I just noticed this thread!

I too collect almost nothing on LD but anime and usually JP releases since there aren't that many American ones. According to the LDDB I have 56 anime titles, but several are TV boxes with six or seven discs in them.

I haven't used my TelevEyes Pro in over a decade. I used to use Substation Alpha, but that was in the Win 9x era. Does anyone know the best thing (probably only thing) to use with Windows 7? I have a crappy netbook here that isn't doing much else.

Well, once again the time of year has come around when I put together the LDs for my Classic Anime Festival event at Project A-Kon. This year's theme is something about "Youkai Hunters", so I'm looking for suitable selections. I've got twelve hours to play with, & so far, I'm considering :
Devil Hunter Yohko, naturally
Rumik World: Laughing Target
Yu Yu Hakusho (The Movie)
Wicked City
Sorcerer Hunters
Silent Mobius
Vampire Princess Miyu
Battle Royal High School, just for its total stupidity
X: 1999
Those Who Hunt Elves
Phantom Quest Corp.
Hyper Police
Cyber City Oedo 808
the "Ghost of Greenwood" episode of Here Is Greenwood

And, of course, Project A-KO

Maybe some Slayers, Urusei Yatsura, Blue Seed (all I have is an ADV release with rot, alas)… lots of possibilities, even though there are quite a few things I just don't have.

How does the re-release of Vampire Princess Miyu compare to the first US release? And how do those both hold up against the DVD?

Oh man, I love that Greenwood episode, and the rest of Greenwood as well.

What about Vampire Hunter D (1985) [LVD9306]? That's...kind of like that sort of thing.

Ginga Tetsudo no Yoru (Night on the Galactic Railroad) [G95F5017] (the kid's friend is essentially a ghost.)

I know there is something perfect...I just can't remember what it is...

Well, the list is constrained by what I happen to have in my library, & for whatever reason I don't have "D", or a subtitle script for "Night on the Galactic Railroad".
I should, however, add to the list both Orphen & Hell Teacher Nube.

I have the Project A-KO disc you mentioned above. Holy hell what a bizarre movie. Btw Publius, seeing as you seem to be an expert on the topic, what Genlock device would you recommend for someone who has absolutely no experience with the technology? I am loving those Ghibli discs I purchased from you, and am viewing Castle in the Sky as we speak, but I would love to view these with other people who aren't as familiar with the films as I am, and would definitely make the investment in such a device to be able to show them with subtitles interposed on top

I am using a Coriogen Eclipse, and I also suggested that model to Publius many moons ago.
However it seems he wasn't so lucky, and the used unit he purchased on ebay was defective.

I myself tho, am extremely satisfied with the unit I have.

While I haven't fired it up since the death of VHS tape trading, I have a TelevEyes Pro. It's extremely easy to hook up and get running, composite/s-video in/out, RGB in/out. Whatever plays out of the computer gets superimposed on whatever comes out of the LD player. Nearly idiot-proof. These units are also rather common and inexpensive since basically every cable access station in the US had a couple. It was the fan subbers choice as well.

Really there is no genlock which is extremely friendly to the casual user. My experience has mostly been with the "Vine Micros" brand, but they all require a certain amount of finagling & experimentation. For example, you may find that the genlock just doesn't like one of the scanrates on your VGA output, for no apparent reason. And if you have a computer with a video output, you may be able to use a video mixer or something of that type instead.

If you want to experiment, I've got a "Deltascan Pro GL", a pretty good model, which broke down, which I'd be willing to sell you pretty cheaply. I repaired it eventually, but by that time I'd already bought a replacement (although the replacement has a problem too). It's not been quite the same since the repair, although it's good enough to be going along with : the picture can be a bit unstable at times. It's tricky buying off eBay, since many of the models used by hobbyists were part of a line of similar-looking & similarly-named products, some of which which did not have the relevant capabilities.

We'll see about that. I'm going to do some research and let you know. I'd like to become more familiar with the products out there first. Question for you though, where do you usually get your fansubs from?

I downloaded a couple of huge collections from FTP repositories which may or may not still be in existence. One of my plans for my Web site is to make them available linked with the discs they pertain to, after editing for spelling, timing, &c. If you like, I could just put the original files up for download.

Right now I'm really only interested in the fansubs for all of the Ghibli films released on Laserdisc, as they'd be the only ones I need to watch with subtitles. When I find time, I might hunt down stuff like Ranma 1 1/2 and various other anime series releases though. Feel free to do what you want with your fansubs

This sounds like a very cool idea.

It's downloading as we speak. Thanks a bunch

I've seen at least the first three episodes of "Perfect Collection" on LD and I'm sure that there were no censorship at all.

EDIT: I didn't see that I answered to post on the first page.

Hey publius,

What format are most of your subs in? I've recently started writing a program to display what subtitle should show up at specific times. I plan to have it read the time from a commercial LD player over rs232 (once I can find a commercial LD player that I want to buy) so that I'll be able to pause/rewind/skip forward and have it still display the right subtitle. It currently only supports subrip srt files since that's what I've been making from my You're Under Arrest DVDs. Seems like it might be a useful program to you.

Also I like the idea of using a genlock to overlay the subs onto the video, but I'll have to research that more. I had originally planned to overlay the text using a directshow filter, but I haven't ever used directshow before and have no idea how. Being able to do the overlay with hardware in the mean time seems like a good idea so I can finally open up those YUA LDs and watch them. I might have to start looking around on ebay for one. Thanks for the great idea!

Mine are mostly in either .SSA (SubStation Alpha) or .JS (JACOsub, not JavaScript!), with a smaller proportion as TurboTitle & other less common formats. I believe the SSA software has some provision for player control via RS232, but I don't know to what extent it works the other way. That is a very nice idea.

So I just got They Were 11 on LD. It's an awesome movie but unfortunately at around 40 minutes through on either side this happens.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4zDHStmy3U&feature=plcp

It was such a great movie I might have to re-buy it if it's the disc and not my player. My player does skip sometimes at the end of CAV discs but I've never seen it mess up on a CLV disc like that before. Anyone have any idea what it might be? The distortion gets worse and worse the closer to the end of the disc it gets and eventually the digital audio starts crackling a bit. The disc was new and sealed when I got it which i can't imagine was great for it to stay in one position in tight shrink wrap for so long but I'm not sure.

Also I got a "Vine Deltascan GL External Genlock Overlay Adapter" on ebay for $41 shipped in the box with the manuals and everything so hopefully that's actually what I need and can overlay some subtitles over my discs. Haven't found a good commercial LD player and a rs232 cable yet but still searching. Looking in to using SDL for the black background with subtitle text on it, but I don't know any SDL so that's slowing things down.

My copy certainly doesn't do that. Have you tried to play anything else recently? If your player skips near the end on CAV discs, it's out of alignment somehow, & a disc which is more than usually out-of-round or slightly warped, which a player in better adjustment would still play fine, might display such an effect.