Hiya. Me again with another Roland P-10 question.
Fairly frequently I am finding that I am unable to sample into the P-10 directly, as it says ‘Copy Guard detected’. I’m not sure why or how this is happening, as the material is being run through various glitch boxes and other things. I’m wondering if there is some way to strip the copyguard from the signal?
…i do not know what is interfering there with you P-10, however ‚generally‘ there exist(ed) a couple of devices aimed at removing copy-protection from video sources…
…i have some in storage and will post those devices names as soon as i find them - however, you should easily find them advertised on big auction-sites; beware however, as i do not understand what is causing your P-10 to launch the ‚copy protection‘ it is unsure if those devices really can cure the problem you are having…
I had this problem trying to record directly from a VCR to my P-10.
The way I fixed it was by running the signal from a VCR through a mixer like a V-4 then plugging the output from the mixer into the P-10. I’m guessing something about the TBC helps to remove the ‘Copy Guard’ hope this helps!
…uhm…the roland V-4 is known for having a very weak TBC - if a cheap and simple but very effective method for image stabilization is needed i would recommend the Panasonic ES-10 ( Panasonic DMR-ES10 Test ) - i have several of these and they do a really great job (as i do not own a real TBC yet)…
…but then if i remember correctly @amfas owns a Video Tech VMX-410 (or 400?) which also should be great to stabilize the video signal…
Thanks! I was trying to avoid a TBC as I wanted to capture the glitchy output with as little interference as possible, but then again the P-10 is prone to drop out with hard glitches anyway, so maybe that doesn’t matter.
I’m really curious where the copyguard is coming from. Perhaps it’s some of the glitched up devices I have that are scrambling the signal and it’s getting confused.
I believe the copyguard is coming from the P-10. It was one thing I noticed where certain VHS had no issue when being loaded into the P-10 but other VHS tapes specifically dis-knee would have the copyguard show up. Feel as though a code is written into the tape and P-10 was designed to read that code and put up the copyguard message. This is all just a guess tho.
My understanding of the copyguard stuff is that it was transmitted with the analogue signal as a kind of copy protection, to stop folks from… well, copying commercial tapes etc. So it will be attached to the source, not the P-10. The P-10 is just designed to respect the copyguard indicator and refuse to allow capturing. With Disney that makes sense, for example.
In my case, I am using a digital source (cheap HDMI player), which is converted to composite and run through a bunch of glitch boxes. The video is all ripped from the web, so there’s no way it could have the copyguard signal (that I am aware of). I can only suspect that some of my glitch devices are getting confused somehow. Weird.
I’ll try the TBC, buuut I think in the past my VideoTech one didn’t work actually… the copyguard persisted. Hm.
Ya very strange… I think you’re right, somehow the glitch is creating the signal that tells the P-10 to put up the copyguard message.
Hope the TBC works.
Very curious. Until I read this, the prime suspects in my mind for potential causes were either Macrovision from tapes or HDCP from DVDs etc. Couldn’t imagine those signals would persist to be a problem after so many generations of analog-digital rips and conversions followed by a glitch chain into the P-10, hmmm. Perhaps a different brand of mixer at the end of chain might do it, not familiar with VideoTech but I have heard that the TBCs in vintage Panasonic mixers (MX-,AVE- series, etc) were effective at bypassing Macrovision signals back in the day.
Alternatively, I would also consider running your problematic signal into something like a Waaave Pool with USB capture and then feed that into the P-10. Would be pretty wild if even that wasn’t enough to fix the issue, at which point I’d blame the cheap HDMI player and/or the P-10.
I haven’t looked ito the specifics in a long time, but in broad stroke terms the way Macrovision (and I assume all the others) worked is that the gain of the video signal is modulated at a fairly high frequency. A CRT is pretty fogiving but the auto gain control in a VCR can’t handle it, so a CRT will smooth the levels out but if you try to go from VCR to VCR the record deck will get confused and the picture will flip between too dark and too bright every few seconds (sort of, it’s not just levels). I used to copy macrovision tapes all the time as a kid and they were still pretty watchable, it just meant that sometimes the picture was a bit dark and noisy with oversaturated reds, and other times it was a bit washed out, and it switched once or twice a minute. You wouldn’t be able to sell it as a commercial bootleg but if you weren’t picky it wasn’t the end of the world.
It makes sense that in a later system that actually detects it digitally, it could easily mistake glitchy signals for Macrovision. The down sid eis I’m not sure a TBC is going to solve the problem, since it isn’t actually sync related, but I’ve never tried and I’m not an expert.
Honestly it’s a pretty hacky system and Macrovision the company probably wouldn’t have stayed in business that long if they hadn’t used the money to go hard into patent-squatting. From the 80s until they bought a ton of metadata (Allmusic, I think Muse, and a few of the other biggest metadata sets for music and movies) and rebranded as Rovi back around 2008 or 9 most of their business was actually sitting on around 300 patents they had bought and being VERY, VERY litigious about it. Source: after the rebrand, they bought the company I worked for, made it the center of their new brand, and then laid off over 90% of us a year later, but not before we’d all spent plenty of time learning and gossiping about what a greasy company they are.
Thanks so much for the chat everybody! This has been really informative and interesting.
I really appreciate all the detail and insight in your reply, so thanks a lot. This in particular is what I suspected must be the case, but I had zero technical understanding to back it up. What you’re saying makes complete sense in relation to the modulation. It may also help explain why some VCRs help, if they smooth out signal which is modulating (as opposed to the synch within TBCs).
I will keep an eye out and try find a Panasonic ES-10 for a good price like @fairplay suggested and try inserting that into the signal. Unfortunately they either go for about £50 locally, or they are bust (no power), so it may be a wee bit before I decide to grab one.
I have less than it probably sounded like, trust me! Glad it helps, though.
I’m really just speculating about whether or not a TC would help, sinc eI’ve neer actualyl tried running anything with acrovision through mine (and it probably also depends on the model, since some of them do a lot more than simple timebase correction). Definitely ask around more about that before you invest in one (although it’s probably worth lookig at them regardless, since they actually help you preserve the glitchiness when you digitize stuff - when the sync gets really degraded almost all capture devices will drop the frames completely, but a TBC rebuilds the sync so alost anything can make it through the capture process. Once things are too far gone you’re pretty much down to TBC or camera+CRT.
…you are looking for any device from that series - i am not near my staorage so i do not remember, but some might be named ‚ES-60‘ and ‚ES-65‘ - but there are more…they have little different specs (harddrives in different sizes and such) in areas that are not used anyway if you just want them as image stabilizers…
A line in the sync/blanking area is used for copy protection. Glitching hard could emulate information on this line as it scrambles all the signals. Seems like it is doing just that.
