Catalog your LaserDisc collection

LaserDisc collectors have had nowhere good to write down what they own. The home video catalog holds 2,982 LaserDisc releases, and the entries are in better shape than almost anything else here: identifying codes on 2,934 of the 2,982, aspect ratio on 2,548, company credits on 2,910, written notes on 1,272. Compare that with VHS, where region and aspect ratio are mostly blank.

What the format does not have is owners. Of those 2,982 discs, 91 are in at least one member's collection. The database is largely built and the shelves are empty, which is an odd place for a scene this serious to be sitting.

Why cataloguing a LaserDisc is preservation work

For a great many films, a LaserDisc is the only home video edition of a particular transfer or a particular set of supplements. Criterion's LaserDisc programme and Image Entertainment's catalogue are where the commentary track and the supplements disc were worked out, and plenty of that material never reached DVD and never will. An isolated score, a director sitting down for two hours in 1991, an open-matte transfer nobody has struck since: the disc on your shelf may be the only copy outside an archive.

Writing down exactly which disc that is — catalogue number, sides, what is actually on it — is the part that outlives the disc. That is not nostalgia.

Region means nothing here, and the data agrees

LaserDisc had no region coding at all. Only 40 of the 2,982 entries carry a region, and those are leftovers rather than facts about the disc. Do not fill it in.

The compatibility question for LaserDisc is the video standard, and the catalog has it on almost every entry: NTSC 2,103, PAL 780, PAL/SECAM 11, with 75 not recorded. That one field tells you whether a disc will play on your machine, and whether a PAL pressing reads about 4% shorter on the sleeve than the NTSC one. If you want the long version of what NTSC and PAL are, it is on the region codes page.

CLV, CAV, and where the disc specs go

A format row on a release carries a type (LaserDisc) and a one-line free-text description beside it. On LaserDisc, people filled that description in, which makes it the most useful field on the format: "CLV, Widescreen" 824 times, "CLV" 529, "CLV, Pan & Scan" 327, "CLV+CAV, Widescreen" 113, "CLV, Widescreen, THX" 88, "Extended Play" 67, "CLV, TV Size" 59, and 232 left blank.

If those tags are new: CLV (constant linear velocity) fits about 60 minutes on a side. CAV (constant angular velocity) fits about 30, but gives you a clean freeze frame and frame-by-frame stepping, which is why special editions put their supplements on a CAV side. A single disc is often CLV on one side and CAV on the other, and that is exactly the sort of detail worth recording.

There is no side-count field, so do not go looking for one. Sides, CAV placement and what sits on which belong in the format description if they fit on a line, and in the release notes if they do not.

Letterboxed home video started here

LaserDisc is where widescreen at home began, and for a long stretch the LaserDisc was the first and only way to see a film at its real shape outside a cinema. The aspect ratios recorded bear that out: 1.33:1 on 949 entries, 2.35:1 on 568, 1.85:1 on 557, 1.66:1 on 101, 4:3 on 91, plus 29 marked "2.35:1 / Letterboxed" and 19 "1.85:1 / Letterboxed". Roughly 1,150 discs are tagged widescreen against 327 pan-and-scan.

The same film was often issued both ways, sometimes by the same company in the same year. The letterboxed pressing and the pan-and-scan one are two releases with two catalogue numbers, and your copy goes under the one you own.

The sleeve, and the rot

Packaging on LaserDisc is its own subject: Cardsleeve on 2,462 entries, "Cardsleeve (Gatefold)" on 338, Box Set on 65, with a handful of trifolds. A 12-inch gatefold sleeve is closer to a record than to a DVD case, and the art on it is a large part of why anyone keeps these at all. Record it.

Condition is the collector's real problem, and it belongs on your copy rather than on the release. Laser rot — the disc oxidising under the plastic, showing up as speckle and dropout partway through a side — is specific to this format, afflicts some pressing plants far worse than others, and is the first thing to note about a disc you are describing to someone else. A copy records condition, where you keep it and what you paid; price and location stay private to you. How the grades work is in condition grading.

What needs doing

Two jobs stand out in the company credits. Dolby Laboratories Licensing Corporation sits at the top with 476 credits, the audio licence printed on the sleeve rather than anyone who made the disc. And Pioneer appears twice, 291 times under one spelling and 160 under "Pioneer Video Inc." — one company, two entries, a real cleanup job. Warner Home Video (361), Image Entertainment (323), Columbia TriStar Home Video (297) and Paramount (223) make up most of the rest.

Start with the shelf you know best. Claim the discs you own, fix the format description while you are in there, and say in the notes what is on each side. If you were on the old site, see what happened to Filmogs, or come and argue about any of this on the forum.