Edirol VMC-1 / Roland VMC-1 Owner's Manual PDF [DOWNLOAD]
 

Wanted to archive this for anybody that may be looking for it.

NOTE: Note that you must be logged in to download files. If you're not already a member, then register now as a Free Member.
Or better yet, upgrade to a Premium Member status to support the community and get access to exclusive emails, newsletters and site content.

Canopus ADVC-300 and Ediroln VMC-1 are the best ever made external capture boxes and the only ones with TBC.

The TBC works in the VMC-1 but not in the ADVC-300, from what I have read and seen. Even though they use the same TBC chip.

As far as I know the only difference is on the VMC-1 you can turn off the TBC but on the ADVC-300 you cannot, If it has a TBC I don't see why it shouldn't work.

See for yourself.

Keep in mind that the best TBC is the one right inside your VCR, I don't see a lot of difference between VMC-1 and ADVC-300 TBC performance, The screen shots show that TBC is indeed working on the ADVC-300 but not as good as VMC-1 and that's one of the raisons why I went for the Roland VMC-1 few years back.

I prefer to capture to DV since I don't do editing otherwise I would capture to AVI, I personally like DV it is 4:2:2 compared to MPEG2 4:2:0, DV files can be played in most modern media players no DVD step needed, ADVC-300 and VMC-1 are one of the best professional capture boxes out there for non desktop users where the capture card is not an option, They both have real time picture adjustment on the fly a feature I sometimes need for tapes with oversaturated color due to misuse of the camcorder and need to tone it down little bit before digitizing, As far as TBC, it is recommended to use the VCR internal TBC or a combination of both which ever works best, I've read a lot of bad reviews about the ADVC-300 but this is just my opinion and my workflow no recommendation made.

NTSC DV is 4:1:1 and PAL DV is 4:2:0 with a different configuration than MPEG-2.

You mean set-top boxes? Which ones?

The Canopus ADVC TBC does nothing whatsoever. Worse yet, the 300 filtering is smeary and cannot be disabled.

To be honest with you, I haven't checked the PAL footage that I captured with Edirol VMC-1, but if there is a way to check the footage chroma sub numbers I will do and let you know, According to the VMC-1 spec it does DV @ 4:2:2, I used to hardware capture MPEG2 and the files where a lot smaller than the DV ones, I got a lot of pixelisation and artifacts in dark and fast scenes, with DV I got larger files and less artifacts, Don't get me wrong I'm not saying DV compresses better than MPEG2, They are both lossy however DV in my case looked cleaner, I would go AVI lossless if I do it for a living but I'm not, I just splice and delete bad scenes or stitch footages together and that doesn't need converting and transcoding nor it affects the quality.
If you know any MPEG2 USB capture box that has picture control and TBC feature like the VMC-1 I'm willing to get it and try it, I was using Pinnacle 500-USB before. I will be trying this card it is MPEG4 native, they say MPEG4 is better and more efficient than MPEG2 and I want to find out myself.


All android boxes using native player or Kodi, NMT boxes such as HDX, TVIX, Popcorn Hour....
I have never converted my DV videos to any other format and I played them with no problem on HDX, TVIX and now nVidia shield and Pioneer Blu-ray player (played from DATA BD-R, external hard drive and thru network), They are huge files and I'm keeping them that way.

I've never used it but I believe you.

If you mean like what is stated on this page, it's saying that the raw analog-to-digital conversion is done at 4:2:2 before being compressed to standard DV (which doesn't support 4:2:2). Similarly, it mentions 10-bit video conversion and 24-bit audio conversion even though the resulting files will always be 8-bit video and 16-bit audio.

I have the USB3HDCAP. It actually uses software encoding; the included package allows H.264 software compression but the actual data sent to the computer is uncompressed 4:2:2 so it can be used to capture lossless.

Is there a new version of Popcorn Hour that supports this? Posts from 2014 and earlier indicate that they won't play DV.

What's the BD player model? This is the first I've heard of one that can play DV.

Since the analog video is interlaced the last number in 4:a:b is not important, Lets just talk about 4:a so if VMC-1 one encodes 4:2 to 4:1 then MPEG2 is better as it keeps 4:2 intact although I didn't see color smear on my DV footages compared to the analog source, in the other hand MPEG2 compression is harsh 25 min MPEG2 is about 900MB, DV is about 5GB for the same source.

Very interesting

Never used popcorn, used similar boxes that used the same chip and played fine, DV is just a standard, they are AVI files, Here is an example captured by VMC-1 using Adobe Premiere:

Pioneer BDP-150 using a hacked firmware

What leads you to this conclusion?

Your PAL captures are 4:2:0 with a different layout than MPEG-2 4:2:0, as I mentioned previously. The MediaInfo you posted provides you some confirmation as it states 4:2:0.

What do you mean by "just a standard"?

So it can't play them without hacking it? That seems disingenuous to just gloss over previously.

I'm not a video professional I always believed that the b number is for chroma vertical resolution, 0 means two vertical pixels will have the same chroma value, in interlaced mode either the odd or the even lines will be displayed in a given frame so it doesn't matter if the two odd/even pixels have the same info or not. But I would like to learn from you if you are in the field.

Indeed it's 4:2:0 I just noticed it after reading your reply, I will check the other videos, If you noticed the Sony name appears in the info because I chose Sony camcorder in premiere capture wizard list the VMC-1 wasn't in the list.

Yes DV is standard, was standardized within the IEC 61834 family of standards, DV-AVI is Microsoft's implementation of DV video file, which is wrapped into an AVI container : Wikipedia source.

On the BDP-150 the CFW (custom FW) suppose to disable CINAVIA don't think it has a bearing on what types of files can be played, I will have to take my word back on that until I double check, I use the player strictly for movie playback.

I guess DV PAL by standard is 4:2:0 copy/past from Wikipedia:
"There are three variants of 4:2:0 schemes, having different horizontal and vertical siting. [8]
- In MPEG-2, Cb and Cr are cosited horizontally. Cb and Cr are sited between pixels in the vertical direction (sited interstitially).
- In JPEG/JFIF, H.261, and MPEG-1, Cb and Cr are sited interstitially, halfway between alternate luma samples.
- In 4:2:0 DV, Cb and Cr are co-sited in the horizontal direction. In the vertical direction, they are co-sited on alternating lines.

Most digital video formats corresponding to PAL use 4:2:0 chroma subsampling, with the exception of DVCPRO25, which uses 4:1:1 chroma subsampling. Both the 4:1:1 and 4:2:0 schemes halve the bandwidth compared to no chroma subsampling"

Not that it matters, but this is only a coincidence. The "Sony" thing is just hardcoded into MediaInfo; it would show that for any "dvsd" file regardless of any settings you choose.

Yeah, but my question was what you meant when you wrote "just a standard".

In basic terms, this part is correct (though not technically accurate).

This doesn't logically follow.

This will be difficult to demonstrate on the forum, but here is a 4:2:2 capture of an interlaced 59.94Hz portion of a LaserDisc. This footage was shot with a video camera, not telecined from film.

The "A" screenshots are direct from the source file, and the "B" screenshots have been converted to interlaced 4:2:0 (sited according to MPEG-2). Because of the nature of human color perception, you need to look really closely at the highly saturated color transitions to see the difference. When either of the chroma planes is converted to greyscale, though, the resolution drop is instantly visible.

Single field chroma, A & B:
Attachment 5668 Attachment 5669

Admin refused to unhide hidden content
nothing will help to see hidden content

"Before/after" single field crop 1 @ 500% zoom:
Admin refused to unhide hidden content
nothing will help to see hidden content

"Before/after" single field crop 2 @ 500% zoom:
Admin refused to unhide hidden content
nothing will help to see hidden content

Remember that anybody can edit Wikipedia entries. Wikipedia is an aggregate of info, and should lead to scholarly references. However, this often is not the case. Lots of wrong opinion is injected into entries. You need to be careful with what you read there. Realize that the author may know as much as you do, or even less.

@msgohan: I really like that you've used the before/after bbcode. :)

Yes I know, That's why I visit forums like this to hear from the people who do it in real life not just from pencil pushers.

I meant by DV is just a standard that the media player detects it as AVI not DV, none of my media players that I owned so far displays any DV word when playing the file.

On the last part I'm not following you, I never said capturing DV is better than capturing uncompressed, I said my MPEG2 captures looked worse than my DV captures due to higher compression of my MPEG2 footages, That's where I asked you if you know any MPEG2 card that does a better job.

I have a question about the screen shots that you provided, Was the chroma signal eliminated from the original video signal or the color picture converted to monochrome using photo software, I'm getting lost a little bit are you saying MPEG2 is not the way to go ??

Huh? I never said that you did. All I'm trying to show is that your understanding of 4:2:2 being meaningless for interlaced video isn't correct. Interlaced video can contain separate color on every scanline just the same as progressive video can.

The black & white photo is not the original image with color removed; it's the opposite: the original image's color in isolation. It's a representation of one of the two chroma planes.

Got ya, No problem, So are there any encoders out there that keep 4:2:2 of the footage captured after encoding to a playable format since neither DV nor MPEG2 keeps it? and is it worth it for the quality of an analogue video such as VHS/S-VHS/Video8/Hi8/Betamax/S-Betamax ?

I need to add a hardware question, Can I pull the uncompressed video using Edirol VMC-1 with firewire port? if so what software do I need?

I just want to share a sample of a VHS NTSC capture but I can't find a way to attach the file.

Answered here: http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/news...ly-upload.html

There is no attachment button in advanced mode, let me try another browser.

-- merged --

Wow cannot believe that internet explorer was the problem, here is a screen shot on how the page looked like: (see attached)

Anyway, here is a NTSC VHS tape that I captured with Edirol VMC-1 using adobe premiere capture wizard for demonstration purposes only, I didn't like the outcome although the tape is not in good quality, what do you guys think?, PAL captures were a lot better:

Forgot to mention that the VHS deck is Toshiba V-E61A nothing fancy.