Sony Megatron Colour Video Monitor

RetroArch Additions Shaders
#1834

Magic glow is a toggle in crt guest shader, im not asking to have it natively integrated and always enabled, i might ask that features like those are indeed integrated. Would you say that all the features in the current megatron presets are essential only? More features do not change the current shader, makes it more in par with new discoveries and tricks for various panels. I mean, i know the quality of this shader and is always the one i go back to as my main, so it’s not at all a diminuishing of your work on this shader, it’s really more as there are little things that keep me from going to other shaders, why having only mask accuracy in here when there’s more than meets the eyes. Or if you can guide me on how to integrate crt guest magic bloom in here i could end up doing it myself no problem.

That’s not the aperture grill im referring to, it is more like that of pvm 2730qm in the first images which i find insane, but more full like that of the real first image. So far i could only make it in this shader and as you say i think it’s personally the best for mask creation.

About ntsc on normal shaders like the default from mega bezel reflective shader the auto ntsc never leaves as default the one with more color bleed, like in sonic phase 2 on megatron is dark blue and the red shooes are violet…like not even the worst composite will give you those results. In mega bezel auto ntsc works properly. Also in ninja gaiden fences and shinobi iii waterfall.

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#1835

I’ll leave most of what you said for @MajorPainTheCactus to respond to. I support his pure, accurate approach, ethos and scope 100%. He has also explained the rationale behind this in prior posts.

In this shader the solution to brightness, bloom and glow all comes from the display and not any sort of computational solution. It’s extremely fast for what it does. Once you add logic including other shaders it’s going to slow things down.

The NTSC Shaders have been successfully integrated with Sony Megatron Color Video Monitor, just as Mega Bezel Reflection Shader has integrated Sony Megatron Color Video Monitor so the proof of concept is there that this beautiful shader and module can be combined with other shaders.

RetroArch now has the Prepend/Append feature so it’s even easier to combine stuff. This isn’t always so straight forward as scaling and filtering settings also need to be on point. I also remember @HyperspaceMadness mentioning that he has a tool which was made to make it easier to build and combine shaders. I think it’s what he uses to make Mega Bezel Presets.

On the flip side, since the work has been done to bring HDR Support to RetroArch, what do you think the results might be like if other shaders started to include support for HDR? Perhaps that’s something that you can try asking other shader developers to start supporting and adding to their shaders.

I think that would be revolutionary.

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#1836

Is this for a 90 deg rotated slot mask?

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#1837

So one thing about ntsc signal is that you should be able to slot in any emulation of it you want - I think Ive got one slotted in for the CTV300 (or its called something like that) preset. You should be able to swap that one out for another as its essentially just a filter done on the frontend of the shader - a ‘pre shader’ if you like.

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#1838

yeah, rotated slot. (padding to character minimum)

2 Likes
#1839

Speaking of NTSC emulation, I went ahead and decoupled crt-guest-advanced-ntsc’s NTSC passes into their own standalone preset, since it has improvements over the existing NTSC-Adaptive. It should work with Megatron, I think. Here it is:

shaders = "5"
shader0 = "shaders_slang/crt/shaders/guest/advanced/stock.slang"
filter_linear0 = "false"
wrap_mode0 = "clamp_to_border"
mipmap_input0 = "false"
alias0 = "PrePass0"
float_framebuffer0 = "false"
srgb_framebuffer0 = "false"
scale_type_x0 = "source"
scale_x0 = "1.000000"
scale_type_y0 = "source"
scale_y0 = "1.000000"
shader1 = "shaders_slang/crt/shaders/guest/advanced/ntsc/ntsc-pass1.slang"
filter_linear1 = "false"
wrap_mode1 = "clamp_to_border"
mipmap_input1 = "false"
alias1 = "NPass1"
float_framebuffer1 = "true"
srgb_framebuffer1 = "false"
scale_type_x1 = "source"
scale_x1 = "4.000000"
scale_type_y1 = "source"
scale_y1 = "1.000000"
shader2 = "shaders_slang/crt/shaders/guest/advanced/ntsc/ntsc-pass2.slang"
filter_linear2 = "true"
wrap_mode2 = "clamp_to_border"
mipmap_input2 = "false"
alias2 = ""
float_framebuffer2 = "true"
srgb_framebuffer2 = "false"
scale_type_x2 = "source"
scale_x2 = "0.500000"
scale_type_y2 = "source"
scale_y2 = "1.000000"
shader3 = "shaders_slang/crt/shaders/guest/advanced/ntsc/ntsc-pass3.slang"
filter_linear3 = "true"
wrap_mode3 = "clamp_to_border"
mipmap_input3 = "false"
alias3 = ""
float_framebuffer3 = "false"
srgb_framebuffer3 = "false"
scale_type_x3 = "source"
scale_x3 = "1.000000"
scale_type_y3 = "source"
scale_y3 = "1.000000"
shader4 = "shaders_slang/crt/shaders/guest/advanced/custom-fast-sharpen.slang"
filter_linear4 = "true"
wrap_mode4 = "clamp_to_border"
mipmap_input4 = "false"
alias4 = "NtscPass"
float_framebuffer4 = "false"
srgb_framebuffer4 = "false"
scale_type_x4 = "source"
scale_x4 = "1.000000"
scale_type_y4 = "source"
scale_y4 = "1.000000"
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New CRT shader from Guest + CRT Guest Advanced updates
Please show off what crt shaders can do!
#1840

Thank you man it helped solving the issue and everything almost works with some tweaks.

The only problem i seem to have is that for some reason there’s an option called NTSC Values where you can choose Svideo, Composite and RF signal, but the values you can choose are only 0 and 1, so possibly without the RF option to be chosen, and the problem is that changing to 0 for Svideo doesn’t work, it is stuck at composite. Other than that everything so far seems working and autoPhase selection is correct.

3 Likes
#1841

Right, that “parameter” does nothing, because what it actually is is instructions to set the NTSC Fringing and Artifacts values to 0, 1 or 2 to replicate S-video, Composite and RF respectively.

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#1842

Got it!

Yes it works man, splendid thing you did!

2 Likes
#1843

Ah great thanks! Ill no doubt plug it in when I look at doing this - possibly next week as Im off on holibobs.

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#1844

Thats fantastic! I might have to try this out myself. I remember back in the day everybody was trying to get sharper clearer images now everybody wants to get blurrier noisier images. :joy: (And rightly so I hasten to add if thats your cup of nostalgia tea)

2 Likes
#1845

I almost forgot, you can also try out the Blargg NTSC video filters available in many cores’ core options as well as my CyberLab Custom Blargg NTSC Video Filter Presets, my older Blargg NTSC SNES Custom pseudo presets, which are included in RetroArch and finally my latest, 3rd Generation Custom Blargg NTSC Video Filter Presets in my new CyberLab CRT-Royale Death To Pixels Shader Preset Pack.

They should all work fine with Sony Megatron Colour Video Monitor!

1 Like
#1846

Yeh man i actually even tried those, i had the best image quality to my liking with the custom pseud MD one indeed, however none were resulting in clean ntsc like latest guest with svideo type.

Your preset package is on similar level as to guest and mega bezel as far as overall uniqueness of the shader presentation, but with megatron the mask is on an other level for me and is the one i look for in crts, especially the aperture grill.

I miss an overall better file naming and file location as with the old presets of yours, which i still prefer above all, together with the old blargg filters, but that can be absolutely subjective.

Look forward to what you come up next, you are one of the most active preset creator and you have grown up a lot in these months with the tecniques.

2 Likes
#1847

I was actually one of the advocates for the improvement of the Colour bleeding which was the start of the most recent overhaul of Guest-Advanced-NTSC.

Since then I’ve released my 3rd Gen NTSC filtering stuff but for now they’re only available as part of my CRT-Royale Preset Pack. Have you tried those yet?

Maybe you can elaborate on these a bit more in my thread.

Thanks, I appreciate that. I recently got Sony Megatron Color Video Monitor to work properly and was tweaking away so hopefully I’ll be able to make a little Sony Megatron Color Video Monitor pack once I’m able to iron out all the minor kinks (mainly with certain colours).

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#1848

Sorry if this already explained, but what TVL/ mask type/display resolution in params settings are appropriate for 1440 screen, would 480/600p content work or only lower? Basically I’m using the windowcast core to capture content.

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#1849

It depends on how many pixels the mask use. In your example 2 and 3 pixel masks are appropriate for high res, which should be 1080p /600 TVL or 4k / 800 and 1000 TVL.

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#1850

480p content in any of the settings you give me (note:integer settings don’t effect 480p content it seems) with slot mask selected, there’s horizontal lines on the screen. I’m not sure if that is how it supposed to look or a bug.

IMG_4646
IMG_46463024×4032 1.17 MB
IMG_4645
IMG_46453024×4032 1.14 MB

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#1851

No idea, I don’t use the slot option in Megatron for a number of reasons (looks weird to me at low resolutions, requires certain scale factor, sdr requires too much brightness…) .I only use the other two masks on my Surface (1504p). I haven’t tried anything with the Windowcast core, but in my experience Megatron also absolutely needs integer anyway.

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#1852

That looks cool thank you

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#1853

That looks like the scanlines are merging into each other too much. Maybe try reducing the vertical max ofvthe red green and blue channels to see if it goes away.