Best to use the newest versions. Ntsc shaders are very interesting as they ‘react’ differently with different games/gfx. patterns, especially with 2-phase games. Screenshots can also be deceiving as they can show only ‘one side of the coin’.
With the new sharpness feature it’s somewhat important to redo the filtering settings, i endorse the use of the fast version as it has a newer filter implemented, which is better for the ntsc pre-shaders.
Example pic:
Would it be possible to make a select key for the ntsc shader? I still think the old version is good, and I would like to use both, depending on the system it would be interesting to alternate, the new one is good for details and the old one has a smoother blend. Well it would be interesting to use the new sharpening in the old ntsc shader.
New Release Version (2022-05-28-r1):
Notable changes:
Download link:
https://mega.nz/file/g14ChCqY#uqgqnoEMmLEdv_hQ6XFRFgtGcw6dmEn1emH24O5OBZc
It’s still considered as a test release, some features could have caught a bug.
A word or two about the blend modes. The main motivation was that old filtering would do at least a decent job or would be useful to a degree, also considering substractive sharpness. This problem is now sorted by a new filter and the new options in the ntsc shaders.
I used to put fast-sharpen as the last pass but now I can’t do it anymore as it seems to conflict with the re-added custom-fast-sharpen. Can I edit my ntsc preset in a way so the last fast-sharpen pass would work normally and independently?
Sonic waterfall looks great, SMB text looks horrible though. 
(I disabled Sega Luma Fix for the SMB shot)
Have you tweaked the new filter? Old presets aren’t viable regarding filtering parameters any more. The ntsc preset also changed, it’s important to copy the presets also.
Sure, you can replace custom fast-sharpen with the stock shader. Alternative would be to rename the parameters in either of sharpening shaders.
Thanks! I’m still trying the new options 
Is it possible if I wanted to set up the new filtering parameters (horizontal filter range and blur sigma?) so it looks more like the blend mode 1.0?
Edit: I think I like the default values. Just wanted to know if it’s doable 
Well this is interesting. I look forward to trying this out but my first question off the top is how do I simulate Blend Mode 0 with these new options?
New Release Version (2022-05-28-r2):
Notable changes:
Download link:
https://mega.nz/file/QpZzhSob#8BzPM7JC0g1_umYzjgxvepIw-xJeeclocMnD0AdX8G4
Thanks for the feedback all, it’s appreciated. Blend mode 0.0 was easy to add, no extra pass is needed and it looks very nice. I guess this will make transits of existing presets much easier.
Old blend mode 1.0 is a compromise to get better filtering with 1x horizontal original size input. You can get much better results now, even with high-res content. But you can get similar results if you don’t use substractive sharpness.
That’s perfect. I see a new shader pack update right around the corner with this
Oh this is really good! Balancing adaptive sharpen with fast Genesis blending is so much better! For smaller resolutions such as 8 bit or even portable, only adaptive sharpening is enough! I think this is useful to better simulate different video outputs from consoles! Thanks!
Another thing I noticed, the ntsc shader now seems to balance things out, it preserves the dither a lot more while showing detail. I think it’s very balanced!
contr = “0.200000”
quality = “-1.000000”
ntsc_phase = “2.000000”
cust_artifacting = “1.100000”
ntsc_sharp = “-10.000000”
ntsc_slimit = “1.000000”
CONTR = “0.000000”
GAMMA_INPUT = “2.750000”
HSHARPNESS = “1.250000”
SIGMA_HOR = “0.750000”
S_SHARP = “2.000000”
HSHARP = “2.000000”
HARNG = “0.100000”
glow = “0.000000”
bloom = “0.400000”
gamma_c = “1.300000”
brightboost = “1.899999”
gsl = “1.000000”
scanline1 = “9.000000”
shadowMask = “6.000000”
maskstr = “0.800000”
masksize = “2.000000”
mask_gamma = “5.000000”
gamma_out = “2.100000”
post_br = “1.300000”
That’s amazingly sharp. 
Nevertheless, support for xbr…etc shaders will be added soon to the ntsc shaders, the new filter can handle even increased pixel ranges.
New Release Version (2022-05-29-r1):
Notable changes:
Download link:
https://mega.nz/file/cggRjTqA#QauEfwbdpQciztNiwNjQqcgaeqsx4C9lh3hr_uCfn_8
I’m using some extreme sharpness settings. The results are quite satisfying for me personally.
For 3-phase ntsc_sharp = “-7.650000” ntsc_slimit = “0.650000” S_SHARP = “1.600000” HSHARP = “1.400000” HARNG = “2.800000”
For 2-phase ntsc_sharp = “-8.650000” ntsc_slimit = “0.850000” S_SHARP = “1.900000” HSHARP = “1.600000” HARNG = “3.299999”
The artifacts introduced by extreme sharpening are very tolerable and in most cases, they seem to simulate what we would actually see from sharp composite signals. Not sure what to call them, ringing, shadows around the edges, like JPEG/MPEG compression artifacts.
I know some people totally hate these, but when it comes to crt emulation they do add some extra flavors. Not sure if I correctly remember how crts used to look like, but these artifacts actually give me an illusion of a somewhat distorted, imperfect video signal I used to see from the real thing.
Mixing old and new shaders to use the same presets doesn’t work any more with ntsc presets. But you can grab an older version from this thread and load the presets from it’s separate folder.
The folder is already present within linked .zip file, just extract it somewhere, preferably into the slang shaders directory.
New Release Version (2022-05-31-r1):
Notable changes:
Download link:
https://mega.nz/file/c8ZhlDYa#KPNZHIMjoIHOlC_DDmGvsETPkxUBOpbzynB0vo-BWdg
New Release Version (2022-06-02-r1):
Notable changes:
Additional note:
Thanks for the nice and constructive feedback, liking and trying the crt-guest advanced versions, it really helped with the shader development. Currently no observable misfunctioning was found by me, neither reported and the shaders seem to work well. So this version imo deserves to be declared as ‘a stable release’. Later releases and improvements are also possible, but let’s call it a day.
Download link:
https://mega.nz/file/spYHmaTC#8Q4jjPL3mXFBN6hvPmRzS5w8uKMuAL4Ca79mMXbHnrg
