The entire wiki has been moved to a GitHub pages site: ld-decode documentation

The reason for this change is to both modernize the documentation and make it possible for anyone to update, change and correct the documentation through the standard GitHub PR mechanisms. If you are interested in contributing to the documentation please see the instructions available from the ld-decode documentation GitHub

The original wiki page below will be available until 2025-12-20. Do not update this wiki.

ld-compress is a script to simplify the compression of .lds (raw LaserDisc RF files) into .ldf images.

ld-decode fully supports FLAC compressed files as input. Files can be suffixed with .ldf as shown here, or .raw.oga. ld-decode will automatically uncompress the input file during processing.

To compress a .lds file simply use:

ld-compress <filename>.lds

This script will write a .ldf compressed version of the .lds file to the directory it's called from.

ld-compress also supports GPU acceleration via FlaLDF. This requires an OpenCL compatible GPU and installation of FlaLDF.

Download FlaLDF. Linux users, install using the .deb. If you're on Mac, add FlaLDF to your PATH.

To compress an .lds file with GPU acceleration, use:

ld-compress -a <filename>.lds

Flaccl does not presently support ogg file containers, so the the output will be with the file extension of .flac.ldf to distinguish from traditionally compressed captures.

Requires FLAC Installed in path / FLACLDF Installed in the directory of tools.

Save files to .bat to make them drag and drop scripts.

CPU (Native)

@echo off
title Compressing : %~n1
C:\ld-tools-suite-windows\ld-lds-converter.exe -u -i "%~1" | ffmpeg -f s16le -ar 40k -ac 1 -i - -acodec flac -compression_level 11 -f ogg "%~dp1%~n1.ldf"

pause

GPU (Nvida CUDA)

@echo off
title Compressing : %~n1
C:\ld-tools-suite-windows\ld-lds-converter.exe -i "%~1" -u -r | C:\ld-tools-suite-windows\CUETools.FLACCL.cmd.exe -11 -o "%~dp1%~n1.ldf" --lax --ignore-chunk-sizes --task-size 16 --fast-gpu -

pause

The full list of command line options is as follows:

Usage: /usr/local/bin/ld-compress [-c] [-a] [-u] [-v] [-p] [-h] [-l <1-12>] [-g] file(s)

Modes:
-c Compress (default): Takes one or more .lds files and compresses them to .ldf files in the current directory.
-u Uncompress: Takes one or more .ldf/.raw.oga files and uncompresses them to .lds files in the current directory.
-a GPU Acceleration.  Uses OpenCL or CUDA to accelerate encoding. See https://github.com/happycube/ld-decode/wiki/ld-decode-utilities
-v Verify: Returns md5 checksums of the given .ldf/.raw.oga files and their contained .lds files for verification purposes.
Options
-p Progress: displays progress bars - requires pv to be installed.
-h Help: This dialog.
-l Compression level 1 - 12 (1 - 11 for GPU encoding). Default is 11 (10 for GPU). 6 is recommended for faster but fair compression.
-g Use .raw.oga extension instead of .ldf when compressing.