One thing I always wondered was before the 90s when companies actually started taking care to optimize their sources to take advantage of Laserdisc's capabilities, was what did the distributors use as source material for movies on Laserdisc?

For a while I assumed that they used the same master that they used for the movie's release on VHS (especially when it came to releases from Image Entertainment since the great lot of their covers merely featured the VHS cover flanked by the edges of a Laserdisc) but was that really the case?

I haven't compared many titles side by side with their VHS counterpart, but from looking at the LD release on their own (most recently the LD release of Ghost Town (1988)), I can't imagine the VHS being as sharp as the LD I was watching.

So were companies using a source better than VHS for their LD mastering material? BetaCam perhaps (300 lines of resolution, higher color resolution, component video)?

Well into the 1990s, the usual master tape for a LD was 1" C-format analog broadcast-studio tape, which is full-bandwidth straight composite video, comparable to what LD can provide. (4.2 MHz @ 48 dB is a common figure, limited to an extent by the timebase corrector — using the outboard BVT-2000, for example, adds an extra bit to the digitizing range, or a potential S/N improvement of 3 dB, although whether that can be realized depends on the tape, the heads, maintenance of the machine, & other factors.) It should be noted that DiscoVision, in order to provide input signal quality superior to what the disc mastering & pressing process could reproduce, used the ultra-high-performance IVC-9000 2" helical VTR, although their film-to-video transfers &c were usually so poor that it didn't make any difference. In the 1990s, D-1 (4:2:2 component) & D-2 (composite) digital master tapes became common, offering superior frequency response & other performance characteristics, along with greater consistency, & high-definition film-to-video transfers began to be made ; discs mastered from such sources are sometimes so marked on the package. On the other hand, it's not un-heard-of for VHS tapes to be made using 3/4" U-Matic cassette masters, which are somewhat better in signal-to-noise performance than 1/2" tape but no better in resolution. The only place you would see that in LD mastering is in soundtrack preparation, because it was very common to record PCM digital audio on U-Matic cassettes using a special Sony adaptor.

Of course, many things affect the quality of video preparation, not least the film-to-video transfer process, & the materials used for the transfer. Projection prints, specially prepared low-contrast telecine prints, interpositives, & internegatives have all been used, although in recent years the trend is toward directly scanning the original negative. Similarly, there can be a world between a telecine apparatus using, basically, a projector pointed into a camera, & a Rank Cintel flying-spot scanner or the like.

Thanks Publius, that was educational.

Elvis

Wow, great information. I always believed that in the early days of laser, they same master for the VHS was used and that sometime after Criterion became standard that the companies began making separate masters for laser. Criterion even released a few of their early releases on VHS, (Third Man, 49 Steps, and Lady Vanishes), which if I remember right were the laser masters. Now that I think about it, wouldn't they be the same anyway since both formats were the same resolution they could be one master for both formats but that the advantages of the laser format would yield a better picture? I think I've confused myself.

Ahh, I see. Good, to see they weren't cheaping out on the LD source for the most part. This one page I refer to on a lot of the old video formats (consumer and professional) says of the 1" Type C:Only thing is, it doesn't give the actual specifications of the format, but I can assume it was higher in resolution than LD right?

Speaking as someone who has an edit pair of Type C machines in his house…
LD is comparable to C-Format. The frequency response it can achieve is somewhat wider, although the degree to which that is useful is limited by interference between the video & analog audio carriers. This is why one proposal to improve LD performance involved eliminating analog audio altogether. Signal-to-noise ratio of LD is very dependent on the mastering & pressing process, because poor cutting & replication will lead to weakly-formed pits with a lower contrast ratio, as well as missing pits producing impulse noise. The quality of the tape & degree of magnetization, of course, have a similar effect. For both tape & disc, adjustment of the playback system, ie optical assembly or head drum, with its amplifiers & other ancillaries, makes a big difference, & with tape there is also the adjustment of the record system & the tape path, especially when interchanging tapes between machines. In both systems, actual resolution & performance is also limited, as I said, by the timebase corrector, which is one reason some people favour very basic LD players which used either a pure servomechanical TBC or an analog bucket-brigade device, without digitization. In any case, C-Format is capable of several generations of dubbing without visible degradation.

C-Format records beautiful 525-line pictures, assuming you feed them to it. There actually are a couple of better things ; the old high-band 2" quadruplex VTRs, in peak operating condition, or the IVC-9000, were capable of better performance, & of course there was the 'Tsukuba Expo' 1" analog High Definition VTR, although someone who actually used the thing tells me its performance was disastrous unless it was adjusted twice a day.

You could certainly use one master tape for both VHS & LD, as long as both are using the same television standard. (In other words, a NTSC master tape for a NTSC cassette or disc.) The LD mastering process, however, is far more sensitive to imperfections in the source than VHS dubbing. Essentially, since the colour-under recording process messes up the chroma signal significantly, the frequency response is limited, & other characteristics are equally impaired, you can use a pretty crummy source for tape, but the straight composite LD format requires a high-quality, preferably broadcast-quality or better, highly stable input.

I believe that some Image Entertainment releases, specifically Central Park Media anime discs, were mastered from sources intended for VHS, because of the high level of chroma noise, unstable black level, & other factors — & also because CPM seems to have gotten into LD only as an afterthought. AnimEigo, on the other hand, saw the importance of the disc market early (since many American fans were importing Japanese discs already), & their liner notes often include notes detailing the whole production process, from Japanese master to LD stamper. It's fair to say that most of their VHS releases were made from masters intended for LD. They even took the trouble, when re-releasing Vampire Princess Miyu, to obtain a new master tape with better picture quality than the one used for their original release.

That was interesting about discovision. I collect the music discovision titles.
I thought the Olivia Newton-John TV Special if you manage to get a rot free copy (no easy task!) is superb in terms of picture quality.
In particular side 2 towards the end is absolutely breathtaking. There is a zoom in of her head which fills the entire frame and it is so crystal clear you would think she is literally standing right next to you (I wish ).

When I was deciding which new TV to buy I used that Olivia title as one of the discs to test play in the shop - it looked incredible and several onlookers commented about how clear the picture was. It is certainly the best discovision music LD I've ever seen and could easily give many of the later laserdisc pressings a run for their money. When they got the film footage and transfer process just right the results were astounding.

The Jet Express series of early Pioneer Japanese music releases (e.g Blood, Sweat and Tears, Chaka Khan etc) are also very impressive to watch.

One of the worst quality transfers to laserdisc I've seen is the Billy Idol laserdisc (US or Japanese). They both look like the footage was grabbed from VHS as they are really grainy and out of focus.

Yes, that Oliva disc looks great. I have quite a few Discovision titles that look really really good. Dual is another that comes to mind that blew me away with how good it looked.

So I was looking to see if the site I used to buy S-VHS blanks still had any good ones for sale (used to buy their T-182 Maxell Pro S-VHS tapes for $8 a tape, but they don't carry them anymore.) When I noticed that they also carry D-2 tapes (one of the formats publius mentioned as the later master sources for LDs.) Decided to check them out for the hell of it (not that I own a D-2 deck or will anytime in the future.)

Fujifilm 94 Minute D-2 tape = $122.20 each

Good lawd! That's a lot of money! Were they always that expensive (the nature of being a professional rather than a consumer format) or are they just that pricey because they're not really used all that much anymore and harder to come by?

Tape stock prices are up this year, because the tsunami did a number on Sony's primary magnetics facility near Sendai. The same facility manufactured tape heads for a pretty large fraction of all users. Now, of course, the flooding in Thailand has constricted the supply of hard discs. All we need is an earthquake to damage the flash-memory factories in Taiwan, & video production will come to a complete standstill!

Cheers for the detailed info, Publius. I'd often wondered what the content was transferred from.

You seem to be becoming the oracle of the forum.

I don't know all the technical stuff and terms, but I have the this Spanish Festival

Spanish Festival: Classical Visual Music [LVD9203]

The front bottom corner of cover has DDD and D-1
On the back of jacket says....Dolby Stereo/ Transferred Digitally/ DDD Digital Audio Master/ D-1 Digital Video Master

I'm not familiar with "D-1" ? Digital Video. With Laserdisc being analog video, then carrying a digital video source.

The picture quality is very good on it though.

My understanding is that the laserdiscs are digitally stored video but analog only ouputted. Thus the flaw with Laserdisc. Never made it to the digital output of the video, only sound. But to be fair, for the time, was perfect because of the prevalance of analog t.v./ screens for viewing.
Elvis

Not quite. The pits and lands on the surface of a Laserdisc are in Frequence Modulation, which is an analog signal. Unlike DVD/Blu-ray where the pits and lands on the surface of those discs are in binary code (hence "digital"--"di" meaning "2".)

You can feed the stamper for the LD whatever signal you want, analog or digital, but it will be recorded in analog and will output in analog. Kind of like if you recorded a DVD to a VHS tape. You might be feeding it a digital signal but you're recording it as analog, and replaying it as analog.

They used D-1 tape for the master (like publius mentioned before) because it provided a high quality digital source for the LD. Hence "digitally mastered."

After doing some research on the D-1 and D-2 formats since publius gave us the information on them here, it looks like 1" Type C (the analog tape format they were using for LD masters previously) was moved away from by studios and broadcast organizations thanks to BetaCam and the newer D-1 and D-2 digital formats providing higher or comprable quality at a lesser price. Makes sense that LD mastering made the move as well.

I used to be in television (behind the camera) and had some work experience at a regional station. They still had a lot of their TVCs mastered on one inch and they also had a working 2 inch, but no one used it. It was really fun to thread the tape up, so tactile. One of my favourite tape formats was Beta SP. It was capable of such beautiful image quality, especially in the richness of the colours. I missed it when the production house I was working at converted to digital.

Always wanted to play with a BetaCam SP deck. They still fetch big dollars on Ebay up to this day.

Interesting, reading up on it. How they got digital audio.
Elvis

Before we converted we were really strongly considering just buying an 16:9 anamorphic lens for our SP camera to continue using the format, but ultimately it wasn't as cost effective as making the change. Before I left we had a Panasonic P2 HD professional shoulder mountable camera. Nice enough, very sensitive, even the grain was attractive. But you would soometimes jump back to old SP wilds and masters and swoon.

Also some of Discovision discs were also sourced from 16mm such as Acrobats of God, The Unsinkable Sea Otter, Art Awareness Collection. In fact there weren't many educational / other titles that were from videotape. Only the Julia Child discs come to mind as produced from videotape.