Karaoke Forums

Here's the deal. The bar I DJ at had its laser disc completely die(after 15 years of service and multiple repairs). Estimate for this repair is 400$+. New Pioneer DVL888 is around 800$. The laser set has several missing and non-replacable discs(I've already tried ebay, karaoke center and karaoke wow). Numerous of the lasers are scratched or in other wise bad shape. My suggestion to the owner was to take the entire laser set and the broken player and sell the set on EBAY and take the proceeds and buy a second CDG machine and use the 800$ to buy SC Foundation 1 & 2.  Just do away with the lasers completley and be CDG only.

Opinions?

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"You know that I sing the Blues and I do not suffer fools. When I'm on that silver mic, it's gonna cut ya, just like a knife"-The SWINGCAT

I think that is a great idea. Its like an old vehicle its OK to hold onto it as long as it runs and doesn't cost you money, but when it starts to brake down let it go and invest in a newer model.  

If I could get the same selection of music (and quality) without losing some crucial songs that may or may not be available on cdg, i'd probably drop the laser's altogether - however, being one that still runs lasers, I tried phasing them out while replacing with cdg & I caught SO MUCH FLACK that I needed to relist the laser selection.  Being you may not have any other option, hopefully the singers will  understand & go with the flow.

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LIKE Lonman on Facebook - Lonman Productions Karaoke & my main site via my profile!

That is the ONE downside to ditching the lasers--is SOME of the selections on the Pioneers. But most can be replaced cheaply. The videos are cool to. But its a $ an Cent issue and they dont TAKE CARE OF THIER stuff like YOU AND I would. The few who would be asking for the lasers would get over it--and could always order those songs on CDG to pacify them. But Im of the opinion that the machine will continue to keep breaking down and the discs will continue to deterioate more quickly than not. Doenst matter to me tho--when I DJ there I bring all my own music and books which is DOUBLE the stuff they have and MUCH MORE MODERN--and as it is I get a 80-20 ratio of my songs vs the bar stuff. So its a moot point to me. But from a BUSINESS MAN stand point I'd have to say sell the lasers for what ever you can and modernize the whole thing--much cheaper and easier in the long run in terms of upkeep and expense.

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"You know that I sing the Blues and I do not suffer fools. When I'm on that silver mic, it's gonna cut ya, just like a knife"-The SWINGCAT

Or you can do what I am doing. I am converting all my LD to DVD. It's a bit of hassle but I think it's worth it. I bought a HDD based DVD recorder. I connected a LD player (doesn't have to be a Karaoke player) to the DVD recorder (costed me about $300) and used analog input to record the entire disc. The tough part is the editing it. I had to put in chapter mark on the DVD and record. The longest part was recording from LD to DVD since it was analog, I had to record real time. However, I can just leave it alone and edit the parts later. Actually chapter marking takes about 5 mins per disk.

The disks played fine on modern cd-g/dvd player. My primary base is cd-g but I was able to save all of my 50 or LDs I had before.

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Seize the day and SING!!!

or convert the lasers to .mpg or .avi files... and play them on the computer!

I did!

I'd be more likely to create SVCD's.  It's MPEG video which plays from a computer just fine and SVCD's play in every DVD player and most of the karaoke players out there.

How would you do that K-meister?  I've got a bunch of lasers gathering dust because they are simply unwieldy and I don't think the player could stand up to the rigors of moving all over the place.  It's VERY sensitive.  I'd love to be able to put them into a format that I could use on my JVC triple!

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Spreading the karaoke gospel

you need a video capture software and probably a device.

I use Pinnacle, which takes any RCA signal (and some s-video), and captures it via a USB device, and records it like a VCR on your computer in either VCD (MPEG1) or SVCD (MPEG2)... you can choose how you wish to use it.

the nice thing about having the lasers ripped to MPG is that if your VCD or SVCD is scratched or ruined etc then it takes 2 minutes to convert and burn a new disk... the benefit of not having to carry around a bulky LD Player and 200lbs of laser disks is a no brainer... - tig

Hey Matt could you simply hook up a Pioneer laser karaoke player and then connect it to a home computer and burn a DVD? I saw someone mention channel separation? What would be involved in makeing a dvd of a karoake laser disc that would allow individual song selection for use at karaoke? Either respond here or give me a call--this may be a direction to go where Im DJ'ing. Keep the master disc and a player, but use a working set of DVD's of the lasers. Anyway let me know.

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"You know that I sing the Blues and I do not suffer fools. When I'm on that silver mic, it's gonna cut ya, just like a knife"-The SWINGCAT

most of the hardware A/V (audio visual) capture devices, like pinnacle capture cards, come with their own media management software that walks ya through the capture and conversion to digital video on your PC... there are many different types of video capture hardware... personally I use the Pinnacle Dazzle Capture device (connects via USB and has RCA audio/video inputs) and it is as simple as hooking ANY multimedia device to the inputs (VCR, DVD, video camera, LASER DISC PLAYER) and push the capture button and it rips it in real time into mpg video on my PC... you can check a capture card out here:
http://www.compusa.com/products/product_info.asp?product_code=320316&pfp=BROWSE
and here is a general directory of capture devices:
http://www.compusa.com/products/products.asp?N=200107
most any of these hardware devices come with their own software for capturing (ripping) and converting A/V sources to digital video file... - tig

pushing the "What Tigrr27 said!"

What is the difference between the VCD and SVCD files?  Does it much matter which one I use?

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Spreading the karaoke gospel

Whew... I've been off the forum and only coming in occasionally so I missed out on a lot of this conversation.  But I'd consider a Video capture device like those made by ADS Tech.  I've had good luck with their USB audio device and I've heard good things about the video capture.

Here's the basic steps:
1. Set up Video capture card/device on computer.
2. Hit record on computer.
3. Hit play on Laser Disc player.
4. Save the track.
5. Repeat from 2-4 until all tracks are captured.

It's really that easy.  As for the differences between VCD and SVCD, SVCD's are similar in quality as DVD's - they use MPEG2 video compression for the video.  They only offer stereo audio instead of the surround sound options available on DVD's.   VCD's use MPEG 1 for compression which is quite a bit worse than MPEG 2 compression and puts in quite a bit of digital artifacts in the video.

For those of you that wonder about such things -
VCD's have about 1150bps of bandwidth on the video and 224kbps for the audio
SVCD's are about twice the video bandwidth
DVD's are about twice the video bandwidth of SVCD's.
More information on the technical side of things is available at:
http://www.videohelp.com/vcd

SVCD's and DVD's can have lower bandwidth's but the max is approx. double.


Here's a quote from VideoHelp.com to explain it better:
SVCD stands for "Super VideoCD". A SVCD is very similiar to a VCD, it has the capacity to hold about 35-60 minutes on 74/80 min CDs of very good quality full-motion video along with up to 2 stereo audio tracks and also 4 selectable subtitles. A SVCD can be played on many standalone DVD Players and of course on all computers with a DVD-ROM or CD-ROM drive with the help of a software based decoder / player. It is also possible to use menus and chapters, similiar to DVDs, on a SVCD and also simple photo album/slide shows with background audio. The quality of a SVCD is much better than a VCD, especially much more sharpen picture than a VCD because of the higher resolution. But the quality depends how many minutes you choose to store on a CD, less minutes/CD generally means higher quality.

VCD stands for 'Video Compact Disc' and basically it is a CD that contains moving pictures and sound. If you're familiar with regular audio/music CDs, then you will know what a VCD looks like. A VCD has the capacity to hold up to 74/80 minutes on 650MB/700MB CDs respectively of full-motion video along with quality stereo sound. VCDs use a compression standard called MPEG to store the video and audio. A VCD can be played on almost all standalone DVD Players and of course on all computers with a DVD-ROM or CD-ROM drive with the help of a software based decoder / player. It is also possible to use menus and chapters, similiar to DVDs, on a VCD and also simple photo album/slide shows with background audio. The quality of a very good VCD is about the same as a VHS tape based movie but VCD is usually a bit more blurry. If you want better quality checkout SVCD,CVD or DVD.


Hope this all helps....

I would caution on one thing. The DVD and VCD/SVCD formats are not the same. Even within DVD recording, there is DVD-R and DVD+R. I know many of the players that play DVD will play VCD/SVCD but I would check to make sure before you do the conversion. The data rate on VCD and SVCD is lot more compressed then DVD is. Think about it. DVD holds 4.7GB and double that on a dual layer player. A CD holds 660MB or 700MB at most. VCD is compressing that 4.7GB in to 700MBs. No matter how good the compression algorithm is you compress it 1/5 of the size, you may notice more artifacts.  

I would personally stick with DVD format since the cost of the blank DVDs now days are not too much higher than CDs. The cost of a computer based DVD burner is reasonable now days as well. I have seen DVD-/+R dual layer burner for less than $80 at my local store. Also, DVD is more widely accepted format for machines than VCD. You will find that most of the Chinese made players will support VCD but not all DVD player will support VCD or CD-G for that matter. Check before you start your conversion.

I personally chose not to use a computer to convert LD to DVD, rather went with DVD recorder, Pioneer DVR-520H. It has 80GB hard drive inside to edit anything you put on it, including movies off any Firewire based camcorders. I know that computer offers more flexibility in editing but I just wanted something simple that does the job and my Pioneer does the job. It records in DVD-R format and so far everything I burned plays well on my machine.  

The choice is personal whether to go with a computer or a stand alone recorder. However, unless you are planning to use computer based Karaoke, I strongly suggest that you convert the LD to DVD, not VCD or SVCD.

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Seize the day and SING!!!

Actually, on a 700MB CD....

VCD's hold 74 minutes
SVCD's hold at most an hour but as little as 30 minutes at the max resolution and bitrate
DVD's hold between 10 and 20 minutes

The bandwidth of each is VCD=10MB/min, SVCD=10-20MB/min, DVD=30-70MB/min

Yes, DVD will result in a slightly better playback result, but given the fact that the videos don't involve a lot of motion and that a majority of your CDG players will playback VCD's and/or SVCD's it makes sense to go that way.

In other words, I have an RSQ 333 in my rack, why would I put a DVD player in the rack when I can use VCD's and playback in my RSQ?

I have a 15 VCD set that I purchased of eBay when I was first starting out that plays wonderfully on my RSQ.  The movies I've purchased from overseas on VCD playback just fine on the unit as well.  I've since added a DVD player to my rack (as a CAVS 203G) but would playback in my RSQ since it loads VCD's faster than any DVD player I have and speed is essential to making my show run smoothly.

Yes, there are lots of alternatives and DVD will give better overall results.  But given the low motion rates and the fact that the audio quality is sufficiently high enough on VCD/SVCD (224kbps) I'd consider going that route first - but only because it's my choice.

Keep in mind that there is VCD and VCD 2.0.  Not all DVD players playback VCD 2.0 or SVCD's but in my experience if they provide for CD+G playback they offer VCD 2.0 and SVCD playback.  Double check the specs of the player to be sure.

Ok--I bought a Dazzle 80 vid capture device and it came with a couple different pieces of software.  I've been successful in saving tracks to my computer, but they are in avi format.  When trying to capture it does not give me the option to save as mpeg2.  

Can I burn the avi tracks to a disc and use them in my JVC triple?

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Spreading the karaoke gospel

If you burn VCD's or SVCD's they'll be converted.  Some of the software for burning discs will convert to mpeg or mpeg2 video.  If yours doesn't support converting then a quick search will turn up a couple pieces of software that will handle the conversion for you.