My 386 time machine project so far

Thats S-video out from the MX400, capturing the S-video Input on the USB capture card?

No cheap good vga capture devices?

edit: That second video looks reasonable

 

Yup the Geforce MX has a S-Video port at the back, goes straight into the Compro USB capture stick.

Not that I know...

2nd video is a VGA to S-Video converter box which I got from ebay: http://cgi.ebay.com.au/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=280573576308&ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT

Not quite as good as directly off the Geforce, but many machines don't have a TV-Out...

I tried Composite, but yea not worth the effort...

PS: dirkmirk hows your machine going?

 

Slightly off topic Mau1wurf1977, but you have inspired me.

I have dug out a few 486 based systems (DX100 + DX66) as well as a Pentium Pro motherboard and CPU. Will post up completed pictures if they still work...

 

Sounds good! 486 machines are great, very flexible regarding "slowdown methods" through Turbo button and internal cache. They also have plenty of ISA slots for whatever sound cards you are after...

I now found a deinterlacing filter that "just works". Many I tried didn't do anything or had confusing options.

I use AVIDEMUX for encoding by the way. Virtualdub is now on it's way out, something to do with VFW. Also can't wait for Sandy Bridge. This Phenom II takes it's sweet time encoding videos.

Encoding and uploading the final recording which was also captured directly off the Geforce MX 440. Will post here it shortly...

 

That second video had worse interlacing than the first! Is there a way you can turn off 480/576i mode on the capture and just get full progressive frames (even if that means sacrificing resolution)?

 

Deinterlaced version

Done a bunch of encodes last night and this is the result. Pretty happy with the quality. To me it was quite a surprise as some mentioned that I shouldn't expect much...

This video is now deinterlaced as well. I included some text from DOS prompt and text editor and a mix of games...

 

What deinterlace method did you use? Looks like blend? You can still see some frame doubling here and there.

Interlacing is awful. In a progressive scan, LCD and YouTube era, it needs to die.

 

The account is hijacked. That can't be the real Elvis. The real Elvis enjoys the legit interlaced old school experience.

 

Actually I LOATHE interlacing, even on CRT. Oldschool consoles and arcades were all progressive scan with nice big fat scanlines.

Interlacing was invented for people who wanted to watch that horrible "television" thing on their CRTs, which IMHO is a waste of a good screen.

 

Previous video used "linear blend". I tried another one using "FFmpeg deinterlacer":

Video is still being processed, but should work soon...

 

MUCH better.

 

Also just in case anyone is wondering WTF why am I uploading old Retro videos in 1080...

The cropped source footage is pretty close to 480p (614 x 490) so it's natural to scale it to 640 x 480 and upload the video like that. Now I know that upscaling does increase the quality of the encode slightly from having done DOSBox videos in the past.

Still I might as well document this, because the "WTF why am I uploading old Retro videos in 1080" question keeps popping up

So I took a small recording, added the deinterlacing filter, cropped the image and scaled it to 640 x 480 (and then again to 1440 x 1080).

Codec is x264 and I use "Constant Quantizer" of 16. The 480 file ended up being 17.6 MB and the 1080 file 76 MB. File length is just under 4 minutes.

This is how the videos compare:



Now once you upload the files it gets interesting. YouTube reencodes the videos and this is something you have no control over. So after the videos are uploaded and YouTube has done the reencode, I can download the file that is stored on YouTube and let's take a look. Note this option is only available to me (Because it's my YouTube account)

The 480 file has shrunk down to 9.09MB and the 1080 file is now only 41.2MB. Let's take a look at what the videos look like after YouTube "got it's hands on them"...




Looking at the DOS command line, the 480 version has clearly lost detail. Looking at the other image we can see that there is lost detail on the 480 video (Markings on the floor, detail on the prince and on the skull)...

There you have it

PS: You can watch the 480 version here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Em0zK821V4

and the 1080 version here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOz3P3fZHq8

 

PAL or NTSC

Playing with my VGA to S-Video converter box which can be set to PAL or NTSC. So higher resolution vs higher frames. I really struggle to decide. Somehow I'm leaning towards NTSC though?

Make sure it plays at 480!

PAL:


NTSC:

 

On my quest to DOS retro perfection I made another interesting discovery! I believe to have found a very good solution for digital speech / sound effects in games...

To this point I believed that the AWE64 GOLD is pretty much as good as it gets for speech / sound effects but I have discovered a setting for the Sound Blaster Pro 2.0 which might change this...

Ok so I used the tool SBP-SET.EXE in the SBPRO folder and it game me options for setting the mixer and one option seems to turn the output filter ON or OFF. It's basically a low-pass filter:

SBP-SET.EXE command options



Boot message confirming the mixer and filter settings!





So I made some recordings with the Game is Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis. This time I muted the FM synth in the mixer and also recorded DOSBox as a reference so to speak, AWE64 GOLD and SB Pro 2.0 with output filter ON and OFF.

Now the difference between Filter ON and OFF is quite amazing. The AWE64 and SB Pro 2.0 with filter ON sound somewhat "limited" or even "muffled". The DOSBox recording is outstanding and the SB Pro 2.0 recording with filter OFF is very close to the DOSBox recording.

It's very bright and you can hear a lot more highs. Quite fascinating and I would definitely say I prefer the SB Pro 2.0 with filter OFF for speech over the AWE64 GOLD. I haven't tested SPDIF yet however...

I will upload all the files shortly!

Here are the 4 recordings:

- SB Pro 2.0 with Filter ON (default)
- SB Pro 2.0 with Filter OFF
- AWE 64 GOLD (note that this card has bass and treble controls, but I left it at default which is 2 steps above the middle setting)
- DOSBox 0.74

http://www.mediafire.com/?lhapzisap9rnll7

 

If the input source is 25/50Hz native, PAL.

If the input source is 30/60Hz native, NTSC.

That's probably going to make 99% of your DOS stuff NTSC.

 

I ordered a VGA > HDMI scaler. So hopefully deinterlacing and all that is a thing of the past...

Also means I can run long cables for recording.

 

Sounds:

Prefer dosbox and filter ON. The other two are noisy.

 

FWIW, the SNES uses an analogue low pass filter. Listening to a real SNES versus an emulated one really shows what these low pass filters add to music and effects. I cringe every time I hear a SNES emulator (even with all the different emulated effects they offer - none of them come close to the real thing).

 

On this card the filter only applies to the digital part. The FM part doesn't get affected. On QuestStudios we found that the filter seems to cutoff very low, hence the IMO massive loss in voice quality in the "Fate of Atlantis" recordings.

Some short retro PC music before we head off into the weekend!

This is the introduction from the PC game GODS, which is quite interesting as it uses FM synthesis AND digital samples...

Roland version (recorded on a CM-32L) if anyone is interested: GODS intro Roland version

 

i've been scrapping a few old school systems that i get, no idea if any of the parts work etc but if anyone in brisbane wants me to save them and pass them on send me a pm and let me know