what’s your retroarch video output resolution? (i think the bottom setting in the menu when you press ‘x’ during launch) you should set it to “video output”

in any case, you should probably use an overlay anyway! they have a predictable outcome and also have less of a performance impact (ie, none!)

[quote=103557]Thanks for the reply. I think I’ll give the overlays a shot. They do seem like a good choice. I watched one of Floob’s videos on the topic a while back, but will have to watch again now that I know a bit more about it.

I see a lot of overlays and guides for 1080p displays, but not much for 720p. Know of any good overlays (and/or tutorials) for 720p? I have photoshop, and I think I recall reading somewhere that I could just scale down a 1920×1080 overlay to 1360×768. Not sure if it’s really that easy?

dankcushions wrote:

what’s your retroarch video output resolution? (i think the bottom setting in the menu when you press ‘x’ during launch) you should set it to “video output”

in any case, you should probably use an overlay anyway! they have a predictable outcome and also have less of a performance impact (ie, none!)

[/quote]

You don’t want to scale the overlays, just make one that is the same size as your desired resolution. They are very easy to make with the tile feature in Photoshop or Gimp.

Regarding the uneven scanlines with Hyllian, that’s a scaling issue- you probably don’t have the aspect ratio set right. to avoid these artifacts, you need to turn integer scale ON under video settings, then set a custom resolution under options -> video options

I could put some more 720p options into this tool
https://github.com/biscuits99/rp-video-manager

Although I have a 720p TV and it sort of gets the 1080p ones to work, so it could be worth trying on the off chance. Also, just a reminder, if you have tweaked your config a lot, do backup before using the tool unless you are comfortable editing the system based retroarch.cfg files.

[quote=103761]Ok, I think I figured it out. I read patrickm’s posts and watched floob’s videos a few more times to really let everything sink in. Now I feel comfortable editing all of this in the config files with my text editor, which is the way I prefer doing it.

I used patrickm’s 3x scanlines PNG, and used photoshop to change the size of it to match my display resolution of 1366×768 (using the Crop function, not Resize). Right now I have it set to 50% opacity, and it looks great. Although I have not tested different opacities yet, so I may find a setting I like even more.

I also should note that aside from it looking great, performance seems to be excellent. I can definitely tell a difference in terms of input lag from when I was using shaders. I highly recommend this method if playability is your #1 concern, like me.

Here are my retroarch.cfg settings. For each emulator, Retroarch “render resolution” has been set to “use video output”. To find viewport width and height, I went into RGUI and with integer scaling on, I changed the custom resolutions until i found one that looked like the correct ratio and was still visible all screen.

As of now, I have “crop overscan” set to “false” for all of these. Although, patrickm mentioned that it needed to be on for some emulators, so I should probably test this more. (suggestions/experiences welcome)

My next challenge will be to achieve this (proper scaling and use of overlays) for gngeo and Mame. If anyone can point me in the right direction for that, it would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks again to patrickm and floob for the great information and guidance.

NES

video_shader_enable = false
video_fullscreen_x = 1366
video_fullscreen_y = 768
custom_viewport_width = 768
custom_viewport_height = 720
custom_viewport_x = 0
custom_viewport_y = 0
aspect_ratio_index = 22
video_scale_integer = true

input_overlay = /opt/retropie/emulators/retroarch/overlays/effects/scanlines/CRT-j-scanlines-1366x768-2.cfg
input_overlay_enable = true
input_overlay_opacity = 0.500000
input_overlay_scale = 1.000000
video_smooth = false

SNES

video_shader_enable = false
video_fullscreen_x = 1366
video_fullscreen_y = 768
custom_viewport_width = 1024
custom_viewport_height = 717
custom_viewport_x = 0
custom_viewport_y = 0
aspect_ratio_index = 22
video_scale_integer = true

input_overlay = /opt/retropie/emulators/retroarch/overlays/effects/scanlines/CRT-j-scanlines-1366x768-2.cfg
input_overlay_enable = true
input_overlay_opacity = 0.500000
input_overlay_scale = 1.000000
video_smooth = false

MEGADRIVE

video_shader_enable = false
video_fullscreen_x = 1366
video_fullscreen_y = 768
custom_viewport_width = 960
custom_viewport_height = 672
custom_viewport_x = 0
custom_viewport_y = 0
aspect_ratio_index = 22
video_scale_integer = true

input_overlay = /opt/retropie/emulators/retroarch/overlays/effects/scanlines/CRT-j-scanlines-1366x768-2.cfg
input_overlay_enable = true
input_overlay_opacity = 0.500000
input_overlay_scale = 1.000000
video_smooth = false

(click for full size image)

[/quote]
Yep having video_scale_interger = “true” help me figure out my problem.

@geauxwave – If you want to provide the images used in your examples I’d be happy to add your settings to this video tool to let others qyuickly try out your settings.
I’ve added thorigs yesterday.
https://github.com/biscuits99/rp-video-manager

@dankcushions – that sounds great to create custom per rom configs for libretro based mame emulation.

@blockaboots Which option have you selected where Master System is sluggish? If you let me know which of the options you have used I can check the config.
At the moment there is only one shader option, the rest are overlays, but I could always add other shaders as options.

You can find various non scanline overlays in
/opt/retropie/emulators/retroarch/borders/
and some here
http://retroarchborders.blogspot.co.uk/

Ah – that image was provided by user thorig:
https://www.petrockblock.com/community/members/thorig/

I think thorig may have more info on the original versions of that.