[Riven]

I had quite a few people say they found the PAL console support not great and where put off buying an OSSC as a result, doesn’t help Junker HQ doesn’t have timings for PAL consoles either.

Companies like Rare used some odd resolution tricks on some of their PAL NES games like Snake Rattle n’Roll, so much so that game on NES breaks the picture on some of the upscalers I’ve used in the past. Having some standard option for PAL games would help, but there are a lot of different PAL resolutions used in-games on consoles, which would require a lot of research. While the advance features help, in PAL games I often find that the minute you use then on PAL titles you lose the signal, due to the highly unusual resolutions they create.

From my experience with PAL titles and the OSSC normally passthrough and x2 tend to work on most systems in PAL by default. As someone with access to quite a few PAL consoles and games I would be happy to help in improving support. Certainly I feel it should be looked at more at some point in the future.

By default the Saturn and PS1 support for PAL consoles is decent, here’s two examples of PAL captures with the OSSC:
Whizz Sega Saturn 50Hz: https://youtu.be/ct3ERsFVw0A
Rapid Reload PlayStation 50Hz: https://youtu.be/lKVlUiHAi10

[Riven]

I captured a few games PAL PS1 games at 50Hz and most will only work at passthrough or Line X2 mode. I have an LG TV which is pretty good with a lot of PAL games, but many NTSC game support Line X3, which I have yet to see a PAL game work with on the PS1. Here’s a video that shows the PAL version of Kingsley’s Adventure captured at 50Hz on an OSSC at Line x2. https://youtu.be/t8LXPBV_vMY

As many PAL games are optimised for 50Hz forcing them into 60Hz is a mixed bag as some work and some don’t. I have recently covered a sample of forcing PAL PS1 games into 60Hz and the results were very mixed with which games do and don’t work: https://randomisedgaming.tumblr.com/post/632059947316805632/importplayer-light-for-ps1-how-to-fix-some-mod

Ideally if the OSSC had a way to generate black/blank lines or double say the first or last line the game outputs multiple times you might be able to standardise the signal in some games that uses different resolutions. The first and last lines are often used for screen safe areas so are just black or a coloured border like on the Mega Drive. You could say multiple 314 x 3 for 942 at PAL, then you could say repeat the first and last lines an additional 138 times between then. That way it would give you a 1080 height, while the aspect wouldn’t be perfect it might just fool some TVs to think it would be a standard picture signal at 1080. You could then adjust via zoom, crop and other options to correct for the odd aspect ratio picture possibly. Not sure it can be done , but it’s an idea suggestion for a way for users might be able to standardise odd PAL resolutions if a feature like this could be added in the normal or pro model of the OSSC. Certainly if the user could pick a set line and multiple it as many times as they need. That way you could used the normal feature to multiple to as close as possible to 720p or 1080p, before then mutipling one or two set lines to give you the remaining lines to reach them.

[Riven]

I’ve seen this issue in a couple of Mega Drive titles, I believe it to be a resolution or Hz change by the game or Mega Drive. Which I don’t believe the OSSC can do much about. Capture units tend to deal with the change better than TVs which tend to black screen for a few seconds. It the same issue you see on PS1 and Saturn games with resolution changes.

I’m the editor of a channel called Randomised Gaming and we’ve been capturing with an OSSC for about a year now. One game this issue is very easy to show with is Splatterhouse 3 on Mega Drive when ever a cut scene played when swapping from fight sections you would get a transition. Example of this is the cutscene at 7:20 in this video of the game: https://youtu.be/Gf74Ir1gPos (Often the TV screen wouldn’t come back on the TV until after the enemies attacked you in the next room.) The capture via the Elgato doesn’t have this issue.

Shining in the Darkness does it when you start a new game and bring up the name selection menu, but it’s a none event on that game. But it’s an example of a game many players will have.

[Author]

Posts