Trouble getting 240p from my PC to SD CRT

[Ya Dad]

First of all, hello. This is my first post, and I hope to stick around and see what all this forum has to offer, and to also help answer questions in other posts if I can. For right now, I have a question and hopefully it's a solvable issue.

I am trying to get 240p from my Radeon R7 360 to my KV-36FV26 Trinitron SD CRT. I uninstalled my graphics drivers and installed CRT Emudriver, then ran VMMaker to get custom resolutions following the guide from the CRT Emudriver official website. I am using a VGA-to-YPbPr transcoder to get the signal to my TV's component inputs. So far I have a great 480i picture going to the TV from my PC, but I want to have 240p. My ultimate goal is to be able to use 240p super resolutions with RetroArch.

I also have a Raspberry Pi 3 Model B and get 240p from that with a 3.5mm to rca composite cable, but it's limited hardware capability makes emulating n64 games sluggish with certain games. This is why I want to use my PC instead, but it's much more difficult to setup 240p with, and currently I don't know what my next step is.

[morton]

Are you sure your model of TV is capable of 240p over Component? That would be the first step moving forward from here. I know some will take 240p and upscale it to 480i only. Not sure if yours is one of them, but may explain why the composite on the Pi works doing 240p, but not component on the PC. So maybe you are doing everything right, and your TV is just not going to play nice due to its inability to properly display 240p on component.

I'm just throwing out ideas, do not give up on account of me. I am actually interested in your outcome as well.

[Ya Dad]

Are you sure your model of TV is capable of 240p over Component? That would be the first step moving forward from here. I know some will take 240p and upscale it to 480i only. Not sure if yours is one of them, but may explain why the composite on the Pi works doing 240p, but not component on the PC. So maybe you are doing everything right, and your TV is just not going to play nice due to its inability to properly display 240p on component.

I'm just throwing out ideas, do not give up on account of me. I am actually interested in your outcome as well.

I'm sure. I have some consoles in my setup that output 240p RGB via SCART, and I use a SCART to YPbPr transcoder to feed it into the component inputs of my TV.

There's gotta be a way to output 240p. I know my graphics card is capable of it because I was able to output 240p RGBHV to my VGA CRT computer monitor (which looked amazing, had authentic scanlines as well). If my graphics card can output 31khz 240p, surely it can do 15khz 240p.

[buttersoft]

When you go into ArcadeOSD, can you see 240p modelines there? If not, your problem would be a crt_emudriver issue, or more correctly a VMM one, no? Do you have 240p in the List-of-Modes.ini you're setting VMM to calculate from? Assuming yes, does VMM show 240p modes in the list of modes it calculates, before you install them? (Have you accidentally set a dot clock minimum in VMM, or altered any other settings or ini's?)

If any of this confuses you, you need to go through the crt_emudriver install guide for the Radeon 5000 series and higher cards again, not the one for legacy 4000 series and lower cards.

http://geedorah.com/eiusdemmodi/forum/viewforum.php?id=2

FYI the GroovyMAME subforum is the home of crt_emudriver too, and the place to post any related questions in future

[Ya Dad]

I did follow the guide you linked to for the 5xxx cards. In VMM when I click on generate modes, I do have 240_60 15.xxkhz modes, but no matter what monitor preset I use, none of them have 320x240. they are all 240 super resolutions.

I am following the directions of a post in order to get Retroarch to work in 240p:

In order not to complicate this more than necessary given that I have many options overridden by per-core config. files, these should be the only ones you should care about for properly displaying RGUI and whatnot:

Code: [Select]

# menu_driver = rgui
# video_driver = d3d
# video_fullscreen = true
# video_fullscreen_x = 320
# video_fullscreen_y = 240
# video_windowed_fullscreen = false
# video_disable_composition = true
# video_smooth = false
# video_vsync = true
# video_threaded = false
# video_swap_interval = 1
# video_max_swapchain_images = 3
# video_gpu_screenshot = false

In case, set super wide resolutions only in per-core config. files, or else, you'll have to mess with aspect ratio options and those are not that elementary.

So according to that, I need 320x240, but none of the monitor presets in VMM have it =/

EDIT: just tried 2560x240 in the retroarch.cfg since it's in VMM, and it worked. I am getting progressive scan, but the image is extremely skinny.

I still want to be able to get 320x240, though, just because that post recommended to do that, and put super resolutions in the per-core settings.

EDIT2: I opened up user_modes - super.ini and under ## Desktop ## directly beneath the 640 x 480 res that was listed, I added:

320 x 240 @ 60.000000 desktop

Then I opened vmmaker.exe, clicked on Generate Modes, then Install Modes.

After that, it was as simple as right click, Screen Resolution, and selecting 320x240. I screamed like what I can only describe as a new-born guinea pig when I saw my TV go into 240p. I am glad no one was here to witness this.

[buttersoft]

I am glad no one was here to witness this.

I was.

And the skinny screen in retroarch is because you haven't set your horizontal stretch to fill that wide horizontal resolution. There's an option to scale, and one to fill, i think?

[Ya Dad]

Ok. To anyone else that may be googling how to fix this, these are the settings I have for near-exact SNES video aspect ratio and timings using super resolutions. If you want timings for a different console, google "____ resolution", where the blank is whatever console you want to know the resolution for. Then, multiply the first number by 10. For instance, the SNES resolution is 256x224, so for the super resolution I added, I used 2560x224. Anyway, here we go!:

- Open user_modes - super.ini using Notepad++ and add:
     2560 x 224 @ 60.000000 super

- Run vmmaker.exe, click Generate modes, then Install modes. You should see the resolution you added in user_modes - super.ini listed.

- Open retroarch.cfg using Notepad++, and change to the following:
     menu_driver = "rgui"
     video_fullscreen=true
     video_scale_integer=false
     video_smooth=false
     video_threaded=false
     video_shader_enable=false
     video_fullscreen_x = "2560"
     video_fullscreen_y = "224"
     custom_viewport_width = "2560"
     custom_viewport_height = "224"
     custom_viewport_x = "-70"
     custom_viewport_y = "-2"
     aspect_ratio_index = "22"
     video_aspect_ratio = "1.143000"
     video_windowed_fullscreen = "false"
     video_gpu_screenshot = "false"

- Enjoy retro-gaming bliss on your SD CRT =)

Hopefully I didn't leave any settings out. Let me know if I am not being clear enough in these instructions. If you try these settings and experience something that looks wrong, please post and I will try to figure it out. It may not be something you did wrong, but something I left out, so let me know and I will correct this post.
     
EDIT1: For comparison, here is a picture of the SNES running on an SD CRT: https://imgur.com/a/IfaO0

And here is RetroArch on the same TV: https://imgur.com/a/1ykoJ

Unfortunately I don't have a camera stand for my phone, so the shots are not 1:1 because my hand was unsteady and I moved a little bit when I reached for the switchbox to switch over from the SNES to the PC

EDIT2: bought a camera stand so i was able to more accurately compare a genuine SNES video output vs RetroArch. Changed custom viewports for more accurate X/Y screen placement.

EDIT3: the aspect ratio is just a bit wider horizontally on RetroArch than a real SNES. It's unnoticable unless you do a direct side-by-side comparsion and you look very closely. I'll be fixing this soon. Below are comparison shots using a camera on a mount, pointed directly at the SD CRT. I named them wrong because they look nearly identical, so once you load up the image, it'll say "snes" instead of "retroarch" and vice versa. I'll name them correctly here to make it less confusing.

https://picgur.org/image/Gn3 <----------SNES model 1, SHVC-CPU-1, via RGB SCART to YPbPr transcoder, to MonoPrice component switchbox, to Sony Trinitron KV-36FV26 SD CRT

https://picgur.org/image/GXz <----------RetroArch using BSNES Accuracy core, via VGA-to-YPbPr transcoder (RetroTek VGACTV1), to MonoPrice component switchbox, to Sony Trinitron KV-36FV26 SD CRT