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Mega LD dumping project

Discussion in 'General Sega Discussion' started by doc eggfan, Feb 3, 2014.

  1. Mentski

    Mentski

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    Being a mysterious face.
    It's right on the front page of the forums what you have to do:

     
  2. Nemesis

    Nemesis

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    Best way to get in touch with me is on the SpritesMind forums. While I haven't been active anywhere online with any degree of frequency over the last few years, I tended to check in with those forums at least once every few months. I'm going to be more active going forward though, so it should be easier to get in touch with me.
     
  3. JaxTH

    JaxTH

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    Jack shit.
    I'm glad you'll be more active for the time being since I'm really interested in this project.
     
  4. Nemesis

    Nemesis

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    It's really hard to give an estimate when this'll finally be done. I totally underestimated the challenges in the analog video capture space here, which is why it's 2018 and still not done, when I could get full rips of the digital content 4+ years ago now I think it was. I can put any MegaLD disk in right now and rip the full digital content, but it's not much use without the video, and getting the video has proven a real pain. I'm leaving happycube to run with the video decoding for awhile, and putting my own decoding effort on ice, as he's on a bit of a roll and I hit a brick wall. As soon as someone can properly crack NTSC decoding in software, we'll be ready to go. Honestly, it's the kind of thing you'd think someone had done a long time ago, but nope, it really hasn't been. There's a chance I'll bite off the digital decoding from the raw EFM in the next few months while he's working on video, but my incentive is lower, as I can already rip that content via software through the LaserActive hardware.
     
  5. biggestsonicfan

    biggestsonicfan

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    It's been a while and I thought this deserved a bump. Here is a sample of the RF decoding from the shiny laserdisc RF device:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNiFdpBhHoE
     
  6. biggestsonicfan

    biggestsonicfan

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    "The Extremely Expensive Retro Console That Still Can't Be Emulated" via Kotaku

     
  7. JaxTH

    JaxTH

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    >Kotaku

    I won't assume they know about this project, but I honestly thought this would be an interview with whatever group Nemesis is in.
     
  8. ICEknight

    ICEknight

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    Is that Ghost Rush game secured already? There's a cheap copy of it right now on a Yahoo auction which ends tomorrow.
     
  9. doc eggfan

    doc eggfan

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    GreatMegaLD, GreatSC3k, Great SG1k
    Yep, I sent Nemesis a version of every 'proper' game except for 3D Virtual Australia, of which I could never find a copy.

    I pretty much covered the entire Sega Mega LD library and also the unique games in the NEC LD-ROM2 library. I might have missed a few regional variants (US vs Jap) and some NEC versions of games I already had on Mega LD.

    He even has two prototype copies of the Laserdisc version of Myst, which was never released and is rumoured to have only 11 copies in existence.

    If it has a 600 dpi scan on Sega Retro or NEC Retro, than Nem has a copy of it.

    (Proper games don't include the handful of pornographic/voyeur style games, which Nemesis has no interest in dealing with, and so I didn't go out of my way to secure).

    EDIT: I just checked NEC Retro, and it seems I haven't uploaded 600 dpi scans there yet. I'm pretty sure I sent more than just Vajra Ni)
     
  10. biggestsonicfan

    biggestsonicfan

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    I know Nemesis wants to do it his own way, but should we crowdfund a working Doomsday ripper so Retro has one?
     
  11. JaxTH

    JaxTH

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    It's always nice to have backup plans.
     
  12. How do I fight "blue contamination" in general purpose deinterlacing? I encounter it with Sonic X and Transformers G1 DVDs. Thanks.
     
  13. biggestsonicfan

    biggestsonicfan

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    Please do not reply to a 5-year-old post expecting an answer while contributing nothing of value to the topic.
     
  14. ICEknight

    ICEknight

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    Last edited: Jul 11, 2019
  15. ICEknight

    ICEknight

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    Clawgrip (from MAME fame) just got a Domesday Duplicator, so if there's somebody here who is willing to (temporarily) send their LaserDiscs to Madrid, please let me know (or get in contact with him directly).

    EDIT: @biggestsonicfan please cut it out with the naysaying in the tweet where I'm trying to gather the attention of all Spanish LaserDisc owners out there. "Files sizes are insane!" is not exactly the one message we want to spread across the collector communities.
     
    Last edited: Jul 17, 2019
  16. Sappharad

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    What is the reason? Based on one of the linked threads it sounded like Nemesis already has dumped most or all of the MegaLD games but has multiple terabytes of analog data that needs to be converted into a better form for distribution and that part isn't feasible yet. (And it sounded like he might want to re-dump with more precision via a newer board?) Clawcrip is only going to be able to dump the analog data for you, Nemesis had built his own stuff to extract the digital tracks.
     
  17. biggestsonicfan

    biggestsonicfan

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    I apologize and deleted those tweets. There is no reason for this attitude. It wasn't particularly "naysaying", more of an observation. This could have been easily remedied with an explanation through a DM on twitter though.
     
    Last edited: Jul 17, 2019
  18. Nemesis

    Nemesis

    Tech Member
    Howdy. Yeah, I've done rips with the Domesday Duplicator. Built every hardware revision of it that's been made, and I've got a good condition LD-V8000 industrial laserdisc player. Someone else can rip the disks (and I'd be surprised if they haven't already), but it doesn't get things any further. The problem is a software one at this point. The decoding software that's been put together by Chad Page is the best thing out there right now, but it's still fairly rigid, and basically works for the input signals it's been designed to work for. It's not a general purpose video decoder yet. Simply put, it fell over at the actual real-world signals I tried to throw at it. The code itself was, last I saw, a fairly incomprehensible blob of python/c++ that felt mostly hacked together. It really needed a rewrite, removing various assumptions and making it more flexible and robust. I actually set about to write my own software NTSC decoder. I got the basics working, but I got burned out and shelved it. Basically I'm waiting at this point to see if ld-decode can evolve to the point where it'll correctly obtain and keep sync on these disks, and not totally mess up at the comb filtering stage when it comes across a 480i signal with unrelated images in each field. It's all doable, but it needs a good overlap of strong programming skills combined with strong analog signals knowledge. I have the former, and spent the better part of two years building up the latter. Not too many other people out there who have the knowledge, interest, and time to contribute I think. With the right people, this project could be knocked over comprehensively in about 6 months. As it is, you're basically waiting for either me or Chad to fully crack the software decoding space, and I'm taking a breather from it right now.
     
  19. biggestsonicfan

    biggestsonicfan

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    So, I know this thread is really old, but a new player has entered the ring.

    While we've been aware @Nemesis has been dumping the data from MegaLDs since forever ago (see the first post in this thread), a second, seperate, call to arms has been put forth by Tanks404 in conjunction with Gaming Alexandria.


    Tweet:
    [twitter] GamingAlexandri—2022.07.12—1546879449995649024—FXedDVVXEAU1nKD.png [twitter] GamingAlexandri—2022.07.12—1546879449995649024—FXeeJAqXwAIYwmu.png

    Tweet:
    I feel that the time we had to do this to create a standard has long, long since passed. It feels like the general public are getting their first taste that this is a thing, and are very hungry for more, unaware of the efforts we have been making since the mid 2010's.

    While I don't feel what we've been trying to establish here is going to waste, with a near-complete collection (and more dumps will always be welcome), I feel that if anything were really going to start it will have to happen now, or our efforts will be put aside for someone else's.
     
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  20. JaxTH

    JaxTH

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    Jack shit.
    Didn't Nemesis hit a snag in what he was doing? That and personal problems I think.

    So who is gonna dump the porn games? Because Nemesis was never going to by himself.

    Congrats to Tanks though.