Image Quality

[paulb_nl]

I don’t have the RetroTink-2X and I am looking at various capture footage to see if I want one for composite/s-video because it is not cheap.

So far it does not look good. I am seeing wrong color balance and probably some contrast enhancement, even on component. Maybe Mike can comment whether the Adaptive Contrast Enhancement is enabled on the video decoder.

I haven’t seen any good unscaled uncompressed image captures yet. Bucko’s captures are either upscaled by the DVDO or png captures from what looks like a compressed video.

In this capture of the 240p color bleed test on component there should be pure red, green and blue color bars but the red bars contain a lot of blue and green and the green bars contain a lot of red and blue. I found this same color error in Raycommend Youtube review in the Super Mario World title screen footage.

If someone could make some good image captures on component of either the Super Mario World title screen or 240p test suite color bars and SMPTE color bars that would be great.

[James-F]

BINGO!

The youtube reviews started to pour in, but not a single one with a proper capture of Composite (for NES) in 1080p@60.
Can someone please do a proper video capture review of the RetroTINK 2x in all inputs for more than a few seconds.

RetroRGB samples where he used the OSSC in 5x Optimized mode was a completely wrong choice, he should have used Generic mode since the sampled pixels are huge hence the resulting huge noise artifacts.
Please use Generic mode when upscaling the RetroTINK 2x with the OSSC.

I want one for my NES but as paulb_nl, I’m still waiting for a proper video review.

Thanks

[BuckoA51]

My captures were taken directly from the capture device (screenshot function) not from videos.

The component ones I turned off upscaling to try to get as close as possible. My eyesight’s probably not good enough to pick out those colour differences.

[paulb_nl]

It does look like the 240p test component images contain compression artifacts. However they are also sized closer to 512×480 (508×472) instead of the 720×480 output of the RetroTink so they have been downscaled.

They are also very dark. Maybe you have the brightness switch on the HDRetrovision cable set to the wrong position?

Have you not been able to capture images directly without the DVDO? If the issue is the refresh rate of the SNES you can set the 240p test to 480i which will make the SNES output at 59.94Hz. Although you should probably get a better capture card like the Datapath VisionRGB E1 which will accept anything you throw at it and allows for 4:4:4 capture.

EDIT: I found out why the 240p component images have artifacts. They are 256 color png instead of 24 bit.

[BuckoA51]

The images were cropped rather than downscaled. WordPress or even your browser is maybe compressing them. Grab the raw files here if you’d like to analyse them further:-

click here

[paulb_nl]

Thanks Matt! The colors in the SMPTE pattern are fine so thats great. Can’t really judge quality because the DVDO has scaled the 480p images to what looks like 16:9 anamorphic so it will look 4:3 when stretched to 16:9.

[BuckoA51]

Yes I could swear I had some Super GnG test images done at 480p but I can’t find them now. The SD2SNES menu and the sharpness test are done at 720×480 though.

[Galdelico]

Hi guys, I just finished watching MLiG’s video about the RetroTINK-2X:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdUlcIR1yh4

and the part – starting around 13:05 – that mentions visible video artifacts – while using it in combo with the OSSC, at higher video modes than Line2X – got me a bit worried. Any of you encountered those issues?

[James-F]

It is the HDMI-to-VGA dongle that creates the wobbly artifacts with 240p input.

[Galdelico]

I see, thanks for clarifying. Coury himself mentions that as a possible cause: he says they tried two dongles, and in both cases there were artifacts on screen. Do you know if certain adapters just work perfectly, or if it’s a case where – with this setup – those issues are just inevitable?

[nmalinoski]

If anyone wants to send me an RT2X, I can test my N64 with an S-Video cable and the Portta HDMI to VGA converter. 🙂

[BuckoA51]

It is the HDMI-to-VGA dongle that creates the wobbly artifacts with 240p input.

If it were it would be consistent across all systems. I’m actively researching the wobble/jitter problem some folks have had and I’m going to be sending MLIG some hardware to try in the near future. On the NES it could be that a dejitter mod is needed but I’m not sure.

[James-F]

@BuckoA51

Can you test the HDMI->VGA adapter if it clips the dark shades with full scale 0-255 HDMI output?
I have one of these adapters from ebay and it seems that it clips the darker shades from the OSSC HDMI 0-255 output.
Maybe these HDMI->VGA adapters require HDMI limited range 16-235 to work properly?

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