Flickering / Shaking Screen in Windows Desktop & Feel (Fine in Games)?

[thefunk007]

Hi Guys,

Hope your all well.

Installation of all software went well I am using a GroovyMAME on Windows 7 with CRT_EmuDriver and a compatible video card.

The issue I have is that when the PC boots, windows will continually flicker to the point of it being very difficult to read anything and also when I load FEEL it will continue. I can scroll through the games list but again am unable to really read due to the constant flickering.

Once I launch a game in MAME it completely goes away and the game is 100% playable with no flickering, but once the game is closed it will revert back.

Any suggestions on what the issue could be?

I am using a PVM-20M2MDE and Etron RGB 201 RXi

Any help would be greatly appreciated as I can't figure out how to stop the flickering effect in the windows environment or why its happening?

Thanks
Lea x

[big10p]

I confess I don't know what FEEL or an Etron RGB 201 RXi are, but this issue is probably due to an issue with interlaced modes. The image jiggles up-and-down, rapidly? I get this on my arcade monitors - the fix is to edit the interlaced modelines in Arcade OSD, and increase the V Total (I think it is - I will check and report back) . Just keep increasing it a bit, until the image is stable. Note that to do this for the Windows desktop mode, you will first have to set it to another mode, adjust and save, then switch back to that mode as your desktop default.

Edit: Yep, it is V total that needs adjusting (assuming you have the same issue as me).

[thefunk007]

Thanks for the speedy response, this is exactly what happens.

I will try and apply your suggestions now and report back.

Thanks x

[Recapnation]

What are you using the Extron interface for? Just to manage the syncs? You may have some setting there which is causing a bad interlaced picture.

[thefunk007]

What are you using the Extron interface for? Just to manage the syncs? You may have some setting there which is causing a bad interlaced picture.

Yes that's correct, its a pretty basic unit with just centering buttons - I can get a perfect stable picture with 640 x 240 (looks great) - but the frontend which is FEEL try's to change to it's default resolution of 640 x 480 (which would be better for me as well).

The issue seems to be at this resolution, I get this almost vibrating effect until I launch a game, playing with the modeline in OSD does help but does still not give a rock steady stable image :-(

Any other suggestions would be welcome as it's kind of annoying.

Kind Regards
Lea x

[Recapnation]

"Interlaced" and "rock-steady stable" are mutually exclusive. You can get more or less interlace flickering depending on the CRT (and seems that Trinitrons are not too good at this) and on graphic filters (which, first off, are determined by the card model you're using), but you can't expect an interlaced picture to look like a progressive one, and indeed it normally is hard to read the small fonts at 480-I, especially at 20''. I'm not sure if you're aware of this.

[thefunk007]

Thank you for the reply.

I am new to this as I'm sure you can tell.

I will try the installation again and see if I can 'fix' the problem, I understand the image is interlaced and therefore not crystal clear due to the scanlines, it's the fact the screen in not stationary but sort of 'vibrating' at 640 x 480 which is the resolution ideally I would like to use for the front end.

If I could get it to stop the movement I would be perfectly happy but I can't no matter how much I play around with the OSD settings

I am using  HD 4890, I think I might switch and try a Ultimarc ArcadeVGA as it seems much simpler to plug and play.

Again, the issue is the vibration effect which I can't get rid of, other than that the image itself seems fine.

Kind Regards
Lea x

[Recapnation]

You aren't getting more simplicity or usability with an Arcade VGA card than with a regular Radeon beyond displaying the BIOS screens at 15 kHz from the get-go. Seems there's still a lot of misinformation regarding this.

I'm still not sure of what you're seeing, given that interlaced signals are not familiar to you. You could even be facing this issue. Since you're using an Extron interface, what I'd do at this point in order to know if there's actually an issue is: set the desktop at 640 x 480 @ ~60, with an image viewer, open a line-doubled picture at that res at full screen, such as this:



Then, set the Extron to get the picture de-interlaced -- normally there'll be a setting where the device causes an offset of one of the fields, resulting in a picture of 240 lines (progressive). If your image is then perfectly displayed (as if it were one of the low-res games you load fine through GM), then, there's no issue whatsoever and you just need your eyes to get used to interlaced pictures if you want the desktop and whatnot at 640 x 480 or higher.