Domesday Duplicator - Ultimate LaserDisc Preservation 

8:16 From capture to decoding, its all possible in Windows/MacOS Arm today, alongside many video tape formats thanks to vhs-decode which windows binary bundles ld-decode with it, alongside cvbs-decode and hifi-decode, also not limted to just the DdD for FM RF capture today.

I hope someone (with alot of money) archives all the pioneer laseractive games.

The thing I like the most about this project is it's fork "vhs-decode", it requires cheaper hardware since VHS tapes have lower bandwidth that can be covered with cheap Connexant PCIe cards. It may be the last non-expensive way to have high quality VHS captures, specially if you live in an area where you can't find professional second hand videotape equipment.

I saw Laserdisc and Domesday and thought this was about the 1980s Domesday project in the UK where they used a laserdisc to create a modern day Domesday book with a laserdisc machine controled by a BBC Master. It got recovered about 20 years later when they thought it might get lost due to hardware failure of the players.

George Lucas' first major film THX-1138 was not released digitally in its original form, only in one of George's 'enhanced' editions with CGI and such inserted. It's been worth holding on to the original laserdisc (and even the VHS) because of that...

The word "dome" in the name did indeed become "doom" in modern english. And as mentioned, it means "judgement" here. But, this word in its original meaning still exists in modern english, in an inflected form. The word "deem" (as in "I deemed it to be like this" or something) comes from the same word.

As a historian who’s had to look in the Doomsday Book, the dry description you gave made me laugh. It is really dull (but also really cool because you can look up places you know and see how tiny they were)

Well, now you are required by Intergalactic law to go down the vhs-decode project too. (seriously, I'd love it had more exposure and possibly reach as it'd also certainly move the project a little faster and further. with the added bonus of having a reference video on youtube)

I saw the rip of the Laserdisc release of the playstation Ghost in the Shell cut scenes here on youtube a while back. If I remember correctly. It used captures from several discs with the same content. By doing that, they could stack the video signals and cancel out the difference that the individual discs had introduced. That way they got as close to the original master tape quality possible. I must say, I was astonished with how good it looked. And it makes me want as many as possible to rip their LD collections as soon as possible. Because that way you can get the very best master tape esque versions restored.

I remember a school trip to London back in 1986 when I was 10; I was lucky enough to spend a couple of minutes using the BBC Domesday Project at the Science Museum, sparking in me a fascination with computers that has pretty much shaped my life. I sometimes imagine I might have turned out to be a normal person if it weren't for those two mindblowing minutes 🤣

Can't wait for the next video: I just inherited a library of Laserdiscs, and backing them up is definitely in my wheelhouse

I don't have an LD, and I never actually used LD, but I love seeing these backup solution being made

I've been looking to make use of one of these myself, as I've been digitizing a lot of rarer Hong Kong and Japanese Laserdiscs for the past year. Side by side the quality improvement is so noticeable, and considering how unlikely a lot of these films are to ever get re-released beyond the analog era, I'll have to invest in properly figuring the duplicator process out.

The ham radio nerd in me loved this episode. This is rather like what you can do with older radios: You can physically tap into the raw IF (intermediate frequency) signal inside the radio, pipe it outside, and capture it via a software defined radio for *external* decoding. That way, you can still utilize the ham radio's superior front end and receiving hardware, but you can decode it all in software at a much wider bandwidth. 73 de WU2F

wow, this thing is awesome! the results truly do speak for themselves. LD preservation is super important with the risk of disc rot and just all that comes with it being an analogue medium so I'm glad we've basically got it down.

This video has one of the best descriptions I've yet come across of what is actually encoded on a Laserdisc. It's fascinating that the inventors of the format realized that they could simply convert a 10MHz video signal to PWM and record the pulses!

Absolutely fantastic - can't wait for part 2 !! Thank you...

Thank you so much for this! Being able to see the process for this will be a boon! Looking forward to the next part

This is _so_ cool. I am lookig forward to your next video about this topic.

Due to the decaying nature of probably all LDs, it is also important to contribute to the "stacking" efforts to try to reconstitute the least corrupted version of every disc. Due to copyright restrictions, I don't know if you can get a copy of the results even though you may have contributed a version.

Really amazing this exists! Thanks for sharing and explaining.

I enjoyed this dive into capturing laser disc content. Thanks for making it. It was just the perfect length.

Bro, this is a great video, I Really enjoyed it! You did go deep the the technical part what I can appreciate

This is a very interesting project, I’m really looking forward to part 2!

OMG thank you for this. I found the related VHS project earlier this month and have been trying to wrap my head around all of this. Very much love seeing this explanation. Looking forward to the next one.

I'm so happy this is being done i wish so much i could see the Archive as there are ld stuff I've always wanted to see

I have wanted to do this for so long so thank you so much for documenting this.

Nice to finally see your video on this. Always funny to hear about just how much time it takes to do this properly.

This is one of the best tech focused channels on RU-vid. For once the algorithm works out!

I’ve been waiting for this video. Thank you.

These kind of videos are great! This channel is turning into an ultimate archivist's reference guide for converting old media.

I do not personally care about laserdisc, but projects like this remind me just how much effort ppl are putting into tech preservation... and I applaud any such efforts.

This is truly amazing, and I'll definitely check part 2, as I own a 4300D!!

Dude I don't know how you find the time & energy to produce as much as you do. This is an amazing project, thank you!

I've been following the Legend of the Galactic Heroes Domesday Duplicator project for some time now. I finally get to learn about it! Great video.

Wow, I have to pull out my old Pioneer LD and about 15 discs and start this as another project! Thank you for the video!

This is an absolutely wonderful project coupled to an interesting and informative video. I'm a big fan of video game preservation, and this reminds me of the ethos and intent of that although different execution. As a tech nerd in general, it allowed me to learn something AV related I didn't know, and does something clever and hacky with consumer electronics to introduce a new feature, modding basically. Great stuff. Look forward to Back To The Laser Part II 😉😁

Family Dog! You've just filled a gap in my memories of that dog drawn with the nose floating in front of its face. Thanks!

New to the channel love the quality content and the cliffhanger definitely got me stalking my notifications

This is very cool, especially for the niche things described. I met someone who has a stack of LD's from an old exhibition at our local science centre, with this tech those could be dumped, or captured I should say, in a meaningful way! Looking forward to the next video! :)

this is awesome! I remember finding a LD-->DVD star wars conversion and I was SO EXCITED right around 2002-2003... This is so cool :)

This is amazing! I remember, for example, those videos of the amusement park ride. I searched on the net for some footage and found almost nothing. Now I understand why. Thank you very much for your incredible work!

Excellent video! Glad to see there is a way to preserve this format. I didn't know that the data on a laserdisc was analog. I think most people would assume because its a disc that it is a digital format, but I guess that didn't occur until CD's came to be.

You're doing great work archiving rare LaserDiscs! Respect for knowing about the Domesday project (and getting the pronunciation right haha) and BBC micro too, I'm guessing they are pretty obscure to Americans! I used the BBC micro quite a lot at primary school here in the UK because they lingered around in classrooms well into the 90s and were a very capable computer with lots of useful educational software, BASIC interpreter built into ROM etc. I have a vivid memory of seeing a maze game on the BBC when I was about 5 and being fascinated by it and that really kickstarted a lifelong love of computers and technology. Never got to try the Domesday project though.

Great work! I am a fan of obscure formats (particularly Blu-ray 3D) and hope that one day we can ensure full backups of most titles from formats like these are archived! A comparison to the ride film would be Happy Family 4D, which was released on 3DBD but few copies ever were produced. In contrast, some creators like Florian Werzinski have published copies of their ride films online in stereo to view.

Now that's important, was aware of a few unique things that were doomed to rot on Laserdisc until now. Wow those old simulator videos! I'm sure everyone remembers some of those from the 80s and 90s, feels like those moving simulators were everywhere and I'm sure I recognise the roller coaster video at the least. Would love to see more of them.

I'm glad you've done this. There was a lot of fuss in Britain a few years ago about how the data on the Domesday Machine discs was being lost because the hardware was no longer functioning and the masters had been lost.

I bought one a while back. I’ve used it to capture 3 discs so far, all things that aren’t available on DVD. It’s tricky as hell but it’s super cool that this tech was developed.

This is mindblowing! Thank you for your passion!

Oh, beautiful! It's always great to see humanity coming together to archive art and knowledge and prevent it from falling out of existence!

Happened on your video through RU-vid's "For You" suggestion algorithm - very interesting, it's given me a number of ideas .. Thanks very much for posting this and preserving the past for people who might be interested in the future - Awesome 😎

You know, I never actually heard the format itself talked about, thank you!

Thanks, RU-vid algo! Very interesting video, I didn't hear about this capture device before. It's a throwback to my LaserDisc time more than 25 years ago. I've sold almost all discs and the Pioneer player long ago, but it is a beautiful format, especially with the huge Special Edition boxes. Great to see the releases archived.

Seen Simon's work in person. It's legit cool stuff :D

Back around 2010 I had a Laser Disk transfer process that I think was as good as it gets - until this! I tapped the 8bit digital video signal directly out of the internal TBC in a Pioneer CLD-95. I made an FPGA based interface board that converted the raw 8bit video to a SMPTE standard parallel composite digital signal*. Then I used a surplus broadcast NTSC digital decoder to get to standard component SDI. Then through a surplus DVNR noise reducer and onto and SDI capture card making DPX files to a 30TB raid. Now this could be compressed further but I kept the raw DPX files. Digital audio when present was just upsampled from 44.1K to 48K. There was a group in Germany that was working in a similar RF capture system for Sony Betacam tapes. Betacam, not Betamax, was a highly successful broadcast component analog format in the 1980s through 2000. It was very high quality. Originally it used standard Betamax tapes but ran the tape much faster. An L750 tape would only last 20min on a Betacam. Mid 1980 we had Betacam SP which used a larger cassette and metal tape and could record up to 90min IIRC. There are huge archives on Betacam tape that need digitizing. * There was a composite digital system in the 1990s that complemented the CCIR601 component digital standard. It was basically digitized NTSC or PAL. The digital tape format was called D2 and Panasonic made a half inch version called D3. Because of the way the signal was quantized (it digitized the sync as well), some of us, including me, thought that a first generation analog 1 inch tape was actually better than first generation composite digital recording. But of course the digital tape could go about 20 generations down with virtually no loss. By the early 2000s it was obsolete as the HDTV/DTV transition used component video.

I love this. I bought a Laserdisc of Repo Man because the open matte was only ever released on LD & VHS. There are not even any composite rips of this version out there. Thanks Shelby, looking forward to seeing the second part.

Thank you for preserving our history.

That's so neat, I too have an LD player (Pioneer CLD-V2600) I picked up locally that was originally from the University of Michigan's Flint Campus Learning Resource Center.

happy to see archival of less-popular media getting much-needed love!

Amazing! Using a modern hardware stack to digitally capture the entire analog waveform is brilliant!

that is INCREDIBLE! Loved the video!

I've been following the DdD for years now, and I already had a 4300D from previous forays into capping LDs, but it might be this video that tips me over into buying the DdD hardware and getting started.

My Criterion Collection AKIRA and Star Wars: The Definitive Collection will never be released on DVD, so this is absolutely something I want to do. Thank you for sharing this!

Thank you for this detailed look at a great project. There is plenty of content that exists only on laserdisc - including the 3 banned James Bond commentaries.

such a cool little sandwich-device, gotta love the open source community!

nice, looking forward to the next one!

I’m so jealous of you techy types, I’m a network administrator and hardware technician for many years, but never to the likes of you. You inspire me brother.

Great timing just today I got the thought to create a data repository. You never know... One solar flare and bye bye internet.

This is awesome. Years ago I read that the Japanese Studio Ghibli box set had an English dub that was made to play on flights from the US to Japan. This pops into my head every now and then and I look it up to see if I can find a copy, but haven’t worked super hard looking for rips.Im really excited at the prospect of getting to hear a good audio rip from these discs, or finally justifying the purchase to rip it myself. We could also get a better quality Wizard of Speed and Time!

Some years ago, a group grabbed one of those players with a serial interface and a player that could go frame by frame and had a component output. They captured every singe picture. They created DVDs of a quality which surpassed the official DVDs.

I've got some recordable laser discs that came from gameworks in Tempe AZ. They were used back before sega bought them. I found them in the av room cleaning up after we went out of business. I think it was something that used to play on the video walls that hung from the rafters

@3:19 There is also the Star Wars despecialized editions to consider, which do carry over the best of all worlds in terms of the film's releases over the years. It isn't official, of course, but it's still the definitive way to watch the OT. Great vid btw, LD preservation of this caliber is really a sight to behold

Funny seeing the Family Dog boxed set. I had forgotten I had one.

I'll never use this but I'm happy this exists!

I have about a dozen LaserDiscs (mostly Japanese Anime) that I got from a friend some years ago, but the players are so darn expensive 😞 I would love to dump them properly but unless I find a cheap and good player and the Doomsday device gets cheaper, I'm stuck with looking at the beautiful cover art and booklets ...

3:20 while preserving home releases is important, I assume you know that the actual theatrical releases of Star Wars have been preserved by people who scanned the 35mm film and released it in 1080p.

20 seconds in and I see the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. This can never be a bad video.

The first clip you used was from the BEST version of Hitchhiker's Guide. I wish we had more David Dixon as Ford!

Well this is amazeballs technology! It's like CryoFlux for laserdisc

I have no interest in LaserDisk, but I appreciate archival and preservation work so much. Thank you for your work.

Damn you, making us wait for the second part! :)

so cool to see some of Inversephase's music in other folks collections!

It seems to me that a library's archive operation might want to look into something like this in order to preserve for the long term its legacy laser discs. Thanks for the review.

I can't believe how in this age and with all the technology we have, some copyright, license and cost-benefit shenanigans make that some movie studios let their archives rot, instead of preserving their catalog. It's sad that some media is really lost forever.

Motorcycle Mania or Motorcycle Madness was the name of the ride I was in, at the Joplin Mall in Missouri. It looked like a Star Trek shuttle on hydraulics and the video looked like they strapped a camera to the handlebars of a motorcycle and the ride was unforgettable. Test driving a dirt bike in the city and you end up driving across iron beams, stories high, between skyscrapers. The most subversive amusement ride I've ever been on.

Amazing work!

Nice footage of "Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy" there!

I didn't even know Family Dog was released on LD. I had tapes of the episodes when it originally aired. And that was the only way I archived mine. I'm jealous you got all the episodes on the disc. I think I only have half the series. The best episode I still think is the homeless woman episode. And you're right about the unmatted movies. The only movie that's ever released the wide and unmatted 4:3 frame, is The Transformers The Movie.

I found an old Laser Disc player and a copy of "A Funny Thing Happened to Me on the way to the Forum" and grabbed them since the LD was still shrinkwrapped new. I should have known that LDs would degrade, especially since I have CDs and DVDs that are already dying on me. I'm glad someone out there is preserving them. Now I just need to find a hosting database of saved movies since there are some ancient ones I've only seen on LD.

Pretty cool. Very niche, but still cool. I never even seen laserdisc in person, so I am not attached to it, but for sure it is nice to archive it. If you have two or three discs of the same release, you might be able to merge multiple captures to fix essentially all dropouts. That would require writing a custom software, but definitively possible.

not saying this is clickbait, but that was a clever thumbnail. I thought the device was spinning the disc.! XD great video. can't wait to see more.

Please do more videos on data preservation!

My new favorite youtube channel ;-)

I remember those 4D/VR rides at malls, etc. I didn't know they were using LD though. That's pretty cool.

This looks like fun. I have a Sony LDP-1000A that will track just about anything. It will play disks that won't even start in other machines. It will be interesting to see what is covered in laser rot error correction.

Wow, very interesting video, thanks!

Amazing! Really crazy stuff 😮

Had Spawn the Director's Cut in DTS. I captured the DTS track by using a Sound Blaster Live! and the custom KV drivers. I planned on muxing it with the DVD version... I ran out of hard drive space, and deleted the file, and sold the LaserDisc before I could capture it again. I don't miss it. I still have that same Fifth Element Disc, a LaserDisc player with an RF out and a Demodulator for the AC-3 sound... I can't wait till your next video to see what it takes for the decode!

I'd love to watch that The Fifth Element LD, it's one of my favorite Bruce Willis movies EVER!! Fifth Element and Armageddon are my two all time favourites of his

Cool project!!!! :) Elegant solution. My first reaction was: "10 bit ADC only? At that price point?", but then I realized it is sampling the Laser output, which is just "pit/groove" 0/1, with the length of the pits and grooves encoding mostly analog information, so there is no advantage in increasing the bit depth at all. ;)