OSSC (DIY video digitizer & scandoubler)

[Xyga]

I have the W4500 Sony Bravia.

The W series from 2013~2015 are on a different level though, you can't have missed that thread: http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=48662

but there should also be a sweet spot that 99% of people like for each console without touching anything else.

There is (the basic default/most open settings in linedoubling mode). But you can't expect each and every machine to work 100% fine and look its best with those default settings, maybe 2 or 3 out of 10 will require some intervention from the user. Mostly minor.
Seriously it's not much more trouble than an XRGB-2 for instance.

The issue is not there but rather in the availability of better modes and settings, like linetripling. Everyone could be happy with just the linedouble settings w/ medim dark scanlines, the same thing as the old XRGB's, but the OSSC can do more stuff, which won't necessarily work as easily for every source display, etc etc.
If you read the thread most users are actually trying every kind of hardware from all origins and hoping for optimal linetripled output, and that on a great variety of displays.
Considering the challenge the OSSC is doing incredibly well ! But it's only natural that the more you'll demand from your setup the more trouble you'll face.

In any case a 'plug-and-play' scaler that would look nice and do well with every hardware and display would mean very limited adjutment capabilities and certainly more lag than what people expect.
The OSSC does the opposite of that by focusing on performance first (low lag and picture quality/fidelity) at an affordable price.
A combination of both excellent useability and performance isn't even a thing technically speaking from what I understood, or if it is somewhere in the field of yet-to-invent, the R&D + manufacturing today would ruin both the maker and his customers.

[Blair]

honestly, I have never figured out why it's so intimidating for people just to take 15 minutes out of their day and dial-in the best settings for the content they're trying to view/play, as long as you're not constantly having to readjust settings every time you play, what's the big deal?

video games as a hobby have never really been "plug-and-play" heck even back in the 80s and 90s we still had to make adjustments to the television/monitor settings to make the image look its best (I can't be the only one that adjusted my brightness, contrast, saturation and sharpness settings as a kid).

as the community grows and more and more units are released to the public easy (bake) recipes, system profiles and display compatibility lists will fill out and everyone will have a central resource that pretty much spells out the best settings for every possible scenario. places like shmups, junker HQ, and the videogame perfection forums are already a wealth of knowledge on these subjects.

Marqs himself even posted some really nice-looking settings for Dreamcast, and Sega Saturn. once more of the units are out (this October?) every mainline system will probably have near-perfect settings available (somewhere). and once the profile saving feature is implemented it will be even easier. I don't really see how it can get much better than that.


speaking of fiddling around with settings I just did a test on something that cfx and I had talked about earlier in the thread (I wanted to send him a PM about it, but his profile doesn't have that option)

I didn't realize there was a different version of DOA2:HC but yeah, mine has the star in the logo too. I was looking at this game last night and watching those martial-arts demonstrations. Since they don't move that fast, they don't show much in the way of artifacts, but the gameplay bits in the opening do, and I set up the game in the watch mode for a bit and saw it there too; it still looks better than running it at 480i. I'll see if turning down EE helps it any. I never owned an Xbox but would've bought the Ultimate DOA2 release had I had one.

Code: Select all

VP50pro+auto-de-interlacing+PlayStation 2+component+LGX capture

(auto de-interlacing was used to simulate the conditions of an Edge Green or iScan Duo)

Spoiler

Using an edge enhancement value of -100 (DE:+5 EE:-100) does indeed improve the visuals on DOA:H*C (ps2), it's not perfect but it does make that incredibly jagged game much more pleasant to look at (especially in motion and close-up shots). it doesn't do much for the texture shimmering, but that's just a limitation of the PlayStation 2 itself. but this way it looks much closer to the Dreamcast version (in my opinion)

[marqs]

Unfortunately wider linetriple compatibility is not possible with current HW.

Don't know if it was mentioned before, but wildchild22 used a HDF Integral to combine the OSSC's video output with an audio input and all of a sudden his plasma set - previously incompatible with the OSSC's 720p output - worked fine in linetripling mode.

I'm burning to find out what causes this behaviour. I'll order an Integral soon and give it a try on my Sonys as well.

I'd try generating a matching modeline via PC and check whether it works with the plasma directly (meaning there's something wrong in OSSC output), and with Integral (meaning the box has to do change some video/Infoframe parameters).

If nothing else, it's adding EDID data that wasn't there before, and probably reclocking. If the EDID data is causing it to work, then a cheaper device like the HDMI Doctor may be able to serve the same purpose (not for audio, just getting line triple working).

OSSC doesn't read EDID of the display so it shouldn't make any difference.

There are two things that are annoying me with the OSSC at the moment. First when I don't manually exit the menus, I have no status display. Maybe some sort of timeout option for the menus before automatically going back to the status display would be nice?

Second, I want the LCD backlight off, but not when I'm actually using the thing. Maybe temporarily enable the backlight on recognized IR codes?

Yeah, the system is not really developed with UI-first mentality. I'll add menu/backlight timeout suggestions to wiki and integrate them to fw sooner or later.

Watching closely for a second version of this thing...1080p? Who knows....I'd like that.

1080p (line5x) with similar compatibility than linetriple is actually on todo-list for current OSSC hw. It shouldn't even be that hard to implement technically on FPGA when combined with pixel repetition feature of HDMI TX IC - I just haven't had much time recently to start implementing new features.

Ideally a TV company should show interest in consolidating this technology into at least one of their TV's. Or at least offer some sort of open source chipset where it can be programmed into it. I am also surprised a company like Nintendo hasn't brought out an official box that does the same thing. Even Pelican or whatever could have come out with a retro switcher with 4 scarts, 4 HDMI's, a composite or two and incorperate this technology into it.

TV business today is really a price race to bottom so no TV company cares about minorities like gamers, especially retro gamers. I don't also see why Nintendo would provide people a way to play their old games when they can sell re-release versions of their games, and now also consoles . It'd be great if you could get a bare display panel, driving electronics and such chipset at affordable price to make your own video processing chain/display. Maybe someday that's available to hobbyists not wanting to throw huge amounts of money into it.

video games as a hobby have never really been "plug-and-play" heck even back in the 80s and 90s we still had to make adjustments to the television/monitor settings to make the image look its best (I can't be the only one that adjusted my brightness, contrast, saturation and sharpness settings as a kid).

as the community grows and more and more units are released to the public easy (bake) recipes, system profiles and display compatibility lists will fill out and everyone will have a central resource that pretty much spells out the best settings for every possible scenario. places like shmups, junker HQ, and the videogame perfection forums are already a wealth of knowledge on these subjects.

Marqs himself even posted some really nice-looking settings for Dreamcast, and Sega Saturn. once more of the units are out (this October?) every mainline system will probably have near-perfect settings available (somewhere). and once the profile saving feature is implemented it will be even easier. I don't really see how it can get much better than that.

Yes, gaming has never been fully plug&play, but a lot of things were easier with CRTs. However, a basic linedouble setup should not require much tweaking / additional HW, assuming the display accepts analog audio (or one is using exteral amp / has Borti's audio add-on). For those on other end of spectrum, I just created a wikipage that lists optimal timings for some consoles with corresponging modelines. The page is still very much in progress but please add new entries if you're familiar with console timings.

[tacoguy64]

Finally checked my email and this thread and looks to be some good news this month. Can't wait to try the much hyped OSSC. I have much hope that it will be a great pairing with my pc crt monitor, and also with my plasma tv.

[kel]

Yes, gaming has never been fully plug&play, but a lot of things were easier with CRTs. However, a basic linedouble setup should not require much tweaking / additional HW, assuming the display accepts analog audio (or one is using exteral amp / has Borti's audio add-on). For those on other end of spectrum, I just created a wikipage that lists optimal timings for some consoles with corresponging modelines. The page is still very much in progress but please add new entries if you're familiar with console timings.

Is there any chance of you or anyone else here that is familiar with console timings taking a look at the Gamecube for optimal timings if you/they have one or find the time?

The aspect ratio seems to be slightly squashed horizontally almost like a 720 image in a 640 window which creates very subtle jailbars on bright images from bad horizontal scaling. I can get it very close to the correct width by setting the 480p in sampling to VGA but then I loose about an inch of the image on one side. I tried messing around with the timings but I was just stabbing in the dark which didn't really help much.

Has anyone else noticed this with the Gamecube, how does the HDMI mod fare in this regard? I haven't had time to try it with any other scalers, direct to TV or my PVM yet so I'm not sure if this is a common problem with the Gamecube in general. I seem to remember the jailbars always being there in the past with other scalers so it probably is. Not sure about my PVM though, will have to give it a try later.

[neorichieb1971]

The GC looks absolutely fantastic in 480p with component as it is on my TV. 480i looks ropey.

As for plug n play, I have a feeling if my TV output 240p I wouldn't be interested in this OSSC device. I'd be quite content with 240p processing because even with 480i conversion I don't feel like i'm missing much when the screen it static. But when it starts moving (scrolling etc) things get a little dis-tasteful.

Part of me is still considering a cheap Samsung TV that supports 240p.

I know this is a big ask. But if anyone has a Samsung TV that displays 240p when you plug a retro console in to it and also has a OSSC, I would like to see some differences.

Also, the lack of screenshots and videos in this thread is alarmingly low (I haven't seen any) although I do concede to not having read all 79 pages of it.

[bobrocks95]

Yes, gaming has never been fully plug&play, but a lot of things were easier with CRTs. However, a basic linedouble setup should not require much tweaking / additional HW, assuming the display accepts analog audio (or one is using exteral amp / has Borti's audio add-on). For those on other end of spectrum, I just created a wikipage that lists optimal timings for some consoles with corresponging modelines. The page is still very much in progress but please add new entries if you're familiar with console timings.

Is there any chance of you or anyone else here that is familiar with console timings taking a look at the Gamecube for optimal timings if you/they have one or find the time?

The aspect ratio seems to be slightly squashed horizontally almost like a 720 image in a 640 window which creates very subtle jailbars on bright images from bad horizontal scaling. I can get it very close to the correct width by setting the 480p in sampling to VGA but then I loose about an inch of the image on one side. I tried messing around with the timings but I was just stabbing in the dark which didn't really help much.

Has anyone else noticed this with the Gamecube, how does the HDMI mod fare in this regard? I haven't had time to try it with any other scalers, direct to TV or my PVM yet so I'm not sure if this is a common problem with the Gamecube in general. I seem to remember the jailbars always being there in the past with other scalers so it probably is. Not sure about my PVM though, will have to give it a try later.

You wouldn't happen to be talking about Wind Waker or Twilight Princess in particular, would you? There's something going on with the engine in those games (Skyward Sword too) that leads to minor jailbars at certain times. I read about the cause somewhere, but I think it was internal scaling or chroma subsampling or something...

[CobraKing]

The GC looks absolutely fantastic in 480p with component as it is on my TV. 480i looks ropey.

As for plug n play, I have a feeling if my TV output 240p I wouldn't be interested in this OSSC device. I'd be quite content with 240p processing because even with 480i conversion I don't feel like i'm missing much when the screen it static. But when it starts moving (scrolling etc) things get a little dis-tasteful.

Part of me is still considering a cheap Samsung TV that supports 240p.

I know this is a big ask. But if anyone has a Samsung TV that displays 240p when you plug a retro console in to it and also has a OSSC, I would like to see some differences.

Also, the lack of screenshots and videos in this thread is alarmingly low (I haven't seen any) although I do concede to not having read all 79 pages of it.

There aren't that many OSSC units out on the wild and between work and life, I just want to use my downtime to play games vs. taking screenshots, etc... The October batch is quite large at 500 units so there'll be more people with the unit in possession.

[kel]

You wouldn't happen to be talking about Wind Waker or Twilight Princess in particular, would you? There's something going on with the engine in those games (Skyward Sword too) that leads to minor jailbars at certain times. I read about the cause somewhere, but I think it was internal scaling or chroma subsampling or something...

Yes that's right. Wind Waker is the game that I have always noticed them on. It wasn't until I played it recently that I thought, actually the aspect ration is slightly wrong. That's when I tried the VGA in sampling option on the OSSC and noticed that the jailbars were very nearly gone and that circles now looked round that made me think that it actually might be a scaling artifact. It seems similar to the Waka scaler for the Playstation that takes a 720x240 picture and outputs a 640x480 one with horizontal scaling artifacts that resemble jailbars to me.

After that I tried a few other games including Twilight Princess with VGA in sampling and although I had not noticed jailbars on any of them in the past I did notice that the aspect ratio was now correct compared to before with the egg shaped circles.

I'm wondering if it is only an issue with digital displays and scalers as surely a CRT would stretch the picture to 4:3 regardless of the internal scaling of the Gamecube. I have a PVM but it is not set up at the moment. It will be interesting to see if the same thing happens on that as soon as I find the time to try it.

Also wondering if the HDMI mod does any better in this regard?

[marqs]

You wouldn't happen to be talking about Wind Waker or Twilight Princess in particular, would you? There's something going on with the engine in those games (Skyward Sword too) that leads to minor jailbars at certain times. I read about the cause somewhere, but I think it was internal scaling or chroma subsampling or something...

Yes that's right. Wind Waker is the game that I have always noticed them on. It wasn't until I played it recently that I thought, actually the aspect ration is slightly wrong. That's when I tried the VGA in sampling option on the OSSC and noticed that the jailbars were very nearly gone and that circles now looked round that made me think that it actually might be a scaling artifact. It seems similar to the Waka scaler for the Playstation that takes a 720x240 picture and outputs a 640x480 one with horizontal scaling artifacts that resemble jailbars to me.

After that I tried a few other games including Twilight Princess with VGA in sampling and although I had not noticed jailbars on any of them in the past I did notice that the aspect ratio was now correct compared to before with the egg shaped circles.

I'm wondering if it is only an issue with digital displays and scalers as surely a CRT would stretch the picture to 4:3 regardless of the internal scaling of the Gamecube. I have a PVM but it is not set up at the moment. It will be interesting to see if the same thing happens on that as soon as I find the time to try it.

I'd try same settings as for Dreamcast VGA (H. active=640). If I recall correctly, GC 480p also runs at 27MHz dot clock / 858 dots per line, so on a typical CRT you'd see way less than 720 (as per 480p spec) dots horizontally.

[SGGG2]

Had some time today to play around with pixel repetition feature of HDMI TX chip. It is required for interlace passthrough, but it can be also used for multiplying horizontal resultion to 2x or 4x without consuming any FPGA resources. That provided an easy way to convert linedoubled 480p coming from FPGA (640x960 or 720x960 depending on sampling mode) to more compatible 1280x960/1440x960 mode at output. Everything seemed to work well based on quick testing so I'll try include these in the fw asap.

Pixel repetition also makes line4x and line5x features more realistic as FPGA does not need to generate so high pixel clock, so those shouldn't be now too far either.

Would it be possible for the OSSC to use this feature for 720p at 3 scale or 1080p at 2 scale for 4K scaling?

[bobrocks95]

You wouldn't happen to be talking about Wind Waker or Twilight Princess in particular, would you? There's something going on with the engine in those games (Skyward Sword too) that leads to minor jailbars at certain times. I read about the cause somewhere, but I think it was internal scaling or chroma subsampling or something...

Yes that's right. Wind Waker is the game that I have always noticed them on. It wasn't until I played it recently that I thought, actually the aspect ration is slightly wrong. That's when I tried the VGA in sampling option on the OSSC and noticed that the jailbars were very nearly gone and that circles now looked round that made me think that it actually might be a scaling artifact. It seems similar to the Waka scaler for the Playstation that takes a 720x240 picture and outputs a 640x480 one with horizontal scaling artifacts that resemble jailbars to me.

After that I tried a few other games including Twilight Princess with VGA in sampling and although I had not noticed jailbars on any of them in the past I did notice that the aspect ratio was now correct compared to before with the egg shaped circles.

I'm wondering if it is only an issue with digital displays and scalers as surely a CRT would stretch the picture to 4:3 regardless of the internal scaling of the Gamecube. I have a PVM but it is not set up at the moment. It will be interesting to see if the same thing happens on that as soon as I find the time to try it.

Also wondering if the HDMI mod does any better in this regard?

If it helps at all, I noticed the jailbars in Wind Waker on a CRT running at 480i with component cables. I'm pretty sure it's a problem with that engine, though it may be possible to rectify it somewhat after the fact with scaling hardware. I forget where I read about the engine though...

[LDigital]

Hey Marqs, been loving it since neo geo got fixed but the settings destabilise snes so there's lots of changing back and forth. Is there any more news on the next update featuring different profiles setups?

[neorichieb1971]

Hey Marqs, been loving it since neo geo got fixed but the settings destabilise snes so there's lots of changing back and forth. Is there any more news on the next update featuring different profiles setups?

My money is dependent on this also. I will not buy something that requires me toying around with it. I would be paying for someone elses expertise.

So Marqs, please chime in when you have it all down.

[kel]

I'd try same settings as for Dreamcast VGA (H. active=640). If I recall correctly, GC 480p also runs at 27MHz dot clock / 858 dots per line, so on a typical CRT you'd see way less than 720 (as per 480p spec) dots horizontally.

Thanks for the tip. I will have another mess around with the H. active timing and see if I can get it close to the correct aspect ratio without cutting off one side.

If it helps at all, I noticed the jailbars in Wind Waker on a CRT running at 480i with component cables. I'm pretty sure it's a problem with that engine, though it may be possible to rectify it somewhat after the fact with scaling hardware. I forget where I read about the engine though...

If it is possible to get rid of the jailbars with scaling hardware that would be great but I can live with the jailbars if not. As you mentioned it only seems to be with those few particular games although come to think of it I do remember something similar in Resident Evil 4, will have to check to confirm though. The aspect ratio issue is the most annoying issue for me (once you see egg shaped circles you can't unsee them) and I just thought the two may be related. Even the linearity test on the 240p test suite and the 480i boot menu of the Gamecube itself gives a picture that is slightly squashed horizontally.

It's interesting what you both mention about CRTs regarding this issue. Maybe it is something that has always been there even way back when the Gamecube was released and people used CRTs but nobody really cared or noticed including myself.

[marqs]

Thanks for the tip. I will have another mess around with the H. active timing and see if I can get it close to the correct aspect ratio without cutting off one side.

Assuming your display will correctly resize picture after active area adjustment, it's then possible to tweak H.backporch to center picture and avoid cutting off one side.

[kel]

Thanks for the tip. I will have another mess around with the H. active timing and see if I can get it close to the correct aspect ratio without cutting off one side.

Assuming your display will correctly resize picture after active area adjustment, it's then possible to tweak H.backporch to center picture and avoid cutting off one side.

I had a quick play with H. active timing and my display didn't like it very much. It still displayed the picture but didn't recognize the resolution anymore and defaulted to 16:9. I didn't really go any further with that for the moment but I did find that using VGA in sampling and setting the H. samplerate to 830 the circles seemed pretty spot on and centered, that's without measuring them so it could be a couple either way. Not sure if it's got rid of the jailbars or not yet as I didn't have time to find a place where they are noticeable in one of those games mentioned above.

EDIT: Leaving it on 480p in sampling and setting it to 640 H.active like you suggested but changing H. samplerate to 830 and then tweaking H. backporch as you also suggested gives pretty much the same results as above. Thanks for the help.

I'll take a closer look when I have some spare time to see if I can also eliminate the jailbars completely this way.

[wildchild22]

It would be great if you could implement 9x line multiplying for 2160p for 4k users. Probably not possible but would be great of it was.

If you make a new version it would be nice if it had an audio input for each source. As right now I have 3 headphone splitters used for component, scart and vga to my hdfury integral for hdmi sound.

[BuckoA51]

Hey Marqs, been loving it since neo geo got fixed but the settings destabilise snes so there's lots of changing back and forth. Is there any more news on the next update featuring different profiles setups?

You should only need to change PL-COAST values though, that's 1 setting basically, not sure how a profile is more convenient than a single setting?

[Fudoh]

If we get profiles via dedicated buttons, then it's indeed easier than navigating the menu at all. And I'm saying this after preaching to DVDO for years after years about implementing profiles. There we got aspect ratio profiles and output profiles, but - d'uhhh - no profiles which included picture settings....

[neorichieb1971]

A project like this needs to be cross referenced against a tick list.

And the tick list needs to be as long as it needs to be so that a successor product is not needed (either competing one or a straight successor).


This product does not tick all the boxes and leaves room for a successor product and also a competing product to do better. Albeit might be the best product everyone has seen so far.

With the OSSC it seems to have done the footwork for any future product that could just add a few bits and become the end product everyone wants. So I do suggest that any improvements to carry audio, utilize HDMI be done sooner rather than later.

The OSSC is good enough to make older products obsolete and if you start to look you will see scalers and line doublers flooding the market. Lets hope nothing comes out soon that makes the OSSC obsolete so soon.

[bobrocks95]

The OSSC was a ~2 year hobbyist project. Companies have had the tech to deliver a comparable product for probably a decade now. I doubt we'll see a successor any time soon.

[neorichieb1971]

The OSSC was a ~2 year hobbyist project. Companies have had the tech to deliver a comparable product for probably a decade now. I doubt we'll see a successor any time soon.

Its open source. You only need half a brain to mount the tech in a new box with HDMI, audio throughput and a better designed connector strategy and if you have a product that blows the OSSC out of the water.

Marqs has done the hard work by the looks of it. Perhaps someone else needs to chime in with a product that copies what Marqs has done and dot all the i's and cross all the T's.

[orange808]

Well, you should get started.

https://github.com/join?source=header-repo
https://github.com/marqs85/ossc
https://github.com/borti4938/ossc/tree/ ... /diy-audio

[Guspaz]

It would take a lot more than "half a brain" to port the code to a larger FPGA and design a new product around it. That's months or years of work from a very particular skill set that few people have.

[bobrocks95]

The OSSC was a ~2 year hobbyist project. Companies have had the tech to deliver a comparable product for probably a decade now. I doubt we'll see a successor any time soon.

Its open source. You only need half a brain to mount the tech in a new box with HDMI, audio throughput and a better designed connector strategy and if you have a product that blows the OSSC out of the water.

Marqs has done the hard work by the looks of it. Perhaps someone else needs to chime in with a product that copies what Marqs has done and dot all the i's and cross all the T's.

Haha, as orange said, be my guest. This is one of the nichest markets ever, I stand by what I said.

Even if someone redesigns the board a bit, they're just going to order a PCB or two from OSHPark and solder it together themselves.
Manufacturing costs are too prohibitive for a competitor product that's only marginally improved, and as I said, it'll be quite a while before someone makes a true successor.

[neorichieb1971]

The OSSC was a ~2 year hobbyist project. Companies have had the tech to deliver a comparable product for probably a decade now. I doubt we'll see a successor any time soon.

Its open source. You only need half a brain to mount the tech in a new box with HDMI, audio throughput and a better designed connector strategy and if you have a product that blows the OSSC out of the water.

Marqs has done the hard work by the looks of it. Perhaps someone else needs to chime in with a product that copies what Marqs has done and dot all the i's and cross all the T's.

Haha, as orange said, be my guest. This is one of the nichest markets ever, I stand by what I said.

Even if someone redesigns the board a bit, they're just going to order a PCB or two from OSHPark and solder it together themselves.
Manufacturing costs are too prohibitive for a competitor product that's only marginally improved, and as I said, it'll be quite a while before someone makes a true successor.

Seems a bit sad to stop a project 9/10th's of the way to absolute perfection.

HDretrovisions HDMizer, although only a mockup at time of writing seems to be a bit more complete in design department.

Seems a shame that HDMizer will not support RGB and the OSSC doesn't have the overall design down. If the market is so niche why not get these guys talking to each other?

[Guspaz]

The OSSC and HDMIzer are targeting completely different markets.

[neorichieb1971]

The OSSC and HDMIzer are targeting completely different markets.

Care to explain this? There is no reason that I can see why one product can't piggy back off the other.

[Blair]

the HDMIzer always seemed to me like just an accessory for their HD retrovision cables, something they would sell to people that had televisions with poor 240p handling on the component inputs.