Thought I’d share my global preset. I’m calling this the “final form” since it is meant to be the cleanest possible composite video image with currently available shaders. Imagine an alternate timeline in which the CRT era never ended and the tech continued to improve for 10+ years (we can only dream…). This is “enhanced composite video.”
I think this is as close as it gets to a one-size-fits-all shader for all consoles up to and including the 6th generation.
This gives you the best of both worlds- this has all the color of RGB, while still blending dithering so that you see all the effects the artists wanted you to see. I’ve also meticulously adjusted the sharpness filters so that you get the sharpest possible image while completely avoiding any artifacts like ringing, color fringing, ghosting, shimmering, etc. Everything that should be blended is blended, otherwise it’s as sharp and clear as it can get.
Now that we have a few very talented people currently working on hardware-accurate, circuit-level composite video emulation, I think “enhanced composite” is the best use for the ntsc-adaptive family of shaders.
Some notes-
Brightness: With HDR1000 and local dimming off, I’m getting 225 nits on a white screen, enough to give it “CRT punch.” This feels like looking at a CRT. Without 1000 nits, you’ll have to turn the mask strength way down and/or crank up the bloom/glow/etc.
Mask: RGBX (Mask 10) is the default, 540 TVL. Our advanced alternate timeline CRTs would be high line count.
For a more consumer-grade feel, go with mask 12 (308 TVL).
Sharpness: It’s a goal of mine for this to be as sharp as possible while avoiding ringing, color fringing on whites, blurring black text/black lines, shimmering/ghosting, etc. Tested everything from NES to PS2.
Scanlines: Adjusted profile so that scanlines aren’t lost on white. I think this is around the sweet spot for strong scanlines. There is little value in increasing the beam edges parameter any further, seems to just darken the image.
Interlacing: I choose interlacing mode 4 because the flickering is awful and in our hypothetical future CRTs we would have advanced digital deinterlacing (lagless, of course) that would have eliminated flickering completely
NTSC Artifacts: Switched off because in our advanced future CRTs, signal processing would have eliminated these completely, through increased signal bandwidth, “AI” per-pixel comb filtering, who knows.
Download:
https://mega.nz/file/5nMTAbKR#wVdl9HuDDK7KltCPyLcjzYah8fztcZj0dp3vmIja8ac
Screenshots:
These are all showing an earlier preset, I’ve since made a few improvements but they’re still mostly representative.
The black text in Kirby should be solid black at normal viewing distance - some faint phosphor activity is ok and probably unavoidable if you want to completely avoid color fringing on white text.
Vertical black lines in Super Mario Bros 3 should be solid.
The text in Link to the Past is a real pain and quickly reveals oversharpening.
I couldn’t get a screenshot of LRPS2 in action, but the white text in FFX is another torture test for color fringing.
And lastly, an Aladdin example to demonstrate dithering, since we’ve all seen the Sonic waterfall enough times 