I've put the code up on github at https://github.com/RogerSanders/avtoolkit .

Some of the main advantages this has over the previous decoder are as follows:
-Universal format support (Can decode signals with any number of lines, any line/sync timing, progressive or interlaced)
-Supports any sample type (templated code allows any data type to be used)
-Supports any sample rate (adaptive processing algorithms scale to the length of detected events in the data stream)
-Extensive source comments and cleaner code structure
-Better performance (Efficient algorithms and multithreaded processing gives over 5x speedup on my PC)
-Cross-platform code with no external dependencies (Only Visual Studio projects provided right now for Windows compilation. I'll add a makefile soon for Linux compilation.)

It's far from perfect yet, but the elements are there to build from. If my interest keeps up, I'll split the core processing work out to a library, so a set of thin tools can grow around the common set of code. I'd like to get this to the point where it can decode basically any analog video signal.

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Posted: 26 Apr 2018, 15:18 

=> Updated the list in the first post with info from this thread: best laserdisc players for analog audio?

Julien

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Posted: 06 Jun 2020, 21:02 

Thought it about time that I put up a few shots of my current set up....

https://i.postimg.cc/gjk65PDM/IMG-2931.jpg

https://i.postimg.cc/26xZ254b/IMG-2933.jpg

https://i.postimg.cc/zvtRYP2q/IMG-2939.jpg

https://i.postimg.cc/zfCbGf2t/IMG-2932.jpg

https://i.postimg.cc/76qCGypx/IMG-2934.jpg

https://i.postimg.cc/5NXXFgkF/IMG-2935.jpg

https://i.postimg.cc/RhFNdLSy/IMG-2936.jpg

https://i.postimg.cc/7PsC6dXk/IMG-2937.jpg

https://i.postimg.cc/D0MmM4mZ/IMG-2938.jpg

https://i.postimg.cc/pTkmK6HK/IMG-2940.jpg

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Posted: 27 May 2021, 19:27 

My theater went through a bit of a refresh last summer, around the time I was re-integrating LD after having abandoned it back in '05ish after the Star Wars SE DVD was released. As it stands I currently have:

Video
Epson HC 4000 4k eShift Projector
Silver Ticket 128" 2.35:1 WVS Acoustic Transparent Screen

Pioneer CDL-D704 (Recent upgrade from Marantz LV520, not shown)
Philips BD7502 UHD Blu-Ray Player
Onkyo HD805 HD-DVD Player (Toshiba XA2 Clone)
Nvidia Shield 2019 (Tube) Streaming Player
XBox One
Nintendo Switch (not shows, it goes back-and-forth with the kids)

Audio
Marantz SR6011 AVR
Adcom GFA-7500 THX-Ultra 5ch Amplifier
Adcom GFA-2535 4ch Amplifier (Atmos, not shown)
Crown DSi-1000 DSP Amplifier (Subwoofer, not shown)
Crown CE1000 Amplifier (Buttkicker, not shown)
Denon AVD-2000 Demodulator/Decodor
Fluance RP80 Turntable w/ LP Gear CFN3600LE Cartridge (Cartridge not shown)
Pro-ject Phono Box E (not shown)

Speakers
3x Monolith THX-LCR Ultra In-Walls (Left/Center/Right, Behind Screen)
2x Atlantic Technologies IWTS-30SR (Bipole Surrounds)
4x Speakercraft Profile AIM7-TWO (Atmos)
DIY Dayton Ultimax UM15 Ported Subwoofer (~11cuft, ~18hz tune)
Buttkicker Advance BK4-3

Power & Control
Panamax M5100-EX
Harmony Elite w/ Hub
Google Home Mini
Dayton UMM-6 Calibration Microphone

Arcade & Snacks
DIY Star Wars "Starcade" (Work in Progress)
Cuisinart CPM-30 Popcorn Machine
Nestle Pixie Nespresso Machine
DIY Snack Stand w/ integrated 1.7 cuft Fridge

LD Video Path
Marantz LV520 -> (Composite, 480i) -> Marantz AVR -> (HDMI, 4:3 480p) -> Epson Projector

LD Audio Path
Marantz LV520 -> (Coax, AC3 RF) -> Denon AVD-2000 -> (Optical, DD 5.1) -> Marantz AVR
Marantz LV520 -> (Optical, PCM) -> Denon AVD-2000 -> (Optical, PCM Stereo) -> Marantz AVR

https://i.imgur.com/Zey8snI.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/z3JVuOS.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/onLh3nH.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/NG0kaRC.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/YFbtiFT.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/DG9KNqx.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/uuoC1tM.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/VwycLre.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/vL3il9a.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/rYC40xJ.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/ysldPdH.jpg

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Posted: 23 Sep 2021, 10:03 

https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0092/3025/4180/files/NEWYORKNINJA_poster.jpg?v=1630528612

I think that regardless of what you may think of the film, the story behind it and getting the thing finished and out on Blu Ray is pretty incredible and is worth of more than one doff of anyone's Easter bonnet.

So long story short, the folks at Vinegar Syndrome found a bunch of 35mm film in their archives that turned out to be a film shot in 1984 called New York Ninja. Great, scan it, restore it, chuck it on a Blu Ray. So what?

Not so fast.

The video was found intact but unedited, and to make matters worse the sound and the script are lost. :wtf:

In a rather gargantuan twist, Vinegar Syndrome have gone and finished the film complete with a brand new score by a band called Voyager. On top of that, a new script was written (a lipreader was not used, instead a script was written that tried to roughly match the mouth movents of the actors) along with a new English language dub track featuring a stellar cast of Don "The Dragon" Wilson, Michael Berryman, Linnea Quigley and Cynthia Rothrock!

Don't know about you but I think this kind of work deserves supporting to the moon and back. Genuinely wonderful to see this kind of thing being done I feel. Only thing I'd have liked to see is for director John Liu to have had some kind of oversight in the editing of the film. It's not clear if he was involved at any stage, perhaps it will become clearer in any bonus features of commentary track(s) on the disc.

Day 1 for me. How about you?

https://vinegarsyndrome.com/pages/vsp

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1wMt3fgOyM

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Posted: 26 Sep 2021, 07:52 

For the occasion I modified the logo a little :angel:

First post was Sept. 26, 2011 => https://forum.lddb.com/viewtopic.php?p=1#p1

Snapshot at 10 years:

111,728 posts
8,521 topics
4,888 active members

Let's see if we can still keep it rolling for another 10 years... just for the fun of it.

Julien

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Posted: 02 Oct 2021, 21:02 

I uploaded the pdf files of the two articles I wrote.

One is for laser disc storage, the other is a review of the Army of Darkness laserdisc.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1llTo582VaF0_s2u_uIzLXjpLMp7RGWq0/view?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/18L-q-93fregtaoR68cQCg2Ilxblx1vg1/view?usp=sharing

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Posted: 14 Oct 2021, 13:55 

No, it’s not a good player but if you have to ship it then just don’t bother with Sony players ever. %99 of them are long gone and broken, also the picture sucks. Buy Pioneers and clones, that way when it breaks during shipping you may actually find spare parts and someone living who has fixed one.

I would advise just not shipping anything. There is a double digit chance it will break in shipping, then you’re back to square one with no money.

Don’t just “shop” on eBay, thinking you can click on a thing and have it running in your house in a week, like it was a SD card or something. That doesn’t work with LD, or rather very very often it goes bad. Look through other noob posts and see how many of them are about broken players. I’m serious, there are more than a couple. Things like insurance and guarantees are worthless to LD fans because they could never find another one or fix the broken one they are stuck with, they will only refund filthy disgusting cash, who needs it when what you want is a player?

Try to locate a real LD person with a spare player and buy from them. They may package it properly and it may survive the trip. Most of the Pawn Stars carnies on eBay will destroy your player once you buy it. They don’t know how to ship things, eBay is absolute meat grinder for LD players. Also, be patient. If you’ve only been looking for a week then you won’t find anything.

Also, I have to mention that maybe you should just give up on LD. It’s super expensive and working players for this never popular format are more rare than ever. You can back away now having not blown thousands on antique junk nobody wants.

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Posted: 14 Oct 2021, 15:15 

Pretty much all of that, yeah. It took me about two years before I finally came across a working player with a price/condition ratio I considered acceptable.

One thing that definitely helps is figuring out in advance what you even want to collect. If you're looking to own a physical copy of something incredibly niche that might not even be available on any modern format and also isn't popular enough to warrant some kind of a fan restoration then there's definitely an appeal and the money sink might even be worth it to you. But if all you're gonna buy is common as dirt 1990s blockbusters or Star Wars then yeah, I'm also gonna second the "give up" part. If you can get it in a much higher quality on a more accessible format that doesn't require esoteric, obsolete equipment to play it, then why not do that instead?

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Posted: 28 Oct 2021, 05:15 

(note: http://www.datasheetlib.com is gone, so links to it are useless now; would be good to replace them with archive.org links or others, but I'm too lazy to do that... :oops: )

All links were removed (many obsolete) and I will just archive the PDFs on the web server and provide them via links.

Example for DENON LA-3500 , it will show up as: Internal DAC (Digital-to-Analog Converter) = PCM61P (Burr-Brown)

Julien

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Posted: 16 Nov 2021, 20:10 

Player: Panasonic LX-900 revision 1995

Capture Device: El Gato non-hd

Movie: Blade (1998) [ID4252LI] Sooner than expected. Had some free time so I took some screenshots. I think I did a fairly good job with this screen captures. Maybe I went a little overboard with 27 screenshots. Let me know if I should lower how many screenshots I take in the future.

Screens:

https://i.imgur.com/d5C7nqt.png

https://i.imgur.com/Ibzp8MM.png

https://i.imgur.com/MvduVkq.png

https://i.imgur.com/P4HOID7.png

https://i.imgur.com/HkYtLqd.png

https://i.imgur.com/2IKwXxm.png

https://i.imgur.com/SYKIyUS.png

https://i.imgur.com/UcX2jAB.png

https://i.imgur.com/xeny73f.png

https://i.imgur.com/dX9HfQQ.png

https://i.imgur.com/PsOfbTd.png

https://i.imgur.com/qDavJWl.png

https://i.imgur.com/DeKUVG2.png

https://i.imgur.com/whVOU7y.png

https://i.imgur.com/XCpqY9P.png

https://i.imgur.com/mBqvVwa.png

https://i.imgur.com/NrfDxKG.png

https://i.imgur.com/01fQAjm.png

https://i.imgur.com/qR2ZeYX.png

https://i.imgur.com/Mqltqym.png

https://i.imgur.com/mVKuUk7.png

https://i.imgur.com/AYj8nqe.png

https://i.imgur.com/g1Yn8uE.png

https://i.imgur.com/SjScs6v.png

https://i.imgur.com/TnRiGLf.png

https://i.imgur.com/px0WTaT.png

https://i.imgur.com/LZESjsd.png

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Posted: 05 Oct 2022, 15:12 

Attachment:
IDMP.jpg


I added 2 links on your User Account page.

#1 => Wanna help? Click here to see titles in your collection missing a cover image.
#2 => Wanna help? Click here to see LaserDiscs in your collection missing Mint Marks information.

Hope it helps!

Julien

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 Post subject: Re: LaserDisc Archive Page
Posted: 05 May 2023, 16:05 

A possible location could be: https://laserdiscarchive.lddb.com.lddb.com/


I uploaded a "clean" version (without Paypal links or email addresses) at this URL.

The WebArchive can still be found here: http://web.archive.org/web/20230315004211/https://laserdiscarchive.co.uk/default.htm

No news from Ian (the webmaster) for more than 10 years now, I guess it's OK to do that?

Julien

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Posted: 27 Jul 2023, 22:52 

Thanks!

Curious to know now if AC-3 and DTS are effectively decoded now, or if there are plans to decode them in the future.

https://github.com/happycube/ld-decode/issues/622

looks like AC3 is done, although still some minor issues on some discs.

https://github.com/happycube/ld-decode/pull/772

and DTS as well.

DTS also mentioned on the wiki https://github.com/happycube/ld-decode/wiki/ld-process-efm

The ld-decode wiki hasn't been updated, but --AC3 is shown in the help: $ld-decode --help
usage: ld-decode [-h] [--start file-location] [--length frames] [--seek frame] [--PAL] [--NTSC] [--NTSCJ] [-m mtf] [--MTF_offset mtf_offset] [--noAGC] [--noDOD]
[--noEFM] [--preEFM] [--disable_analog_audio] [--AC3] [--start_fileloc start_fileloc] [--ignoreleadout] [--verboseVITS] [--RF_TBC] [--lowband]
[--NTSC_color_notch_filter] [--V4300D_notch_filter] [-d deemp_adjust] [--deemp_low deemp_low] [--deemp_high deemp_high] [-t threads] [-f FREQ]
[--analog_audio_frequency AFREQ] [--video_bpf_high FREQ] [--video_lpf FREQ] [--video_lpf_order VLPF_ORDER] [--audio_filterwidth FREQ]
infile outfile

Extracts audio and video from raw RF laserdisc captures

positional arguments:
infile source file
outfile base name for destination files

options:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
--start file-location, -s file-location
rough jump to frame n of capture (default is 0)
--length frames, -l frames
limit length to n frames
--seek frame, -S frame
seek to frame n of capture
--PAL, -p, --pal source is in PAL format
--NTSC, -n, --ntsc source is in NTSC format
--NTSCJ, -j source is in NTSC-J (IRE 0 black) format
-m mtf, --MTF mtf mtf compensation multiplier
--MTF_offset mtf_offset
mtf compensation offset
--noAGC Disable AGC
--noDOD disable dropout detector
--noEFM Disable EFM front end
--preEFM Write filtered but otherwise pre-processed EFM data
--disable_analog_audio, --disable_analogue_audio, --daa
Disable analog(ue) audio decoding
--AC3 Enable AC3 audio decoding (NTSC only)
--start_fileloc start_fileloc
jump to precise sample # in the file

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Posted: 29 Jul 2023, 03:15 

Attachment:
o1000054415226199740.jpg


https://page.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/d467750597

https://ameblo.jp/jbls9500/entry-12782914381.html

This looks like a standalone comb filter. Does anyone have experience with it?

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Posted: 12 Nov 2023, 14:43 

My first advice is to not get into LD.

If you’ve ignored that then the second most important thing is to never mail a player.

Third: don’t mess with stuff that works. Don’t open the machine and start poking the lens with a Q-tip. Don’t turn pots. If it works, leave it. Also if it works make sure to use it once in a while. Players will very much freeze up from lack of use and when powered up for the first time in a decade snap themselves to pieces.

Laserdisc care is pretty much the same as record handling except they are more sensitive to temp changes and humidity and don’t care at all about static or dust. Store them vertically and with consistent pressure but not crammed into the shelf.

I think that’s pretty much everything. My first LDs were Far and Away, Project A-ko and Nausicaa, all purchased in 1992 and they all play perfectly so I don’t think any more care is needed than what I advise.
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