SingMai SM03 review? (Sing Mai SM-03)

[traal]

Quote:

Originally Posted by latreche34

Another issue, and I've already discussed it with you in previous e-mails is that people don't know what to do with an SDI port, If you tell them you need another device to connect to the computer they will see another expense and often they get confused about which one is the capture device the one next to the VCR or the one next to the computer, If you can find a way to put a USB or thunderbolt port or a port for an external storage device like a SSD that can save the uncompressed and uncropped 10/8bit 4:2:2 AVI that would be the device of the century.

Or just an S-Video connector for output so I can easily integrate it into my existing capture chain.

Also, there seems to be some overlap in capability between the SM-03, SM-10, and SM-14, so it would be good to have a chart that shows the differences.

[latreche34]

No, having S-Video out defeats the purpose of the devise's existence entirely, The SM03 is a capture device that converts analog to digital, If you go back to analog it incurs an unnecessary lossy step and requires another capture device instead of just a SDI to USB interface, Not to mention that they have to fit in another DAC which increases the cost.

[SingMai]

Hello,

In response to comments above:

The SM03 webpage now has a table showing the differences between the SM03, SM10 and SM14: https://www.singmai.com/Modules/sm03.html

I have added more information in Chapter 2 of the user manual on SDI and how to display and capture the video: https://www.singmai.com/Documents/SM...r%20Manual.pdf

I am adding NTSC443 and PAL60 standards to those supported by the SM03.

And just a comment, the Magewell modules can record uncompressed video if required.

I welcome any other comments or questions.

[traal]

Quote:

Originally Posted by latreche34

No, having S-Video out defeats the purpose of the devise's existence entirely... Not to mention that they have to fit in another DAC which increases the cost.

Hold on, are you saying that other external TBCs are pure analog devices from end to end, they don't have a DAC in them?

[hodgey]

Other than very ancient ones for early open reel tape formats no. If there is analog output there will be a DAC of some sort that turns the digital signal back to analog.

[latreche34]

Quote:

Originally Posted by traal

Hold on, are you saying that other external TBCs are pure analog devices from end to end, they don't have a DAC in them?

Haven't said anything about conventional TBC's, I was talking about the SM03 being a capture device with integrated TBC functionality after the ADC, But just to answer your question, yes conventional TBC's do have both ADC and DAC for video only. The SM03 does not need a DAC, it's function is to digitize both video ad audio, do the timing and other digital processing and send the digital signal to computer in its lossless form, My point was why do you want to convert the signal back to analog, for what purpose?

[Hushpower]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Latreche

and send the digital signal to computer in its lossless form

I'm being picky, but that's not strictly correct. It only outputs SDI. You need another gadget to "convert" the SDI signal into computerspeak ie USB ingest.

Singmai provides that converter gadget (PCIe or USB) with the SM03 (for an additional cost), noting of course your previous comment that it would be great to have that integrated into the SM-03 box.

[lordsmurf]

Quote:

Originally Posted by latreche34

My point was why do you want to convert the signal back to analog, for what purpose?

Detailers, proc amps, etc. And not everybody wants to be locked in with married devices. Not all capture cards play nice with all tapes, even with TBCs in the workflow. Same for all TBCs, but you want a certain capture card. As mentioned many times, SDI is closed loop. If you want SDI, fine, but the lack of DAC is not a very strong argument. The issues with DAC is really more about the quality (or lack thereof), not mere existence.

[latreche34]

Quote:

Originally Posted by SingMai

I am adding NTSC443 and PAL60 standards to those supported by the SM03.

And just a comment, the Magewell modules can record uncompressed video if required.

I welcome any other comments or questions.

Nice to see NTSC4.43 and PAL60 but how about native SECAM and MESECAM? Oh by the way the community here seem to dislike any advice to use OBS, Don't know what has changed over the years but it use to have problems capturing SD rec.601 based materials.

[lordsmurf]

Quote:

Originally Posted by latreche34

Nice to see NTSC4.43 and PAL60 but how about native SECAM and MESECAM? Oh by the way the community here seem to dislike any advice to use OBS, Don't know what has changed over the years but it use to have problems capturing SD rec.601 based materials.

It's not just that, either.

OBS connects to capture cards at the screen recording layer, sandwiches between actual device connection, and overlay/display. Computer display has multiple layers. At the non-device layer, it's subjected to errors/corruption and alterations. Some NLEs used to operate this was as well, contributing to why NLEs all sucked at capture (and still do, for other reasons, mostly still resources overhead).

So OBS isn't capturing with the hardware, it's screen recording, but at a less-molested way that many understand screen recording. In this way, OBS is a more advanced screen recorder than most.

I can't explain all the extreme technicals too well here, but it's essentially DirectX, which you'll note is a requirement of OBS.

OBS is crap for analog capture. It's fine for everything else. Not unusual, as it's an "also has" feature, and those are never good with anything in the capturing world, hardware or software. A poor "feature".

[Bogilein]

This is the conversation with Lord Smurf from the Singmai Scammer post. However, since this has nothing to do with scam, I'm copying the posts here with my response.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bogilein

That's not entirely true. I know two people who have the SM03 device.

One has the old and the new device, and the other has the new device.

As far as I know, the devices were only manufactured after orders were placed.

Singmai was basically a small one-man company.

Quote:

Originally Posted by lordsmurf

Thanks for that bit of info, however...

How well do you know the people making this claim? I've known people online that make false claims about items existing.

I trust your information ... you've earned it. But I just want to know how well you trust them.

Assuming all is accurate, this is great news, he made some items before passing. But I've not seen/read any feedback on performance. If he was one-off making these units manually, then I'd suggest those are all unique prototypes. It's not really non-prototype until you start some sort of scale production, even if small.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bogilein

I would trust the person who owns both devices for 90% and the person who owns the new SM03 device for 99.9%.

On the other point, I agree with you. Somehow, they are all prototypes. I don't think the devices were intended for mass production.
For your information, I ordered the old device in February 2023 and was told that it would be ready in a week. Then it was two weeks, then three weeks. They couldn't get the Altera FPGA anymore. The alternatives didn't work, and the result was that the SM03 was discontinued and my order was canceled.

From this, I conclude that there are no remaining stocks and that they only produced after someone placed a order. The same applies to the new device. Anyone who has read his online diaries can then figure out the rest for themselves.

https://web.archive.org/web/20240720...//danploy.com/

Quote:

Originally Posted by lordsmurf

I saw this earlier today: https://forum.lddb.com/viewtopic.php...9602&start=100

Is that the person you refer to, who has both units? nidi from Switzerland?

I notice that some of the posters there have the same doubts and experiences that I do, the old "pics or it doesn't exist" rightful attitude. reelyinteresting was especially spot-on in his comments.


In that same LDdb thread, nidi posted images of the inside of the v2(?) blue unit internals. That Altera is not the only old chip that was used. I wonder where he even got some of those, as some are at least 15 years old. I'm disappointed by what I see there, and I now heavily doubt the SM03 would have ever worked well.


And I appreciate your input here.

Yes, I was referring to the user Nidi with the two devices.

The blue SM03 device appears to be without a Y/C input. It would then have to be a device from 2021 to mid-2022. The SM03 V1 devices with Y/C were available from mid-2022 to early 2023. The Singmai V03 V2 devices were available from early April 2024 to late April 2024.

According to the Singmai Facebook page from May 6, 2024, the first devices were delivered to companies.

After the Media Production Show in May, Dan was apparently in such poor health that he could no longer deliver or assemble devices. There may be a few more V1 devices than V2 versions. Privately owned by users involved in video capture, I think you can count the devices on two hands.
I have packed all the pictures of the two devices and user manuals I have into a zip file and attached it here.

[nidi]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bogilein

This is the conversation with Lord Smurf from the Singmai Scammer post. However, since this has nothing to do with scam, I'm copying the posts here with my response.












Yes, I was referring to the user Nidi with the two devices.

The blue SM03 device appears to be without a Y/C input. It would then have to be a device from 2021 to mid-2022. The SM03 V1 devices with Y/C were available from mid-2022 to early 2023. The Singmai V03 V2 devices were available from early April 2024 to late April 2024.

According to the Singmai Facebook page from May 6, 2024, the first devices were delivered to companies.

After the Media Production Show in May, Dan was apparently in such poor health that he could no longer deliver or assemble devices. There may be a few more V1 devices than V2 versions. Privately owned by users involved in video capture, I think you can count the devices on two hands.
I have packed all the pictures of the two devices and user manuals I have into a zip file and attached it here.

That would be me, just discovered this forum and saw my pseudonym.

Sad to hear Daniel has pased. I had e-mails back and forth with him for years.
captured some scenes and commented on his work.

I was mainly interested in good 3D Y/C comb filters to capture some clips from my LD collection.

tried several 3D Y/C models to see if it would better the already very good NEC 3D Y/C comb filter in Pioneer's Flagship MUSE HLD-X0 player.

[nidi]

here's the link to my comb filter tests that I made a while ago

https://forum.lddb.com/viewtopic.php?f=50&t=11095

[nidi]

link to pictures and videos of the 2 units

https://forum.lddb.com/viewtopic.php?f=50&t=9602&start=100

[aramkolt]

Ah yes, the old "what is the best YC comb filter" question - IE, what separates composite TO S-Video the best with the fewest artifacts (typically rainbowing, dot crawl, and/or sharpness loss).

Most people I've talked to say that the Harris/Leitch DPS-X75 with A3D composite input card does the best overall, but I don't think I've seen an actual comparison to the SM03 - I did check out the "MEGA.nz link" posted on the laserdisc database and I don't think I saw anything captured with the SM03 unfortunately.

I'm not totally sold on the X75 being the best having not done the testing yet, but I do have one for testing. I'd be using a TPG21 with the Snell and Wilcox SW2 pattern on it as the source which is an uncompressed version of what's on the different video essentials products. I do think just using the video essentials DVD with the SW2 pattern is probably good enough to show the sort of problems we would be looking for.

There also is some question as to how well these different TBCs handle line errors and for the most part the first digital device in a chain will "bake in" any errors, so using something like an X75 *AFTER* say a passthrough DVD recorder, I don't think you'd get any benefit over just using the S-Video output of the DVD recorder.

The X75 isn't particularly super rare and I think that is why several people have tried it, but there are lots of other interesting devices such as more modern For.A (thinking FA-9000/9100/9600), Snell and Wilcox (CVR and TBS series). I've even seen some Snell and Wilcox composite video decoders that actually have laserdisc specific modes in the menus - those are typically in the MDD series, though they do make a variety of modular composite decoder cards also.

I may put up a separate post with just the SW2 pattern from the video essentials DVD as a burnable ISO and ask people to post their results of burning the disc and then playing it via composite into their chain to show the results that can be publicly posted and compared. Variances in DVD or bluray players shouldn't matter for the sort of errors we are looking for as far as the performance of comb filters. If you wanted to get fancier, you'd then record that pattern from DVD (via S-Video) to VHS, then try to capture that tape to see how the same chains handle timebase errors via composite output from the VCR playback also. While I also haven't experimented with patterns recorded to VHS, you might be able to purposely induce more timebase errors by playing the tape back on a different VHS player than the one that it was recorded on (ideally different brand altogether). The key here is making the recording with an SVHS recorder with S-Video in. The playback part can be with a basic composite output only VCR or at least with any internal TBC features turned off.

[nidi]

Yes, there are no Singmai captures, as I don't have a way to capture via a PC.
I can however use a camera and record off my screen.

created a new directory called Singmai, there's a recording off my screen

[latreche34]

You can use a SDI recorder. Do you have the latest version of the SM device after the chip shortage or before?

[nidi]

I do have the old blue one and the new one with the LCD display.