Marseille's mCable?

[Seraphic]

Thought I give this a try, so I ordered the mCable Gaming Edition along with a cheap Datapath VisionRGB-E1s capture card I found on ebay.
Going to install the board tomorrow and start off with the PlayStation 2, Crystalio II, and OSSC with some lossless RGB 4:4:4 screen captures for comparison.
It will be interesting to see the results with games I am actually interested in, using good hardware. If it sucks, hey, at least I tried and it's off to ebay with yee!

[Xer Xian]

Cool eager to see what are your findings.

[Seraphic]

Unfortunately, the used capture card I received was DOA.
So any pictures will be cell phone and might not even be worth it as far as getting detailed data.

Here are some things I already found out though.

1. The cable does in fact upscale 480p/720p to 1080p.
2. It will accept direct OSSC 59.83 output of PS1 games on a PS2, but picture is distorted. So not really.
3. My Crystalio II reports that the cable is converting the RGB 4:4:4 output of the OSSC to the 709 YCbCr 4:4:4 format.

As far as results go from viewing on my TV with PS2 games. It looks a little smudgy on some things and okay I guess on others.
I was just hoping to be able to do direct comparisons as it is hard to tell the differences without them.

[Seraphic]

Cellphone or not, here come some pictures.
480p PS2 -> OSSC -> Crystalio II -> TV

Without mCable - Crystalio II scaling 480p to 1080p


With mCable - mCable scaling 480p to 1080p

[Xer Xian]

It definitely does a good job smoothing out those jaggies. Is the ringing bad? The white background doesn't help with spotting it.

Did you place the mCable after the CII? Does it process a 480i signal in any way? How is the upscaling?

[Seraphic]

It definitely does a good job smoothing out those jaggies. Is the ringing bad? The white background doesn't help with spotting it.

Did you place the mCable after the CII? Does it process a 480i signal in any way? How is the upscaling?

Hard to tell without direct capture. Here is a darker set.

mCable is before the CII to see what it is sending and the mCable sends interlaced sources out unprocessed as far as I know.

Scaling doesn't look too bad. In my case, with the mCable it is scaling 480p to 1080p on its own and without it, the CII is scaling 480p to 1080p.

Without mCable - Crystalio II scaling 480p to 1080p


Witt mCable - mCable scaling 480p to 1080p

[Seraphic]

Here is a two more sets from two different PS3 games. AA improvements seem to be very minor here.

Without mCable - Crystalio II scaling 720p to 1080p


With mCable - mCable scaling 720p to 1080p


Without mCable - Crystalio II scaling 720p to 1080p


Witt mCable - mCable scaling 720p to 1080p

[Fudoh]

Would you mind doing a 2D game, something in 240p (doubled to 480p) or native 480p ?

[orange808]

+1 on 240p line doubled.

[Seraphic]

Would you mind doing a 2D game, something in 240p (doubled to 480p) or native 480p ?

I would like to, but I can not get it to work. I moved the mCable to the end of the chain (OSSC->CII->mCable->TV), but I am unable to get a picture.
Think it has something to do with the odd frame rate even though I had the CII convert to 59.94. Will try again tomorrow and see if I can get it to work.

While I was trying to get that to work I did discover something cool though.
The CII is accepting 240p pass-thru from the OSSC and it looks a lot like the OSSC's scaling.



CII 240p to 1080p


OSSC 5X

[Xer Xian]

Nah, the OSSC is much sharper. Completely different scaling algorithm of course.

Anyway, thanks for these screenshots. I'm especially blown away by the one with those pillars/floating boulders. There's some detail loss, but - damn.

[Fudoh]

I would like to, but I can not get it to work. I moved the mCable to the end of the chain (OSSC->CII->mCable->TV), but I am unable to get a picture.

I was merely thinking of something on the PS2 running in 480p natively (like Hokuto no Ken) or doubled 240p in 480p like one of the Sega Ages titles (Gunstar Heroes, Fantasy Zone, Space Harrier). Got anything on hand ?

[Seraphic]

I would like to, but I can not get it to work. I moved the mCable to the end of the chain (OSSC->CII->mCable->TV), but I am unable to get a picture.

I was merely thinking of something on the PS2 running in 480p natively (like Hokuto no Ken) or doubled 240p in 480p like one of the Sega Ages titles (Gunstar Heroes, Fantasy Zone, Space Harrier). Got anything on hand ?

Getting 240p with the mCable needs some more testing as I can not get it to work from the OSSC even when line doubled and then sent to the CII first.
Native 480p and 480i works fine though. And yes, I will get that Hokuto no Ken shots for you tomorrow.

Nah, the OSSC is much sharper. Completely different scaling algorithm of course.

Anyway, thanks for these screenshots. I'm especially blown away by the one with those pillars/floating boulders. There's some detail loss, but - damn.

Yeah, it does look pretty good. I need to get direct captures though. This cell phone is not cutting it.

[Seraphic]

Not sure how I did it, but I was able to get the OSSC to line-double 240p with 2x to 480p and the mCable to accept it. I was also able to get the capture card working with some sweet lossless RGB screen captures. Now, don't forget the OSSC is sending RGB 4:4:4 output but the mCable is converting that to YCbCr 4:4:4 and I am then using the CII to convert back to RGB 4:4:4. It is unfortunate the mCable does conversion at all. How much damage is being done here? More direct pictures to come!

Without mCable - OSSC scaling 240p with 5x to 1080p


With mCable - mCable scaling OSSC's 2x 480p to 1080p

[Seraphic]

Without mCable - Crystalio II scaling 480p to 1080p


With mCable - mCable scaling 480p to 1080p


Without mCable - Crystalio II scaling 480p to 1080p


With mCable - mCable scaling 480p to 1080p


Without mCable - Crystalio II scaling 480p to 1080p


With mCable - mCable scaling 480p to 1080p


Without mCable - Crystalio II scaling 480p to 1080p


With mCable - mCable scaling 480p to 1080p


Without mCable - Crystalio II scaling 480p to 1080p


With mCable - mCable scaling 480p to 1080p

[Extrems]

YCbCr is a useful colorspace for this kind of processing, and it'd make sense to keep it that way as an optimization.

[Seraphic]

YCbCr is a useful colorspace for this kind of processing, and it'd make sense to keep it that way as an optimization.

That would require a different capture card like a Magewell as it can do YCbCr 4:4:4 among other things.
It is probably the one I will get when I do a new build that can actual capture. This Datapath only supports 4:4:4 in RGB.

Last two from this game:

Without mCable - Crystalio II scaling 480p to 1080p


With mCable - mCable scaling 480p to 1080p


Without mCable - Crystalio II scaling 480p to 1080p


With mCable - mCable scaling 480p to 1080p

[Extrems]

That would require a different capture card like a Magewell as it can do YCbCr 4:4:4 among other things.
It is probably the one I will get when I do a new build that can actual capture. This Datapath only supports 4:4:4 in RGB.

I'm just trying to explain why the mCable would output YCbCr.

[Xer Xian]

@Seraphic: what does the CII say about data levels output by the mCable? Does it send out limited or full range? (I wonder if 4:4:4 YCbCr at 0-255 is correctly supported by most TV sets..)

Anyway, while I understand that it makes sense for this thing to isolate luma and work on that, YCbCr output is bad news for me - IIRC my capture device does not like it either..

[bobrocks95]

Looks pretty awful for pixel-art games, kind of like a Scale2x filter.

Not bad for removing jaggies on earlier 3D games. I think I see some ringing on UI elements but overall not bad if you're the type who wants to trade a bit of image quality for less aliasing.

[Thomago]

This may be just me, but before going with cheap Post-Processing-AA that smoothes some jaggies but leaves others and looks horrible in motion (as it doesn't have a temporal element), I'd rather pass on AA altogether.

[Seraphic]

I was merely thinking of something on the PS2 running in 480p natively (like Hokuto no Ken)

Does this game support 480p? Holding Triangle+X but I do not not get a prompt to switch from 480i to 480p.

I'm just trying to explain why the mCable would output YCbCr.

Ah, I see.

@Seraphic: what does the CII say about data levels output by the mCable?

When the CII is set to auto detect it says it is receiving 16-235.
However, it also does this for OSSC/PS3/PSTV/Xbox360 even when they are set to Full Range/Extended. So it is a bug I think?

This may be just me, but before going with cheap Post-Processing-AA that smoothes some jaggies but leaves others and looks horrible in motion (as it doesn't have a temporal element), I'd rather pass on AA altogether.

This was more of just an experiment to see what the results would be.

[Fudoh]

Does this game support 480p? Holding Triangle+X but I do not not get a prompt to switch from 480i to 480p.

Hokuto no Ken is 480p using GSM.

[Seraphic]

Want to point out that there is no lag with this cable. Just did a perfect stage one run with the PS2 version of Triggerheart Exelica Enhanced.
All five phases of the boss and secret boss with zero hits. Something I could never do on the Xbox 360 version.

Does this game support 480p? Holding Triangle+X but I do not not get a prompt to switch from 480i to 480p.

Hokuto no Ken is 480p using GSM.

I don't have my Fat PS2 setup to boot stuff like that just yet. Sorry.

Here is one PS2 240p fighter I do have though:

CII scaling 240p to 1080p


OSSC scaling 240p 5x to 1080p


mCable scaling 240p from OSSC's 2x 480p to 1080p

[Fudoh]

thanks a lot!

[Seraphic]

thanks a lot!

No problem. So based on what I posted, what are your thoughts on the mCable?
I think it does a good job at removing jaggies, adds some loss of detail and a little ringing in exchange, but not too bad.

[Fudoh]

I guess it's quite OK on polygon-based graphics. I think it's terrible on 240p-2D content (but that's expected).

You can see quite clearly how it works by looking for diagonal contrast edges and smoothing them out. Native 480p 2D might look better than 240p...

[Seraphic]

Native 480p 2D might look better than 240p...

Can you think of a game? I could capture a quick set after I "find" it.

[Blair]

This may be just me, but before going with cheap Post-Processing-AA that smoothes some jaggies but leaves others and looks horrible in motion (as it doesn't have a temporal element), I'd rather pass on AA altogether.

doesn't temporal aa suffer from ghosting and detail lost during motion? I've only tried them a few times, but I don't really like to use FXAA or TXAA because of how blurry they can look. didn't Linus say that the M cable uses an algorithm that's more similar to SMAA?

Native 480p 2D might look better than 240p...

Can you think of a game? I could capture a quick set after I "find" it.

@Seraphic, awesome screenshots! if you get a chance definitely try using GSM to force ps2 games into higher resolutions, for instance Metal Gear Solid 3 and Wild Arms 5 can be reliably pushed to 1080p. and your video processor can definitely handle aspect ratio correction. can the M cable process the OSSC's 240p 3x, 4x or 5x modes? also, what about 480p 2x?

for native 480p games with 2D art here are some (Wikipedia also has a full list, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_P ... play_modes)


Most Guilty Gear tittles

Melty Blood: Actress Again

Sonic Mega Collection Plus

Alien Hominid

La Pucelle: Tactics (also has a 240p mode)

[ZellSF]

Totally unsurprised at any of these screenshots. Except that it's filtering some jagged edges on 240p linedoubled content. That seems a bit weird to me, but I'm not an expert.

This may be just me, but before going with cheap Post-Processing-AA that smoothes some jaggies but leaves others and looks horrible in motion (as it doesn't have a temporal element), I'd rather pass on AA altogether.

What are you comparing to? For plenty of games FXAA/SMAA looks great in motion. For others it looks horrible.