XRGB-mini Framemeister

[eightbitminiboss]

Finally

Functions to save and load global settings to/from SD card. More scanline tweaking. Shorter 240p/480i switching times. Selectable HDMI output range. New 3-level menu structure.

Would love to try this right away, but I won't have the time till next weekend. I expect some thorough testing by you guys!

And this is very neat and useful: http://micomsoft.co.jp/XRGB-mini_Ver200_OSD_E.pdf

I'm poking at it right now and I'm seeing that setting the HDMI Output Range to Limited let's you see that elusive 3rd shade of green on the Super Mario World bushes. But the other green gets really nuke green...



I'm looking at the 240p/480i switching now.

[grumly54]

Great job !!!

[eightbitminiboss]

Just poked around with the sync settings. Setting the Sync Time does seem to effect the 240p/480i switching. It's not perfect, but I can get to the gun shop in RE2 N64 without dying, so that's something? I'm hoping considering this is beta, that'll be looked at further and fully implemented...

Edit: I've been going in and out of the inventory menu in game repeatedly and sometimes I can go in and out and not lose sync for a good while then it drops every once in a while. Seems like progress to me.

[iast]

Did the new FW do anything about sync issues on Taito F3 or some Seibu boards?

[pyrotek85]

Oh nice, wasn't expecting any new firmware. I'll have to play with this later today.

[FBX]

Already got mine flashed in. MUCH better organization of the options, and a lot of new features to play around with!

[Grimakis]

This is very exciting. Can't wait to try the settings save/load.

Regards,
George

[Gered]

I'm poking at it right now and I'm seeing that setting the HDMI Output Range to Limited let's you see that elusive 3rd shade of green on the Super Mario World bushes. But the other green gets really nuke green...

Indeed, setting it to Limited made a significant improvement, though using 1280x1024 DVI output still produces the best colour for me. But any improvement is good, right?

[FBX]

I started systematically testing the various settings with the Genesis. The Framemeister's distinctive 'flicker' issue now appears independent of the A/D settings, but the good news is adjusting the black level to a value of 4 made the flicker invisible thus far on my tests. I'll have to switch to the SNES as there are games where I can really see the flicker. I'll report back my findings asap.

[Fudoh]

What does the clamping feature accomplish ?

[FBX]

What does the clamping feature accomplish ?

It's weird. I tried "SP" to see what it looks like, and the blacks are turned to a weird light blue-green color (edit: more tests show it just overblows the brightness and/or gamma appearance of the image). Effectively useless.

[Shining]

Can someone have a look at the "overlay" option? It would be awesome if it gets rid of the colored borders in Genesis/Mega Drive games.

[FBX]

Can someone have a look at the "overlay" option? It would be awesome if it gets rid of the colored borders in Genesis/Mega Drive games.

It's some weird color bar overlay that shades the graphics. However, I believe this is just a default test image, and this means we should be able to develop our OWN overlays!

Also just got done learning how to use, save, and load profile settings. They work great! I'm uploading my Genesis one now and will write a guide here on how to download and use it (there's a couple of tricks to get it working properly).

[FBX]

Guide for profile saving and loading:



1. Be sure you have the microSD card in and active. This requires a double-reboot of the Framemeister for it to detect it if you removed it at any point.

2. Once you have all your settings just as you want them for a given console input, bring the Framemeister menu up and scroll down to "DATA".

3. You'll see several options: "LOAD_SELECT", "LOAD", "SAVE", and "SAVE_NEW" are the first four. You'll want to select "SAVE_NEW" and use that to save your profile.

4. It should save the profile as "EEP001.BIN". You can see it in the "LOAD_SELECT" list to confirm.

5. When loading the profile you just made, you'll be given an input option to load the profile into. Obviously you'll want to select the correct one. If you made an RGB profile, select that input when asked.

6. You can turn off the Framemeister and remove the microSD card to load the card on your computer. This will allow you to rename the profiles, but BE AWARE you can only use 8 characters in the name as that's all that will show up on the Framemeister's menu.

7. To use someone else's profile you downloaded from the Internet, simply place the BIN file in the "EEPDATA" folder on the microSD card.

8. Now place the microSD card back into the turned off Framemeister & double-reboot the Framemeister (this means booting the Framemeister, letting it reach ready status, powering it off, and booting it again). This has to be done because a single reboot fails to recognize the microSD card.

[FBX]

Okay, so here's my bin files of original NTSC Sega Genesis RGB in perfect 5x scale and 4x scale. Your display will need to be in 1080p HDMI mode and set to "Full Pixel" or whatever your set calls it when you turn off screen size zooming. Also these profiles use full-range RGB color space settings:


http://www.firebrandx.com/downloads/fra ... ofiles.zip

Refer to my above guide for loading it on your Framemeister.

[Grimakis]

Guide for profile saving and loading:



1. Be sure you have the microSD card in and active. This requires a double-reboot of the Framemeister for it to detect it if you removed it at any point.

2. Once you have all your settings just as you want them for a given console input, bring the Framemeister menu up and scroll down to "DATA".

3. You'll see several options: "LOAD_SELECT", "LOAD", "SAVE", and "SAVE_NEW" are the first four. You'll want to select "SAVE_NEW" and use that to save your profile.

4. It should save the profile as "EEP001.BIN". You can see it in the "LOAD_SELECT" list to confirm.

5. When loading the profile you just made, you'll be given an input option to load the profile into. Obviously you'll want to select the correct one. If you made an RGB profile, select that input when asked.

6. You can turn off the Framemeister and remove the microSD card to load the card on your computer. This will allow you to rename the profiles, but BE AWARE you can only use 8 characters in the name as that's all that will show up on the Framemeister's menu.

7. To use someone else's profile you downloaded from the Internet, simply place the BIN file in the Data folder on the microSD card.

8. Now place the microSD card back into the turned off Framemeister & double-reboot the Framemeister (this means booting the Framemeister, letting it reach ready status, powering it off, and booting it again). This has to be done because a single reboot fails to recognize the microSD card.

This is an awesome feature. Now console specific settings will be a breeze to tweak.

Regards,
George

[FBX]

Just updated the zip package where it now contains both 4x and 5x scales for Genesis. Also corrected the guide on the install folder (it's actually called "EEPDATA").

[TheShadowRunner]

After a quick test, profiles work just great, remembering scaler settings, picture mode etc.
This is excellent!
(be careful not to rename profiles with - or _ in the filename, the Mini doesn't like this and will not load them).

However, the RGB Full - RGB Limited setting is completely fucked.
RGB full is like RGB of 1.11. So far so good.
However RGB limited is RGB full with some kind of reduced brightness, completely wrong.

On Strider PS1 running on PS2, with RGB limited, blacks are even MORE crushed than with RGB Full !!

The image is supposed to be brighter with RGB limited, not the other way round.
What the hell, I don't even understand what they did/tried to do with this new RGB limited setting, but it's completely wrong.

:sadness:

[Rongolian]

YES! This update appears to have given us the appropriate options to make scanlines viable on 1080p output.

I've messed with the new settings in 1080p, and have gotten some better results, I'll share them here.

HDMI_Output: 1080p
DEC_LINE1: 30
DEC_LINE2: 75
DEC_SMOOTH: 127 (I feel that having this parameter at max was the parameter we needed all along to make scanlines work)

FWIW: I boosted the A/D settings to 170 to boost color behind the scanlines. This is a personal preference, I feel like it makes the picture look vibrant even with scanlines.

At a viewing distance, these settings work pretty well. Closer up I can still tell there is a slight difference in scanline thickness, hopefully somebody here can help in adjusting these settings to get them just right!


Edit: They also added an option to make the NO_INPUT screen black instead of blue! I really like that feature

[Gered]

YES! This update appears to have given us the appropriate options to make scanlines viable on 1080p output.

I've messed with the new settings in 1080p, and have gotten some better results, I'll share them here.

HDMI_Output: 1080p
DEC_LINE1: 30
DEC_LINE2: 75
DEC_SMOOTH: 127 (I feel that having this parameter at max was the parameter we needed all along to make scanlines work)

FWIW: I boosted the A/D settings to 170 to boost color behind the scanlines. This is a personal preference, I feel like it makes the picture look vibrant even with scanlines.

At a viewing distance, these settings work pretty well. Closer up I can still tell there is a slight difference in scanline thickness, hopefully somebody here can help in adjusting these settings to get them just right!

Just tried these, unfortunately it looked pretty bad on my TV Been fiddling with the scanline settings at 1080p also and haven't found any combo of settings that looks good yet.

[FBX]

Edit: They also added an option to make the NO_INPUT screen black instead of blue! I really like that feature

That was there in the prior update as well. I distinctly remember fiddling with it.

At any rate, I have no idea where they are going with the overlay feature. You get these weird color shades, and you can change the color of the first 'bar' of it while also being able to rotate to vertical and stretch the overlay size. It must just be something they are beta-testing.

[blizzz]

FWIW: I boosted the A/D settings to 170 to boost color behind the scanlines. This is a personal preference, I feel like it makes the picture look vibrant even with scanlines.

That will seriously mess up your colors. I wouldn't go over 131.

[TheShadowRunner]

I can't find how to disable / set the screensaver anymore. There was a setting for the screensaver in 1.11 right?

[Rongolian]

FWIW: I boosted the A/D settings to 170 to boost color behind the scanlines. This is a personal preference, I feel like it makes the picture look vibrant even with scanlines.

That will seriously mess up your colors. I wouldn't go over 131.

I understand this is probably the case on many TV's, on mine the "game mode" significantly dims the picture, the A/D setting helps restore vibrant colors, I'm just relaying what I'm doing on my setup to get results

[CkRtech]

FWIW: I boosted the A/D settings to 170 to boost color behind the scanlines. This is a personal preference, I feel like it makes the picture look vibrant even with scanlines.

That will seriously mess up your colors. I wouldn't go over 131.

I understand this is probably the case on many TV's, on mine the "game mode" significantly dims the picture, the A/D setting helps restore vibrant colors, I'm just relaying what I'm doing on my setup to get results

Is game mode for you a specific setting, or is it a preset from a list of other modes (i.e. Vibrant/Vivid, Standard, THX, "Game," etc)? Ideally, it turns off all of the extra processing to help reduce lag. You should still be able to adjust contrast/brightness, saturation, etc on your set to be able to achieve comfortable levels while maintaining normal settings (closer to default) on the xrgb.

[Shuco13]

Some things I realized about the new firmware:
1. There is still a color/greyscale difference between DVI and HDMI output, even if Deepcolor, OUTPUTCOLOR and RGB (limited/full) are set to the same level. Can anybody explain that?
2. I don't know what they did with the A/D setting but changing it just a little bit seems to severely mess up gamma. I wouldn't touch it if you don't know what you're doing.
3. Something that has already been mentioned, but yay, scanlines are not broken anymore on 1080p. Unfortunately I haven't found the ideal settings myself yet.

@CkRtech
Some people have had their TVs being calibrated. They don't want to adjust their screen's picture settings only because the Framemeister is failing in the output chain.

[CkRtech]

Some people have had their TVs being calibrated. They don't want to adjust their screen's picture settings only because the Framemeister is failing in the output chain.

But surely that is a very niche situation for the userbase here. ISF calibration is going to do a lot more than only tweak your brightness/contrast/saturation levels. Again, if by "game mode" it is literally changing the preset picture modes on a TV rather than turning a single processing option on and off, then it is negating any ISF calibration that was performed.

Although the hardware all of us use on this varies from console to console, revision to revision, and cable to cable, I think 180 AD output on the xrgb is probably an outlier. Rongolian was saying that he was adjusting it to basically get it look like what he wants it to look like - user preference. ISF calibration is pretty much "here is the industry standard calibration for your set. Don't touch anything." I suppose changing the AD level on the framemeister is an easy way around tweaking ISF calibrated settings, but I'll bet it is a safe assumption that Rongolian's set is not calibrated & therefore tweaking brightness/contrast/saturation at the set level would be more beneficial than cranking AD on the xrgb.

[TheShadowRunner]

After more testing, the "RGB full" - "RGB limited" toggle is complete nonsense.
When selecting "RGB limited", instead of altering the output SIGNAL to "RGB limited" (ie compress the output from 0-255 to 16-235), the Mini is doing some sort of internal conversion which just reduces the Brightness.

In other words, it's not that they're doing it wrong, they're doing something else entirely ??????

When you switch from RGB Full to RGB limited on PS3/PS4/Bray player, etc, you can see a HDMI handshake going on and the image appears brighter with RGB limited.

With the Mini, the output signal isn't altered at all, I have stricly no clue what they're actually doing.

Edit: just noticed "scanlines on/off" isn't remembered in the profiles.. oh well.

[Shining]

Yep, the RGB full/limited toggle is complete bull. I was hoping for a "force FULL RGB" setting but this is not it. I will have to stick with YUV for now.

However, the background noise on my 1CHIP SNES has been significantly reduced. Yay

And what is this fixed 1080p scanlines talk? Have some of you actually succeded in making them resemble 720p scanlines?

[TheShadowRunner]

Yep, the RGB full/limited toggle is complete bull. I was hoping for a "force FULL RGB" setting but this is not it. I will have to stick with YUV for now.

However, the background noise on my 1CHIP SNES has been significantly reduced. Yay :D

And what is this fixed 1080p scanlines talk? Have some of you actually succeded in making them resemble 720p scanlines?

Again, just saying, the Mini already outputs RGB full.. and that's my problem heh.
Even on 2.00 set to LIMITED, it still outputs RGB full (+ some brightness conversion bs).