I’m wondering if dull, dim, dirty colors are something we really should be pursuing in our composite video shader presets.
I’ve never actually seen a photo of a well-functioning CRT displaying composite video that had dull, dim, dirty colors. The colors are different from RGB, but not really dull or unsaturated. If anything, I’ve noticed composite video on a CRT tends to be a bit more saturated.
Here’s what I think is happening:
-The saturation loss is caused by bleed. Bleed is reduced or eliminated by notch or comb filtering
-What little bleed remains causes a slight saturation loss in those colors that are bleeding
-TV manufacturers often did “nostalgic” calibrations, which probably caused clipping and other “incorrect” things, but it looked good to the consumer (bright and vibrant)
-The consumer then did whatever they wanted with the knobs
In short, I think a generic “composite video look” really comes down to chroma bleed and artifacting. In guest-advanced-ntsc, we should pay attention to the “NTSC Chroma Scaling / Bleeding” parameters, along with “NTSC Artifacting” and “NTSC Fringing.”
For a more nostalgic look, a slight hue shift of red towards orange (or some other subtle shift) can help, to mimic whatever weird things the manufacturer was doing.
I don’t think we really need to touch NTSC Color Saturation or NTSC Brightness, though.
I think the way chroma bleed currently works might be improved if we can get it to actually cause saturation loss where it’s bleeding from, if that makes any sense. edit: Actually I think GTUv50 is doing this. guest-ntsc / ntsc-adaptive kinda do it, but only at a very low setting for chroma bleed and you don’t have full control over YIQ, so it’s not quite as accurate/realistic.
Thoughts?