Post subject: No interpolation on windows 7
Joined: 7/29/2011
Posts: 61
I just upgraded to windows 7 and now the video in all the major emulators, FCEU, snes9x, ZSNES and others are all blocky when any bigger than their native resolution. I can't change hardware acceleration because the option to get there in windows 7 is greyed out. Same thing with virtualdub when resizing the window. How do I fix this?
Lex
Joined: 6/25/2007
Posts: 732
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Are you trying to say the image, while simply using the emulator itself, is being upscaled using nearest neighbor (aka point) instead of any other upscaling algorithm like bilinear, bicubic, etc.? If so, that's a setting in the emulator you're using, not a Windows setting. It's up to the emulator's video programming to decide how to present the image, and with the standalone versions of the emulators you mentioned, each has its own video options menu to peruse. I suggest you poke around and explore the video options menus in those emulators. If you mean that the video capture (usually AVI for those older emulators) output looks weird after upscaling during playback in your video player, then I suggest you follow the video playback guide I wrote for encoders who are Windows users. After having done so, you can choose between several image upscaling algorithms in madVR's settings, as shown in this screenshot:
Joined: 7/29/2011
Posts: 61
Are you trying to say the image, while simply using the emulator itself, is being upscaled using nearest neighbor (aka point) instead of any other upscaling algorithm like bilinear, bicubic, etc.?
Yes.
If so, that's a setting in the emulator you're using
No it is not, I never touched the emulator's settings since upgrading. This problem only began after migrating to Windows 7. The files that hold the settings are exactly the same as they were on XP. A little coincidential that EVERY single emulator and program including ones I have only used once 5 years ago and the ones whose .cfg I have set to read-only a long time ago suddenly have no hardware acceleration, no?
creaothceann
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OV2 wrote:
enabling bilinear filter in directdraw causes snes9x to use video memory for the output image. Up till winxp, that would cause the image to be filtered bilinear. From vista on upwards, directdraw never uses bilinear filtering.
Deathlike2 wrote:
when you are running DX on any version of Windows other than Vista, bilinear filtering is automatically enforced with DDraw acceleration (assuming that's enabled).
Joined: 7/29/2011
Posts: 61
WOW. You're telling me that bilinear interpolation has gotten so resource intensive in the 21st century that it had to be phased out, chips getting twice as slower every 18 months and all? This really is retarded. And it's not the only example of how bad software sucks these days. Windows 7's photo viewer actually uses nearest-neighbor zoom, something last used in like Windows95. Wtf is next? No more color support in the new Windows OS? Sigh. I should have never upgraded from XP, or should I say downgraded? So is there any way to get around this?
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use emus that don't use the depreciated direct draw interface
Joined: 7/29/2011
Posts: 61
It's not just emulators but multitudes of programs that I'm having this problem on, sir. I will not abandon virtualdub for some bloated, malfunctioning garbage like Avidemux or the non-free overkill professional ones. And I'm certainly not abandoning snes9x that many movies were made for. If no one can suggest any solution I'm just going back to XP.
creaothceann
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Santiago wrote:
Windows 7's photo viewer actually uses nearest-neighbor zoom, something last used in like Windows95.
Why would you use that anyway? Irfanview ftw.
Santiago wrote:
And I'm certainly not abandoning snes9x that many movies were made for.
https://web.archive.org/web/20120915125144/http://byuu.org/bsnes/accuracy http://www.tested.com/tech/gaming/44376-16_bit-time-capsule-how-emulator-bsnes-makes-a-case-for-software-preservation/ http://filthypants.blogspot.de/2014/07/crt-royale-and-3dfx-shaders.html
Joined: 7/29/2011
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Why would you use that anyway? Irfanview ftw.
Because why should I need to go out of my way to download a third party app just for a basic function that should be default on the OS. It was perfectly fine on XP, an OS 8 years older than 7.
https://web.archive.org/web/20120915125144/http://byuu.org/bsnes/accuracy http://www.tested.com/tech/gaming/44376-16_bit-time-capsule-how-emulator-bsnes-makes-a-case-for-software-preservation/ http://filthypants.blogspot.de/2014/07/crt-royale-and-3dfx-shaders.html
What about preserving the many numerous early movies and hacks that are only compatible with early emulators? Are they not a viable piece of cultural history too? I can't run zsnes0.989 anymore on a modern PC to watch those runs from Zophar because the old, legacy support for DOS has been dropped and for good reason. But I can still make a DOS drive and watch or a DOS VM to watch from the OS. What's the awesome reason for going 20 years in the past and dropping bilinear interpolation in favor of shitty point-sampling? Obviously this is not a technical obstacle. Why not go back to 256 colors too?
creaothceann
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Life is all about compromises. I don't care if a tool is part of the OS or not; if it's the best for the job then I'm going to use it. I could even program my own, but I'm not byuu and if I'd do that for everything I'd need 50-hour-days. There is not going to be a perfect out-of-the-box environment for me, so I build my own toolbox by searching out existing programs. Of course you can preserve the old emulators... but watching runs in them isn't even necessary. Just dump the runs to AVI/MP4/whatever and watch them in your media player (I prefer MPC-HC, btw.); it'll even automatically introduce the blurring again. And if that blurring is too strong, just upscale the videos a little bit e.g. with Avisynth.
Lex
Joined: 6/25/2007
Posts: 732
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Santiago wrote:
If no one can suggest any solution I'm just going back to XP.
I realize this was posted a long time ago, but this bothers me. I suggested a solution in the first reply. Snes9x has these options (screenshot from Snes9x rerecording 1.51 v7 svn147): I still wonder why OP didn't just look at the settings.
Joined: 8/24/2012
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I can confirm this on Windows Vista and higher + DirectDraw applications. It's driver issues, not OS problems: http://sourceforge.net/p/fceultra/bugs/715/
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Joined: 11/18/2011
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Sergunov wrote:
I can confirm this on Windows Vista and higher + DirectDraw applications. It's driver issues, not OS problems.
Yes, you're right. When I use Intel Express Chipset Family as an example, I don't find any problem with interpolation for apps that uses DirectDraw at all, but as soon as I change to nVidia card, the interpolation stop working which gives a pixelate image in most emulators that uses DirectDraw, Fortunately, some emus had an option to use Direct3D instead and that gives the ability to bilinear filtering the image (thanks to feos and Aktan for informations). However, this doesn't causes a major problem if the goal is encoding a video except PSXjin and PCSX-RR, since the built-in AVI recorder for PSXjin and kkapture for PCSX-RR record exactly what appears in the screen of the emulator (PSXjin doesn't record HUD, as a note) PS: both of computers used for the test uses windows 7 as an OS. The first one had a P4 CPU and Intel GPU and the second one had a C2D CPU and a nVidia GPU
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