Nes rgb with composite colors?

[FBX]

If I honestly felt that way about my palette, I wouldn't be bothered by that particular color entry looking different on some displays. I'd just 'pretend' there's no issue at all. Since I don't want to assume anything, I look into these things to see if there's some way to figure out which color is the closer approximation. You say there's no true color, but by that logic one could put hot pink in that entry and EVERYONE would know that is way off. So very clearly there is some sort of threshold we can go by. My concept is to try to get as close to that threshold as possible, and I certainly don't want to assume the brown-versus-green variance is as close as it gets.

Yes, if you put hot pink in the place of brown, it would obviously be incorrect, but if you got hot pink as a result from an actual NES, you would say that display is horribly miscalibrated. No properly calibrated display would show hot pink for that color.

However, different displays, all of which are properly calibrated, can still show variances in color (like the brown/green issue) because NTSC encoding and decoding are not accurate at color reproduction.

I agree 100%, but the 'obsession' is to see how close one can get to a reasonable approximation versus a color that would be generally agreed to be off or wrong (as in the hot pink example). Now if it turns out that brown-versus-green really is as close as the variation can be narrowed, I'll live with it. In which case, I'd rename the current palatte I did as simply "Framemeister". Speaking of which, I ordered Avermedia's simple USB powered composite converter to remove the Framemeister from the process. Obviously this just replaces the interpretation of the signal with the USB device, but hopefully it will give the alternative look with the olive-browns and more reddish earth colors as seen in the nestopia palette, whilst still maintaining the bluer cyan colors that most were complaining as being too balanced. If it doesn't work out that way, then I'll just leave everything as is and be done with it.

[Josh128]

I have an Avermedia PCI composite/SVideo capture card installed on my main PC. Perhaps I'll give it a whirl and see how it captures both from my NES.

[Skips]

I finally got the USB Blaster in and a chance to try the saturated and unsaturated palettes out. I hated the saturated palette. It made the brown in Mario's clothes in SMB1 look baby shit colored. The unsaturated palette however is definitely nice. It is much closer to a stock NES in color than the original "natural" palette shipped with the kits is. Even though I did not care for the saturated palette it is still better than that god awful FCEUltra garbage shipped with the kit. I will definitely be using the Saturated/Unsaturated/PC10 firmware Tim posted over the stock one from now on (purge that FCEUltra bullcrap off the RGB kits!). Good job FBX.

P.S. Did i mention I greatly dislike the FCEUltra palette?

[leonk]

I finally got the USB Blaster in and a chance to try the saturated and unsaturated palettes out. I hated the saturated palette. It made the brown in Mario's clothes in SMB1 look baby shit colored. The unsaturated palette however is definitely nice. It is much closer to a stock NES in color than the original "natural" palette shipped with the kits is. Even though I did not care for the saturated palette it is still better than that god awful FCEUltra garbage shipped with the kit. I will definitely be using the Saturated/Unsaturated/PC10 firmware Tim posted over the stock one from now on (purge that FCEUltra bullcrap off the RGB kits!). Good job FBX.

P.S. Did i mention I greatly dislike the FCEUltra palette?

What is your display device?

[The_Atomik_Punk!]

I finally got the USB Blaster in and a chance to try the saturated and unsaturated palettes out. I hated the saturated palette. It made the brown in Mario's clothes in SMB1 look baby shit colored. The unsaturated palette however is definitely nice. It is much closer to a stock NES in color than the original "natural" palette shipped with the kits is. Even though I did not care for the saturated palette it is still better than that god awful FCEUltra garbage shipped with the kit. I will definitely be using the Saturated/Unsaturated/PC10 firmware Tim posted over the stock one from now on (purge that FCEUltra bullcrap off the RGB kits!). Good job FBX.

P.S. Did i mention I greatly dislike the FCEUltra palette?

Always cool to hear your insights Skips. I haven't had a chance to get my system flashed with FBX's new Unsaturated/Saturated/PC10 palette (I have his previous effort, Accuracy 2.0 flashed on my kit currently). As I've expressed previously in this thread, unsaturated for my money is definitely the clear winner; I noticed as well that the saturated palette lightens Mario's clothing into a somewhat strange color (Nestopia YUV even looks better in this regard), as well as some other undesirable changes IMHO.

One example that I'd appreciate it if FBX "crunches the numbers on" would be, once again, Mega Man 2 Wily stage. To my eyes, the shade of blue may be a little closer to the darker, stronger entry in his Accuracy 2.0 palette, as opposed to the DC Final:

(1. Nestopia YUV/ 2. FBX DC Final Unsaturated/ 3. FBX Accuracy 2.0


Now to be clear, I don't have the new firmware on my system, I'm just comparing the palettes in Nestopia with what I'm seeing on my CRT with stock hardware. Furthermore, I'm fully aware that tweaking one palette entry, can throw of other games. Much respect to FBX for undertaking this endeavor; I can definitely see how it can prove to be a tedious task, but it's certainly appreciated by us in the community!

I'm really interested to see the results of FBX using the Avermedia Composite Converter to see if that yields any colour differences from his unsaturated palette; if it does, perhaps the new palette could be called something like "CRT", and the saturated palette could go by "Framemeister" ?

[Skips]

I finally got the USB Blaster in and a chance to try the saturated and unsaturated palettes out. I hated the saturated palette. It made the brown in Mario's clothes in SMB1 look baby shit colored. The unsaturated palette however is definitely nice. It is much closer to a stock NES in color than the original "natural" palette shipped with the kits is. Even though I did not care for the saturated palette it is still better than that god awful FCEUltra garbage shipped with the kit. I will definitely be using the Saturated/Unsaturated/PC10 firmware Tim posted over the stock one from now on (purge that FCEUltra bullcrap off the RGB kits!). Good job FBX.

P.S. Did i mention I greatly dislike the FCEUltra palette?

What is your display device?

Im using an xrgb mini

[FBX]

Now to be clear, I don't have the new firmware on my system, I'm just comparing the palettes in Nestopia with what I'm seeing on my CRT with stock hardware. Furthermore, I'm fully aware that tweaking one palette entry, can throw of other games. Much respect to FBX for undertaking this endeavor; I can definitely see how it can prove to be a tedious task, but it's certainly appreciated by us in the community!

I'm really interested to see the results of FBX using the Avermedia Composite Converter to see if that yields any colour differences from his unsaturated palette; if it does, perhaps the new palette could be called something like "CRT", and the saturated palette could go by "Framemeister" ?

That last pic was the 'eyeballed' image I took based on my LCD's direct conversion (as in the NES deck hooked directly into it). Hopefully the avermedia converter will give similar results so it can be offered as an alternative flavor. The device should come in tomorrow and I'll give reports on how it goes.

[The_Atomik_Punk!]

Now to be clear, I don't have the new firmware on my system, I'm just comparing the palettes in Nestopia with what I'm seeing on my CRT with stock hardware. Furthermore, I'm fully aware that tweaking one palette entry, can throw of other games. Much respect to FBX for undertaking this endeavor; I can definitely see how it can prove to be a tedious task, but it's certainly appreciated by us in the community!

I'm really interested to see the results of FBX using the Avermedia Composite Converter to see if that yields any colour differences from his unsaturated palette; if it does, perhaps the new palette could be called something like "CRT", and the saturated palette could go by "Framemeister" ?

That last pic was the 'eyeballed' image I took based on my LCD's direct conversion (as in the NES deck hooked directly into it). Hopefully the avermedia converter will give similar results so it can be offered as an alternative flavor. The device should come in tomorrow and I'll give reports on how it goes.

Yeah, I pulled it from your "Accuracy 2.0" palette. While to my eyes it looks closer to what I'm seeing on stock hardware (regarding Mega Man 2), a relatively similar blue entry in Darkwing Duck looks far too vibrant with that same palette (as well as numerous other examples). On the whole your Unsaturated palette looks bang on to me, that's just one example that I think may benefit from further inquiry- but I can be wrong; I'm just relying on myself eyeballing it. I'm more interested in deferring to your calibrated results as to what is actually representative of stock colours. Awesome that the Avermedia is coming in soon, cool to hear if it corroborates your previous findings, or if further tweaks are warranted- keep us updated!

[FBX]

Now to be clear, I don't have the new firmware on my system, I'm just comparing the palettes in Nestopia with what I'm seeing on my CRT with stock hardware. Furthermore, I'm fully aware that tweaking one palette entry, can throw of other games. Much respect to FBX for undertaking this endeavor; I can definitely see how it can prove to be a tedious task, but it's certainly appreciated by us in the community!

I'm really interested to see the results of FBX using the Avermedia Composite Converter to see if that yields any colour differences from his unsaturated palette; if it does, perhaps the new palette could be called something like "CRT", and the saturated palette could go by "Framemeister" ?

That last pic was the 'eyeballed' image I took based on my LCD's direct conversion (as in the NES deck hooked directly into it). Hopefully the avermedia converter will give similar results so it can be offered as an alternative flavor. The device should come in tomorrow and I'll give reports on how it goes.

Yeah, I pulled it from your "Accuracy 2.0" palette. While to my eyes it looks closer to what I'm seeing on stock hardware (regarding Mega Man 2), a relatively similar blue entry in Darkwing Duck looks far too vibrant with that same palette (as well as numerous other examples). On the whole your Unsaturated palette looks bang on to me, that's just one example that I think may benefit from further inquiry- but I can be wrong; I'm just relying on myself eyeballing it. I'm more interested in deferring to your calibrated results as to what is actually representative of stock colours. Awesome that the Avermedia is coming in soon, cool to hear if it corroborates your previous findings, or if further tweaks are warranted- keep us updated!

I have to be fair in that naysayers do have a point: We can't know for sure what the exact hue value is, so I can only get as close as can be reasonably accepted. The hope as I mentioned before is that I can make a new capture demonstrating the alternate earth tones while still maintaining the more bluer cyans and sky blue values of the current palettes.

BTW there was discusses earlier a complaint of the 'baby s***' green effect on Mario in SMB under the saturated palette. That's part of the same swath of colors that appear more olive brown in some converters. It's in fact the 2nd entry of that swath. A good look at that swatch is the dirt walls on the first stage of Contra:



And also the first town in Faxanadu hints that maybe the more brown coloring is closer to what was expected from the programmers' perspective at the time:



Both YUV images on the right are nearly identical to what my LCD direct converter shows (except the green sky on the left is closer to the LCD). I also have to admit that having viewed these examples, I prefer the browner tones.

[The_Atomik_Punk!]

I have to be fair in that naysayers do have a point: We can't know for sure what the exact hue value is, so I can only get as close as can be reasonably accepted. The hope as I mentioned before is that I can make a new capture demonstrating the alternate earth tones while still maintaining the more bluer cyans and sky blue values of the current palettes.

They most definitely have a point; I just fundamentally disagree with their premise that further tweaking to the Nestopia YUV palette is completely arbitrary and thus entirely subjective. If you can prove the colour values as you're setting out to with this new effort, that may be a great stride towards "a close as reasonably accepted solution".

BTW there was discusses earlier a complaint of the 'baby s***' green effect on Mario in SMB under the saturated palette. That's part of the same swath of colors that appear more olive brown in some converters. It's in fact the 2nd entry of that swath. A good look at that swatch is the dirt walls on the first stage of Contra...

Baby s*** green, lol. While I didn't put it as strongly as Skips, I noticed that too when I mentioned previously that the earth in Contra stage 1 looked too green in the DC Final (the Metroid title screen is another example).

And also the first town in Faxanadu hints that maybe the more brown coloring is closer to what was expected from the programmers' perspective at the time... Both YUV images on the right are nearly identical to what my LCD direct converter shows (except the green sky on the left is closer to the LCD). I also have to admit that having viewed these examples, I prefer the browner tones.

Yeah, I always loved Faxanadu for how dark, earthy, and unsaturated the palette was. I agree that the sky looks more like the left pic (DC Final) on my setup, maybe even darker.

[Skips]

Don't get me wrong I did like FBX's work on this. I just am really blunt and have colorful vocabulary. The baby shit comment actually comes from my brother. He was watching me make the JTAG cable and solder the headers. When I turned on the system with SMB1 his first comment was "Why does mario look like he rolled around in baby shit". It made me laugh pretty hard.

On other games (like mario 3) the saturated palette looks pretty good just there are some times where it looks as off as the natural palette (Mario's shirt being one of them). I actually sat down again last night and got to play the Famicom for an hour. I found myself switching between the unsaturated and saturated palette depending what looked better for each game. The two palettes seem to work well for different games. For the first time I am actually finding myself using all three options on the NESRGB and not just the PC10 palette. Digging the new palettes a lot so far.

[darcagn]

I just fundamentally disagree with their premise that further tweaking to the Nestopia YUV palette is completely arbitrary and thus entirely subjective.

Nobody is saying it is completely arbitrary:

I have no problem if FBX makes new palettes to try to get closer to the look of the output of the NTSC decoders he owns. Better for the community if people like you and others find that it's closer to your NTSC decoders as well. My problem is just that he (along with others in this thread) is pretending like his palette is an "accurate" palette.

At any rate, for those of you trashing the "Improved" palette, I'm going to have to disagree with you guys. I think the improved palette is fantastic. I play using it on a lot of games. I think Original/Improved/PC10 is the right way to go when having to select among 3 palettes to include. Now what the original will be defined as... well, that's the real question.

[leonk]

skips, you know I respect you.. but PC10 .. REALLY?

I don't have a switch on my test system. Tim's first 1.7 special had the FBX eye'd palette on pad 3. So I moved the wire from 1 to 3. When the current version came out, I forgot to update the palette selection, it was set to PC10. I tried playing SMB3 (my go to test cart) and was shocked by how yellow and over saturated everything looked on my Sony PVM. It looked like a baby vomited on my CRT!

I quickly realized my mistake and moved the wire back. Not sure how anyone can play with PC10 palette (unless that's what they're used to from playing on PC10 PPU modded RGB system for many years and forgetting how the NES should look like).

[darcagn]

Not sure how anyone can play with PC10 palette (unless that's what they're used to from playing on PC10 PPU modded RGB system for many years and forgetting how the NES should look like)

I don't mind the look of the PC10 palette to be honest (it was certainly better to have RGB with PC10 palette over composite with stock palette, back in the day with the old mod), but I primarily only use it for playing actual Nintendo Versus games which are intended to have that palette.

[The_Atomik_Punk!]

...I primarily only use it (PC10) for playing actual Nintendo Versus games which are intended to have that palette.

That's basically what I do too, for that authentic Nintendo Arcade experience.

[leonk]

I'm lucky to own a Sharp Titler, and if I'm not mistaken, the RGB PPU in there also has the PC10 palette. I should see if SMB3 looks just as bad in S-Video coming out of it.

[Josh128]

At any rate, for those of you trashing the "Improved" palette, I'm going to have to disagree with you guys. I think the improved palette is fantastic. I play using it on a lot of games. I think Original/Improved/PC10 is the right way to go when having to select among 3 palettes to include. Now what the original will be defined as... well, that's the real question.

I use "Improved" for all my games as I find "Natural" just looks too drab. I agree "Improved" is great-- it may not be perfectly accurate, but it looks great.

BTW-- FBX, have you ever considered looking at some of the game manuals for the classics such as Zelda 1, Metroid and Kid Icarus? Many of these booklets have images seemingly taken from an RGB/VGA source-- no way in hell they come from composite. Wonder how they compare to your palette?

[darcagn]

I'm lucky to own a Sharp Titler, and if I'm not mistaken, the RGB PPU in there also has the PC10 palette. I should see if SMB3 looks just as bad in S-Video coming out of it.

The Sharp Titler PPU has the same palette as the PC10 PPU.

AFAIK, all RGB PPUs have the exact same palette. Some of the Versus titles have color entries swapped around, however, as a copy protection mechanism (Versus titles were distributed with CPUs and PPUs alongside the ROM chips; an arcade owner couldn't just burn their own copies of EPROMs because they wouldn't have the correct palette).

BTW-- FBX, have you ever considered looking at some of the game manuals for the classics such as Zelda 1, Metroid and Kid Icarus? Many of these booklets have images seemingly taken from an RGB/VGA source-- no way in hell they come from composite. Wonder how they compare to your palette?

Nintendo Power used to take screenshots from an RGB source, using the PC10 PPU palette. I imagine manuals would be the same way?

EDIT: I downloaded a pack containing scans of all the NES game manuals; they look like they are the correct original NES palette but are too low res of scans to tell if they are sourced from composite. They probably are.
EDIT 2: In fact, they look like they are just pictures taken from a television/monitor. Some of the manuals even have visible scanlines in the close-up screenshots. I'm pretty sure they're just pictures from an NES or Famicom.

[Skips]

skips, you know I respect you.. but PC10 .. REALLY?

I don't have a switch on my test system. Tim's first 1.7 special had the FBX eye'd palette on pad 3. So I moved the wire from 1 to 3. When the current version came out, I forgot to update the palette selection, it was set to PC10. I tried playing SMB3 (my go to test cart) and was shocked by how yellow and over saturated everything looked on my Sony PVM. It looked like a baby vomited on my CRT!

I quickly realized my mistake and moved the wire back. Not sure how anyone can play with PC10 palette (unless that's what they're used to from playing on PC10 PPU modded RGB system for many years and forgetting how the NES should look like).

I see what you did there

[atheistgod1999]

Whatever, I'm just sticking with composite for my AV Famicom. If I could deal with it on my Gamecube, PS2, and Wii back when all we had was a consumer-grade CRT, I can deal with it now. I'm only gonna use RGB for consoles that produced it natively (and S-Video for consoles that produced that natively like the Atari 7800 and Colecovision)

[FBX]

BTW-- FBX, have you ever considered looking at some of the game manuals for the classics such as Zelda 1, Metroid and Kid Icarus? Many of these booklets have images seemingly taken from an RGB/VGA source-- no way in hell they come from composite. Wonder how they compare to your palette?

Many of those old screenshots appear to be photos of the physical screen of some sort of RGB alternative that looks nothing like composite CRT.

At any rate, I'm working on an experimental palette that combines those YUV earth tones with most of the other colors from the direct-capture process. This is going to be a little bit time-consuming in that I'll have to cross-reference each and every entry. I'll post back with an update when I get it done.

[leonk]

Whatever, I'm just sticking with composite for my AV Famicom. If I could deal with it on my Gamecube, PS2, and Wii back when all we had was a consumer-grade CRT, I can deal with it now. I'm only gonna use RGB for consoles that produced it natively (and S-Video for consoles that produced that natively like the Atari 7800 and Colecovision)

!?? Got some free time today so I hooked up my AV modded top loader to a CRT TV and NESRGB with unsat palette into a Sony PVM CRT; both running SMB3. My wife (furthest person from a gamer I know) walks by, looks at the regular composite TV and tells me "why does that look so bad??"

On LCD composite looks even worst!!

[Josh128]

@Darcagn-- its possible some of the shots are from composite, but many of them are certainly from an RGB monitor of some kind. I know this because of the complete lack of scanlines in them,while still being pixel-sharp, such as the items on the pages 21-26 of the Zelda booklet. (I have the actual booklet in hand.)

@FBX Thats the point-- they are not from composite, but from a RGB or VGA monitor of some kind-- they are straight from Nintendos devs themselves.


In any case, it may be a bit of a silly idea, but since we are already down the rabbit hole...

[darcagn]

@Darcagn-- its possible some of the shots are from composite, but many of them are certainly from an RGB monitor of some kind. I know this because of the complete lack of scanlines in them,while still being pixel-sharp, such as the items on the pages 21-26 of the Zelda booklet. (I have the actual booklet in hand.)

Looks like the PC10/RGB PPU. Look at the any of the screenshots of the overworld in the LoZ manual--the ground is very, very yellow, just like the RGB PPU is (instead of sandy peach). Then look at and compare the illustrated map on page 43/44, which has the same colors as the regular NES PPU palette.

EDIT: Actually compare page 32, the entrance of the 1st labyrinth, to page 42, also the entrance to the 1st labyrinth. They were taken with different PPUs.

[atheistgod1999]

Whatever, I'm just sticking with composite for my AV Famicom. If I could deal with it on my Gamecube, PS2, and Wii back when all we had was a consumer-grade CRT, I can deal with it now. I'm only gonna use RGB for consoles that produced it natively (and S-Video for consoles that produced that natively like the Atari 7800 and Colecovision)

!?? Got some free time today so I hooked up my AV modded top loader to a CRT TV and NESRGB with unsat palette into a Sony PVM CRT; both running SMB3. My wife (furthest person from a gamer I know) walks by, looks at the regular composite TV and tells me "why does that look so bad??"

On LCD composite looks even worst!!

I'm using a BVM-20F1U, not an LCD.

[FBX]

Here's a working palette of the YUV combination idea:

http://www.firebrandx.com/downloads/fbx ... omized.zip

Basically it takes the core purple-red-brown-olive colors from the YUV palette and combines them with direct-capture green-cyan-blue-purple colors and throws in a few tweaks.

Games look pretty good so far that I've tested, but I could use some outside look perspectives on it. Just remember that the redder browns and more brownish greens are intended as the alternative look.

[leonk]

I'm using a BVM-20F1U, not an LCD.

composite on BVM/PVM still looks like dog vomit compared to pure RGB. What FBX is doing here is splitting hairs for the most anal perfectionist .. Moving from composite to RGB using an NESRGB is a massive jump in comparison when it comes to video quality, sharpness, clarity, and overall pixel nirvana. None of these attributes are changed by color selection.

[The_Atomik_Punk!]

Here's a working palette of the YUV combination idea:

http://www.firebrandx.com/downloads/fbx ... omized.zip

Basically it takes the core purple-red-brown-olive colors from the YUV palette and combines them with direct-capture green-cyan-blue-purple colors and throws in a few tweaks.

Games look pretty good so far that I've tested, but I could use some outside look perspectives on it. Just remember that the redder browns and more brownish greens are intended as the alternative look.

...It's...it's glorious

For real though, this amalgam of the best of Nestopia YUV values, and your own Direct capture values in areas that Nestopia was deficient (plus a few tweaks as you said), looks phenomenal in every game I've thrown at it. Rectifying the brownish-greens from your DC Final now looks much improved, and the slightly reddish-browns from Nestopia YUV really liven it up. Faxanadu on my setup with stock hardware has the buildings looking more yellowish-brown in the first town, but I actually prefer the reddish-brown values from Nestopia YUV for this game.

I'd love to hear additional perspectives if others are as content with this effort as I am, or if anyone thinks there's room for improvement. If not, I'd love to have this available in a custom firmware, maybe simply refereed to as the "FBX palette", as it's no longer solely a directly calibrated palette.

For my two cents, I can't find any area that would benefit further tweaking; I'm prepared to be silent and niggle no more

[Zets13]

For whatever it is worth, Chris Covell has scans of an ad depicting Famicom graphic creation screens with color selection grid:

http://www.chrismcovell.com/secret/FC__1988Q2.html

And many thanks FBX for trying to come up with a better set of NESRGB colors.

EDIT: Scroll to the bottom of the page to see the scans.

[Skips]

Just a small demo of FBX's unsaturated palette running on my RGB Famicom. Video taken with an XRGB mini and Elgato HD60. Video is in 1080p so make sure to set it to that. The greens are not that intense on the palette, the Elgato exaggerates greens fro some reason.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLwU0bJ ... e=youtu.be