Thanks for putting so much effort into looking at a way of improving the video output. I’ll try them out soon.

If you like, I could look to incorporate your settings as an option in the video manager tool I have, so that users dont need to make any changes in RGUI, and you can change the settings per system.

You are welcome to test out the latest version here.
BE WARNED it will overwrite custom settings you may have had, so dont try this on a setup you have spent weeks tweaking.

Its set to work with RetroPie 3, not 2.6.
https://mega.co.nz/#!2NAUwbAL!BrgkCCWMerAxKDDE_0LYtR2qKjkDN26QZbDrIuIJ_28

When copied to your home directory

unzip -o rp-video-manager-11-JUL-2015.zip
cd /home/pi/rp-video-manager
chmod 755 videomanager.sh
./videomanager.sh

Can you confirm if your settings in the first post are geared to a particular system (is it just imame4all-libretro)? Then I can make sure I make it so it only affects that system.

You should back up your image as you have made so many tweaks – you dont want to lose it!
http://smartretro.co.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=58

With these settings, the overlay is being scaled with bilinear filter, which is blurring some of the scanlines and causing the moire effect you were describing. IMO this can be very distracting, particularly with vertically scrolling games.

I’ve detailed a way to get pixel perfect scaling at 1080p while cropping both the letterboxing (the black bars) and the overscan, so that the picture fills the vertical area of the screen and the scanlines line up perfectly without scaling artifacts, cf., “how to get perfect video scaling” and “how to get scanlines.”

There are a couple incorrect assumptions you’re making, one of which is that most systems put out 224 horizontal lines of resolution, which is not the case. If you’re losing important score/credit info, as you said you were at 5x scale, it’s likely because you are using 224 as the internal resolution instead of 240. What gets cropped at 5x scale corresponds exactly to the overscan area on an NTSC CRT TV. The remaining area is referred to as the “safe zone,” and game developers would always make sure that important game graphics were displayed within this zone (with a few rare exceptions), and they frequently made use of the overscan area to store information that the player wasn’t supposed to see (usually, to compensate for the variability in how CRTs were calibrated).

Also, regarding opacity, IMO you’re better off setting your display’s “backlight” setting higher to compensate for the loss of brightness. (This is not the same as the “brightness” setting). For example, with 4x scanlines at 100%, you would lose 50% light output, so you compensate for this by increasing the backlight by the same amount (eg., if your backlight is at 50%, you would turn it up to 100%).

Also, regarding the dotmask shader, it will cause a drop in frame rate and input lag, but it is slight. I’m sensitive to these things, so it ruins it for me, personally.

With this said, could you please correct the misinformation contained in your post regarding the horizontal resolution of console systems? This kind of information can quickly and easily spread once posted, leading to more confusion and problems, and it works against the efforts of those who are working to preserve authenticity and accuracy. Thank you. :)

The correct horizontal resolution is 240 for NES, SNES, Genesis, PS1, N64, PC Engine. This can be readily corroborated by using Google and searching “internal resolution (system name)”

However, there are individual core differences and bugs where the internal resolution isn’t right, Picodrive being a notable example. So the correct resolution for a system may not be the “correct” resolution for an emulator. I’ve saved you the work by providing a list of resolutions to use in “how to get perfect scaling.”

I haven’t tested Neo Geo, but I think it varied, with the most common being 264 with overscan (240 without)

[quote=101999]
nope, it’s not being scaled. my overlays are 1080p, so if you set your retroarch video output to 1080p, no scaling takes place. i have scaled the scanlines ahead of time in gimp, but it seems to be a subtler effect, and not noticeable (to me) – see my screenshots.[/quote]

This is what I meant, though. You have scaled the overlay in gimp using linear filter. If you zoom in, you will see that this results in a blurring effect and alters the appearance of the scanlines in an irregular fashion. In addition, I think this darkens the image more.

It may not be noticeable except when vertically scrolling, when it can be very distracting. The moire effect you describe is consistent with what occurs when you use linear filter on the overlay in gimp or photoshop. You want to use “nearest” or “none” to avoid this.

The only other thing I can think of that would cause this is that your tv is not doing 1:1 pixel mapping, as in you are not in fullscreen mode but are zooming/stretching the picture somehow.

[quote]
nope, I was using 216 instead of 224, in the scenario I was talking about (this is the visible area you end up with when trying to 5x integer scale on a 224 line system). you can’t show 224 lines on a 1080p screen in a 5x integer scale (5*224=1120)[/quote]

The games were designed with overscan in mind- the safe area is 90% of the vertical area on an NTSC CRT. So if you integer scale 240 by 5x to get 1200, you lose 120 lines on a 1080p display, or exactly 10% of the vertical area. So what gets cropped corresponds exactly to the overscan area, which is perfect. You don’t want to see overscan, do you?

[quote]
Do you have a way of measuring this? None of the retroarch emulators seem to be able to display framerate for me.[/quote]

I think there’s an option to display frame rate under video settings, but I tested input lag and frame rate by just walking back and forth in Final Fantasy III. Every so often there is a skipped frame when using the dotmask shader. I’ve attempted to recreate the dotmask effect via an overlay, but the pi is doing something strange that causes bizarre artifacts when I attempt to add vertical lines that are 1px wide.

Also, regarding the note you added, it isn’t quite correct. It just varies from system to system whether overscan is cropped or not; it causes a lot of confusion and is why crop overscan is probably going away in a future version. Crop overscan behavior is very core dependent, there’s really no generalization you can make, here.

[quote=102060]nope, as I say below, I got that effect when perfect 1px scanlines and integer scaling on – it’s totally a feature of my TV.[/quote]

It’s a feature of the image you’re using and the type of scaling that you’re applying. I just confirmed this by looking at the full size image you linked to- check the blue area in the Sonic screenshot. The scanlines in this area should be uniform at 800% zoom, but they aren’t- this can create the described moire effect.

[quote]using a ‘nearest’ filter would make it look awful – you get 2 pixel-thick scanlines every so often.[/quote]

That isn’t related to nearest neighbor per se, it’s a function of how the image is being scaled. Nearest neighbor will result in the most accurate scaling with the fewest artifacts.

[quote]so most games show important graphics only in the centre-most 216, but they will normally still render the playing field up to 224. given that most consumer CRTS (especially as we edge into the 90s) showed the centre 224 with increasingly tighter tolerance, showing the full 224 is more ‘realistic’ than just emulating a rubbish TV eg, see my sonic screenshot – there’s non-glitched graphics across the entire 224 lines.[/quote]

You seem to think that the padding is meant to be displayed, when it gets cropped on a CRT. Just because the graphics aren’t glitched at the top/bottom doesn’t mean it’s not padding. Notice how the score/time/rings display and the Sonic lives display is not right at the edge? That’s because some TVs would drop right up to those graphics. Heck, I’ve got a cheap Sanyo CRT that crops even more than this- the top two lines where it says “score.” This is not an old TV, but one from the mid 2000s.

Since CRTs varied in how much they cropped, the game developers had to allow for this by placing all important graphics within the safe area. If they put those graphics right at the edge, they’d be cut off most of the time on a CRT.

The safe area is not console dependent but depends on the CRT. It is defined as 90% of the total viewing area.

I personally don’t see what is gained by displaying the overscan; it’s useless information that takes up display area and it isn’t authentic/accurate to how the games were displayed on an actual CRT. But whatever floats your boat. :) some people just really want to see every line put out by a console, even if you didn’t see it on a TV…

[quote]
a 5x integer scale for these games cuts into the scores, credits, health-bars, etc. see my windjammers screenshot for an example.[/quote]

I haven’t looked at windjammers, but nothing important should be cropped at 5x integer if crop overscan is on the right setting for the core being used and you are scaling up from the right resolution.

[quote=102160]

yes, but as i said (4 times, now), I a similar effect because of my TV, even when using no scnaline. I do NOT get this effect when using lower opacity on the scanlines, scaling or not. Apparently you are unable to take my word for it, so here’s some screenshots (ignore the vertical white ‘ovals’ as they are just an effect of my phone camera):[/quote]

All opacity does is adjust the darkness of the overlay. The artifacts are most likely there even at lower opacity; you’re just not able to notice them at that opacity.

[quote]
i say again, most TVs displayed the centre 224 lines. http://wiki.nesdev.com/w/index.php/Overscan: “Actual TVs show about 224 lines of the signal, hence the commonly reported 256×224 resolution. But the vertical position may be slightly off center.” – this is why almost all games will render the playing field for the full 224 lines, knowing that most users would see it, rather than show borders because some users wouldn’t. “In fact, even some CRT SDTVs made in the 2000s show more of the bottom than the top; this may be so that tickers on cable news channels aren’t cut off.” – this might account for your TV, but for those of us who want to emulate TVs from the era, showing the full 224 lines is accurate (and shows more of the game).[/quote]

the statement “most TVs displayed the center 224 lines” is misleading. The wiki page provides no source for the claim, and the claim does not account for the very wide variance in how CRT TVs were calibrated. There was no single standard, only a correct range. The safe area is 90% of the picture, and is where game developers placed important graphics. That’s all that really matters for the purpose of displaying games. The developers didn’t plan for a hypothetical average, they planned for the maximum amount that a TV would crop so that the games would look right on anyone’s TV.

(http://www.nab.org/xert/scitech/pdfs/tv031510.pdf)

One problem is that it looks like you are not taking into account how crop overscan behavior alters the internal resolution of the game. For example with SNES9x, turning it on alters the reported internal resolution, so when you scale up, more gets cropped off than when you leave it off.

Furthermore, the number of lines displayed by the TV has no bearing on what the internal resolution of the system is, or what it should be set to. NES for example put out 240 horizontal lines, no exceptions. The TV would display anywhere from 90-100% of these lines so anywhere from 216-240 lines would wind up being displayed. There is no “more accurate,” here, since the amount that got displayed varied widely by manufacturer, model, and individual set.

[quote]clearly you haven’t tried it. here’s what nearest neighbour scaled (224 lines in 1080) scanlines look like close up:[/quote]

Clearly I haven’t tried it?

It looks like you’re scaling up from the wrong resolution and/or using bilinear filter on the overlay in Gimp. Here’s what nearest neighbor looks like with the 5x scanline overlay I’ve provided at 5x scale, using 240 as the native resolution. It’s fine. It seems like you’re doing something strange on your end that is causing the issues you’re describing.

http://s1309.photobucket.com/user/Patrick_McCleery/media/image.jpg1_zpswuxdykgm.jpg.html

[quote]For people who want to play neogeo or (many) arcade games, at full screen, without cropping information – this is the only solution. The rest comes down to personal opinion about what parts of the screen are important/not important, and what CRTs you are used to.[/quote]

It’s a fact that the safe area is defined as 90% of the screen- see the link I provided above. This is the area that console developers used when designing graphics. Of course, arcade games are going to be different because they were designed to run on arcade monitors which were better made and didn’t have overscan. In other words, most arcade games probably don’t use padding, which is why important stuff gets cropped off at the edges when you use 5x scale on an emulator. Another factor complicating this is that arcade monitors often used different resolutions than standard CRT TVs.

If it really is 224 with no overscan (I think this is true for CPS) then the best you can do on a 1080p display if you want *perfect* scaling is scale up to 896, and have letterboxing equal to 184 lines, which is more than 17% of the total display area dedicated to letterboxing.

I’m not familiar with the neo geo emulator (or the neo geo for that matter) but it’s also very possible that it’s doing something weird with crop overscan.

However, these are unique cases- 5x scaling shouldn’t result in anything important being cropped on any other console system if the right settings are used.

[quote=102341]what I’m doing is giving the settings for a CRT TV that would display 224 lines, whereas[/quote]

And I’m trying to get you to appreciate the wide variance with which CRTs were calibrated, which you don’t seem to understand. The 224 line thing is truly pulled from nowhere with no source to back it up (this is a criticism of the wiki you linked to, not you). You need to understand that CRTs were analogue- controlling the paths of individual electrons with magnets. It wasn’t an exact science. As such, even individual TVs of the same manufacturer and model number could vary widely in the amount of overscan they displayed. CRTs were calibrated by hand after they were put together. It wasn’t like there was a whole batch that displayed 224 or something like that. You couldn’t even generalize about a particular model. Each CRT is unique, like a fingerprint or something. I encourage you to actually look at a few different CRTs and measure the overscan they display- you will most likely find that no two measurement are exactly the same even when looking at TVs of the same model. Literally the only generalization one can make here is that “the important game graphics were displayed within the safe area.”

[quote]u’re not understanding what’s going on here. your screenshot is displaying 216 lines (you can tell by the amount of ‘ground’ is displaying – compare to my screenshots above of a 224 line in 1080p scaled version). your scanlines are displaying 1:1. you won’t see any scaling of the overlay unless you turn off integer scaling – ie attempt to stretch 224 or 240 lines on a 1080p[/quote]

Nope, I’m afraid you are mistaken. The output seen in the screenshot is 240 lines with crop overscan off. That’s how many lines are being put out by the emulator in the screenshot I provided. 24 of these lines get cropped off by stretching the picture with 5x scaling so that the edge of the picture extends beyond the edge of the screen. So I’m displaying 216 lines but the output is the full 240.

The scaling artifacts are resulting from something you’re doing in gimp most likely. Below is a screenshot taken with the internal resolution set to 224 and scaled up by 6×5. 224 makes no difference in the appearance of the overlay vs 240.

http://s1309.photobucket.com/user/Patrick_McCleery/media/image.jpg1_zpsnt9eagkf.jpg.html

[quote]…or you use my method. you’re welcome[/quote]

And it will result in artifacts. Sorry, but there’s no method other than the one I described that won’t result in artifacts. Bilinear filter results in artifacts by definition, that’s just a function of how it works. It takes the average of four adjacent texels and determines the color based on that.

Its certainly making interesting reading!

As has been mentioned a few times, people will often have their own preference of how to implement their memory of how it all used to look on their CRT, so its very hard to come up with a perfect solution.
I’ll try to add more options into my video manager tool so people can quickly flip between different ways of doing this and choosing what they prefer.