I’ve been backing up my Laserdiscs after the problems I had with my players a month or so back, one thing I frequently noticed was the flicker of closed captions at the very top of the captured video file. This greatly intrigued me, as it would be useful to have subtitles these films. I began investigating software options for decoding the captions embedded in the video image area, but was unable to find anything that worked with video file embedded captions, or was cheap enough to justify spending the money on. Having been intending to do some video-processing work in Python this seemed like an ideal warm-up exercise.
Tag Archives: Laserdisc
Laserdisc Players and Comb Filters
With the recent demise of two of my Laserdisc players while writing an article about Se7en, I took the plunge and got a couple of ‘fresh’ ones. Pondering how best to make use of these players got me started thinking about comb filters. I’d always wanted to get a better comb filter to use with my older players, but never got around to doing much about it.
Having a bit of free-time and cash on my hands – I decided to do a bit of group test. During testing I managed to resurrect my two dead players (Hint: 220v players don’t work well for long on 100v !)
The following equipment will be put to the test:
- Pioneer HLD-X9
- Pioneer CLD-D925 (Dual PAL/NTSC player)
- Pioneer CLD-939 (Japanese Pioneer CLD-97)
- Farojida LD-1000 (Tweaked Pioneer CLD-99)
- Leitch DPS-575 (Timebase corrector and 3D comb filter -> SDI)
- Snell and Wilcox TBS-185 Kudos Plus (Timebase corrector and 3D comb filter -> SDI)
- Sony HX-903 LCD Television
- CYP SY-P295N S-video and composite to HDMI converter
Effectively this is a group test of all of these components, which I have seen discussed on many forums – but never actually reviewed !
The Mysterious Case of Se7en
Se7en is a dark crime-horror fantasy, written by Andrew Kevin Walker, directed by David Fincher with cinematography by Darius Khondji. The film was a success both commercially and critically. However due to the complexity of the photographic process, it is difficult to be certain that any of the home-video releases reflect the image seen in first run showings. This article will examine the various video releases of Se7en, and explain the process by which they came about, and attempt to pick the best amongst them.