Nes rgb with composite colors?

[The_Atomik_Punk!]

Hey Atomic Punk! Give it a shot .. tell us what you think with your golden eyes.

I don't know about golden eyes- I like to think of it more as an attention to detail

This is really interesting; FBX's "correct" direct capture palette really does look spot on to me when compared to stock hardware. As a result, this palette is actually (sometimes much) less vibrant than FBX's accuracy palette, and even less vibrant than Nestopia YUV colours in many instances. I'm not going to pull screen grabs now, but as an example, the blue shift from the accuracy palette is toned down, so that it's more of a happy medium between Nestopia YUV's grey/green, and the vibrant blue of FBX's accuracy. This completely re-balanced that Darkwing Duck example I mentioned being too vibrant earlier.

As for specific examples compared to FBX's accuracy palette, in SMB3 the red curtain at the start is less vibrant, as is Mario himself. The purples being a little biased towards red (i.e pink) in Zelda II and TMNT have been adjusted. Reddish highlight colours (like at the start of Kid Icarus and Castlevania) have also been muted which produces a more natural brown. There are many others, so I encourage people to check it out to see for themselves. Bottom line, this palette (for my money) deserves the moniker of "Natural" when stacked against Nestopia's YUV palette.

Personally, I'd love to get this palette on my kit, but I'm only one guy. If others see it as worthwhile, then maybe it might be reasonable for Tim to look into updating the custom firmware with this palette, but otherwise an open source solution as alluded to by FBX may be a better bet so as to not waste Tim's time. Furthermore, I can see this palette being a tough sell in the sense that it's is actually less colourful than the "Natural" already on the kit, even though that's exactly what I like about it.

[FBX]

What I could do is re-capture the palette with more saturation level if you think it might call for it. I was just happy to finally have correct hues and non-blown-out lighter colors that plagued my previous attempts (bad equipment).

I'll do two more captures stepped up in saturation and then we can review the three to see which one is at the sweet-spot.

[leonk]

Here's some visual comparison:

FCE Ultra (YUV?) original:



FBX eyed palette:



FBX measured palette: (more muted colors)

[FBX]

I've done a re-capture with stronger saturation. Let me know if it looks kosher or if I need to turn the saturation down a couple notches:


http://www.firebrandx.com/downloads/FBX ... urated.zip


Edit:

BTW leonk, you can get much cleaner pics using png, and the low color count makes them very small file sizes too. Here's SMB2 example using the saturated palette I just finished:

[panzeroceania]

FBX, what did you have to change in your workflow between your recent capture that had a problem, and your final capture

[FBX]

FBX, what did you have to change in your workflow between your recent capture that had a problem, and your final capture

The entire method will be detailed once the palette passes independent checks (mostly interested in what AP thinks).

[yxkalle]

NESRGB's natural (YUV) palette comes from Nintendulator, not FCEU. They look nothing alike.

[leonk]

NESRGB's natural (YUV) palette comes from Nintendulator, not FCEU. They look nothing alike.

Actually, we're both wrong! Tim himself posted this on page 2 of this thread:

"There are three palettes included with the NESRGB. The Natural palette is the Nestopia YUV palette. It seems to be a calculated palette (based on the NTSC standard) and the colours follow the luma/chroma rules of the PPU. This is the theoretically accurate palette.

The Improved palette is from the FCEUX emulator. Each colour is hand picked. It's not very accurate in that it doesn't strictly follow the way the PPU works internally. Some games look better with this palette, others a bit worse."

I made a typo above. It was actually the "Improved" palette. About to post a few more comparisons.

[leonk]

Here's how you read the following images: FCEX original / colors chosen by FBX by eye / colors chosen by FBX measured and saturated:

[yxkalle]

My mistake. It did say Nintendulator on evil Tim's NESRGB page, that's why I thought that

... The Natural palette has the same colours as the normal composite video output. It comes from the Nintendulator NES emulator.

[FBX]

FYI those FCEX images are not from the YUV palette. Use Nestopia and set the palette to "YUV" in order to compare and contrast.

[Voultar]

Holy Hell...




This palette needs to replace "Natural" immediately. At least for my setups..

[leonk]

So am I the only one who never noticed until now that the sky in SMB 1 and SMB 2 is purple and not blue!?!

Nintendo fixed it for SMB3 ... but hell.

[azmun]

Been playing Super C for the past few weeks and not sure if I notice the subtle difference in the palette (concerning blues/greens) between my NESRGB modded AV Famicom running on s-video (natural palette) and original Famicom running on RF. I won't be able to test RGB since my current set up (TV) isn't equip for that output at the moment. The only thing I can say is that there is less bleeding with the former and consequently looks sharper--at times less organic. Its safe to assume developers/artists had this in mind while programming these games.

That said, I wonder if FBX palette applies to RGB exclusively or also pertains to s-video.

[leonk]

Been playing Super C for the past few weeks and not sure if I notice the subtle difference in the palette (concerning blues/greens) between my NESRGB modded AV Famicom running on s-video (natural palette) and original Famicom running on RF. I won't be able to test RGB since my current set up (TV) isn't equip for that output at the moment. The only thing I can say is that there is less bleeding with the former and consequently looks sharper--at times less organic. Its safe to assume developers/artists had this in mind while programming these games.

That said, I wonder if FBX palette applies to RGB exclusively or also pertains to s-video.

FBX's palette applies to all NESRGB connections (RGB, S-Video and composite) as the NESRGB generates its video out from the RGB circuit.

[The_Atomik_Punk!]

FBX, what did you have to change in your workflow between your recent capture that had a problem, and your final capture

The entire method will be detailed once the palette passes independent checks (mostly interested in what AP thinks).

Hey FBX, I'm not entirely sure that the muted colours are a bad thing (maybe a smidge more vibrancy would be cool), but I'll be happy to look at your Direct Final Saturated palette to offer my opinion after the holidays; I'm out of communication for a few days starting today- Merry Christmas to all!

[FBX]

After reviewing several games, I'm actually quite happy with the saturated capture, and I'm finally calling it my last effort.

I made a web page with several screen caps showing the palette in action, and the complete method for arriving at each color is detailed below them:


http://www.firebrandx.com/nespalette.html



.

[Smashbro29]

After reviewing several games, I'm actually quite happy with the saturated capture, and I'm finally calling it my last effort.

I made a web page with several screen caps showing the palette in action, and the complete method for arriving at each color is detailed below them:


http://www.firebrandx.com/nespalette.html



.

I have a flashcart, I have my AV Famicom outputting that great RGB but I need these colors in my life.

Was thinking of having yours, improved and garish because I may as well fill the other 2 slots.

But how do I do it?

[Voultar]

I've thoroughly tested FBX's latest "final saturated" palette. Unbelievable.. It's the most honest palette that I've ever seen.


Tim, please God.. Make an optional F/W that replaces natural with this.

[FBX]

I had some people raise the complaint that using Paint Shop Pro was inaccurate and 'ghetto'. I just got done doing a 2nd recording with using Photoshop exclusively to import, crop, and average the colors, and the results were 99.99% identical. We're talking 1 tick of difference on 1 or 2 channels per color, so there's no point in going into a panic and having to re-release a new updated version of the palette. The current latest one still stands as my final effort (thank God).

[viletim]

I've thoroughly tested FBX's latest "final saturated" palette. Unbelievable.. It's the most honest palette that I've ever seen.


Tim, please God.. Make an optional F/W that replaces natural with this.

I'll put up a version with FBX-Composite-DC-Final in place of natural tomorrow.

[FBX]

I've thoroughly tested FBX's latest "final saturated" palette. Unbelievable.. It's the most honest palette that I've ever seen.


Tim, please God.. Make an optional F/W that replaces natural with this.

I'll put up a version with FBX-Composite-DC-Final in place of natural tomorrow.

Awesome news! Would you be willing to make it the saturated version I posted on my web page? ( http://www.firebrandx.com/nespalette.html )

It's only called "saturated" because the other version was actually turned down from the default color balance of the XRGB-mini (reduced to a value of 25 from the default 32). I realized I needed to do the default 32 as the final version when I saw how dark the SMB overworld bricks had become on the 25 value version.

At any rate, much appreciated for your time on this again!

[Josh128]

Great work FBX. The captures you posted on your page look fantastic. Its ironic that you probably put more effort into accurately re-creating composite palette than the original NES hardware engineers did in designing it.

BTW-- years back I used to use Paint Shop Pro and LOVED it! Easy to use, much more powerful than MS Paint, I havent used it in a while because I had trouble finding a good version online recently. Do you have it on disk or do you know a good location to obtain it?

One last question, probably been asked and answered many times here, but what equipment and software is required to flash the new code onto the NESRGB once Tim makes it available?

[leonk]

One last question, probably been asked and answered many times here, but what equipment and software is required to flash the new code onto the NESRGB once Tim makes it available?

Tim answered it a while back in this thread. The link to software and hardware needed can be found a few posts back.

[FBX]

Got my Altera USB blaster in the mail today, so I'm excited to try this out myself on the new firmware release. Crossing my fingers all goes well!

[The_Atomik_Punk!]

Hey FBX, just got a chance to check out your DC Final Saturated palette, and I think that I personally prefer the original (correctly converted) DC Final palette. To my eyes, the unsaturated DC palette looks closer to what I'm seeing in stock composite, which is illustrated in a couple examples. I apologize if my saying that the colours were more muted in your DC Final palette led you to believe that my opinion was they needed brightening; that certainly wasn't what I intended to communicate.

Firstly, both in Contra on the first stage, Double Dragon II at the first level start (crates), and the Metroid title screen, the yellow sections shift slightly more to green in the saturated version. In Contra, the distinctness of the green grass relative to the brown/yellowish ground beneath skews more towards green with the saturated palette (and is thus lessened), whereas the colour distinctness is more pronounced for me in stock composite (as in you original DC palette). The same thing happens in the Metroid title screen; the ground is more yellowish in stock composite (and your DC Final), but skews more towards yellow/green when saturated. This occurs again with the yellow crates at the start of Double Dragon II, which should be more yellow as in your DC Final, but shifts slightly more greenish when saturated.

Darkwing Duck (on the bridge stage) once again looks too saturated regarding the blue night sky where it kind of overpowers the foreground, as it was in your Accuracy 2.0 palette. This looks perfectly balanced and thus muted) to me in your DC Final palette as it is in stock composite.

From my understanding of your methodologies in compiling these palettes, the only difference between your DC Final, and DC Final Saturated was a setting on your XRGB Mini colour balance, but to my eyes, that slight modification produced noticeable differences that I'm not convinced are better. I'm personally leaning more towards wanting access to your original DC Final palette as it looks closer to what I'm seeing on stock hardware- but I'm only one opinion. I'd like to hear what other people think regarding the merits of your DC Final vs DC Final Saturated before Tim places one in another firmware update.

[leonk]

If I'm not mistaken, the device used to gauge the colors also differs here.

FBX uses a digital display device (be it LCD TV or computer LCD monitor) while the automic punk uses a CRT (is that correct?) Will that play a big difference in color reproduction?

[The_Atomik_Punk!]

If I'm not mistaken, the device used to gauge the colors also differs here.

FBX uses a digital display device (be it LCD TV or computer LCD monitor) while the automic punk uses a CRT (is that correct?) Will that play a big difference in color reproduction?

Those examples I cited in my previous post were observed by swapping between FBX's DC Final, and DC Final Saturated palettes in Nestopia on my PC (LCD), while having my CRT with a stock NES running next to it. This obviously can lead to discrepancies due to CRT and LCD calibration, but the comparison between the two palettes can be observed in Nestopia relative to each other, regardless of your monitor's setting, by simply swapping back and forth between the two palettes with the aforementioned games running.

[FBX]

For me, I prefer the saturated version.

Since we're all asking Tim for these in a firmware update, perhaps the best compromise is for him to make the alternate update have both the unsaturated and saturated versions. So say, the unsaturated version in place of "natural", the saturated version in place of "improved", and then the playchoice 10 version still intact as the 3rd option.

Agreed?

[RGB32E]

Since we're all asking Tim for these in a firmware update

All two or three people?