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Offline Hammer

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Re: Is Amiga Emulation better than the real thing?
« Reply #14 from previous page: May 01, 2008, 12:53:54 PM »
 :-)
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-D- wrote:
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Hammer wrote:
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If I understand well, such an interpolation is usefeul in films or wholly moving screens because it suppresses the "pauses" that occur when a frame is repeated.

But if it only adds frames it can't improve 2D animation, especially for objects that moves on the screen without changing shape, because in it motion must be regular. Every added frame will just slow animation down instead of stopping it, so instead of getting jerky animation you will just get wavy animation : it won't make the motion regular. In order to reproduce 2D animation accurately on a different refresh rate, you would need to redraw every frame to make it correspond to what the eye would see at the same moment if the display's frame rate was right..

The whole point about "motion interpolation" is to avoid judder issues e.g. playing 24FPS video on 60hz/120hz display.


Actually, the point is to reduce judder, nothing eliminates it entirely. You'll notice film aficionados generally prefer certain scaling techniques over others for this exact reason. From your wiki link:

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According to CNET.com executive editor David Carnoy, with Sony's MotionFlow objects look more stable when the feature is turned on. This is sometimes accompanied by a glitch in the picture.[1] Not everyone likes the effect and some complain that it gives film a "video" look.[6]


Ermm, it’s a Sony....

This is not Philips Trimension middleware.
http://www.trimension.philips.com/

"Philips Trimension software for PCs ensures stunning image quality − even on the biggest, most demanding HD flat screens. No judder, no artifacts, just superb images and razor sharp video."

WinDVD7 is shipped with Philips TrimensionDNM middleware.

According to http://www.soundandvisionmag.com/hitech/1449/smooth-operator.html


"To eliminate judder, Trimension calculates enough interpolated frames between the actual frames recorded on a DVD to be able to show them all at 60 fps. Good frame interpolation is a technically difficult and sophisticated process, and it's impressive that Trimension runs smoothly on a PC (a 2.8-GHz Pentium 4, at minimum)."


Not a problem with today's multi-core CPUs and video accelerators. Brute force computation performance can be applied at this problem.


"Smooth is also the word to describe the results. Old or new, B&W or color, animated or live action — if the original film was made at 24 fps, Trimension makes nearly all moving objects cross the screen with an almost surrealistic smoothness. While images containing no motion look precisely the same with the system on or off, it takes only a very slight movement — a turn of a head, the raising of a hand, a single step — to make the image look more lifelike than normal film. The effect is so pronounced that the latest version of WinDVD, v.7, includes a toned-down mode that introduces an even-rhythm, cinema-like judder ("2:2 pulldown")."


Latest WinDVD is at 9th release.
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Offline Hammer

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Re: Is Amiga Emulation better than the real thing?
« Reply #15 on: May 02, 2008, 01:41:54 PM »
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-D- wrote:
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Hammer wrote:
 :-)
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-D- wrote:
Quote

Hammer wrote:
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If I understand well, such an interpolation is usefeul in films or wholly moving screens because it suppresses the "pauses" that occur when a frame is repeated.

But if it only adds frames it can't improve 2D animation, especially for objects that moves on the screen without changing shape, because in it motion must be regular. Every added frame will just slow animation down instead of stopping it, so instead of getting jerky animation you will just get wavy animation : it won't make the motion regular. In order to reproduce 2D animation accurately on a different refresh rate, you would need to redraw every frame to make it correspond to what the eye would see at the same moment if the display's frame rate was right..

The whole point about "motion interpolation" is to avoid judder issues e.g. playing 24FPS video on 60hz/120hz display.


Actually, the point is to reduce judder, nothing eliminates it entirely. You'll notice film aficionados generally prefer certain scaling techniques over others for this exact reason. From your wiki link:

Quote
According to CNET.com executive editor David Carnoy, with Sony's MotionFlow objects look more stable when the feature is turned on. This is sometimes accompanied by a glitch in the picture.[1] Not everyone likes the effect and some complain that it gives film a "video" look.[6]


Ermm, it’s a Sony....

This is not Philips Trimension middleware.
http://www.trimension.philips.com/

"Philips Trimension software for PCs ensures stunning image quality − even on the biggest, most demanding HD flat screens. No judder, no artifacts, just superb images and razor sharp video."

WinDVD7 is shipped with Philips TrimensionDNM middleware.

According to http://www.soundandvisionmag.com/hitech/1449/smooth-operator.html


"To eliminate judder, Trimension calculates enough interpolated frames between the actual frames recorded on a DVD to be able to show them all at 60 fps. Good frame interpolation is a technically difficult and sophisticated process, and it's impressive that Trimension runs smoothly on a PC (a 2.8-GHz Pentium 4, at minimum)."


Not a problem with today's multi-core CPUs and video accelerators. Brute force computation performance can be applied at this problem.


"Smooth is also the word to describe the results. Old or new, B&W or color, animated or live action — if the original film was made at 24 fps, Trimension makes nearly all moving objects cross the screen with an almost surrealistic smoothness. While images containing no motion look precisely the same with the system on or off, it takes only a very slight movement — a turn of a head, the raising of a hand, a single step — to make the image look more lifelike than normal film. The effect is so pronounced that the latest version of WinDVD, v.7, includes a toned-down mode that introduces an even-rhythm, cinema-like judder ("2:2 pulldown")."


Latest WinDVD is at 9th release.


Nice (I think it looks OK), but quoting from the marketing literature doesn't change the fact that the process isn't 100% flawless, do some research around the video forums. Losing the "film-like" look of the video is a common complaint with Trimension, as are artifacts (like halos) in certain situations.

WinDVD 7 "includes a toned-down mode that introduces an even-rhythm, cinema-like judder ("2:2 pulldown")."

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 By its nature, scaling/processing modifies the video content in some way or another, so far there is no method that everyone is happy with. That's why the wiki article (which mentions Trimension) sez "reduces", and not "eliminates". Might be a better argument to compare dedicated image processing hardware anyway, an $80 copy of WinDVD hardly compares to multi thousand dollar scaling hardware.

One should realise that multi-thousand dollars and  dedicated image processing hardware doesn’t automatically equal performance.

The computation performance from ATI and NV GpGPUs makes some multi-thousand dollar solutions a joke.

Any cost values must factor in the economic of scale.

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Anyhow... regardless, you can't use it to play Superfrog via WinUAE. :-) The video you posted (while not terrible) absolutely isn't showing flawless scrolling, but as I said above, most people would be content with it. It would be better to just record it at 60Hz (if it works without glitches at 60Hz, or find an NTSC version if one exists). Fire up some Slamtilt at 60Hz, with your emulator configured for PAL/50 FPS and let me know how smooth it looks. ;)

I don't have Slamtilt, but I do have  Pinball Illusions AGA.

My WinUAE settings for playing PI-AGA

Model: A1200
ROM:KS ROM v3.0 (A1200) rev 39.106 (512k)

Settings
_Filter:
___PAL/50
_Display:
___FullScreen+VSync
___Render Every Frame
___FPS adj:50

_Chipset
___Cycle-exact
___Sound Emulation, 100 percent
___NTSC: FALSE
___Collision Level:FULL
___Faster RTG: FALSE
___Chipset Extra:A1200

The scolling is smooth (i.e. no judder) on
ASUS G1S laptop with Windows Vista Ultimate 32bit
Intel Core 2 Duo T7500 @2.2Ghz,
Dual MCH mode PC5300 4GB RAM,
NV Geforce 8600M GT GDDR3 @1.4Ghz VRAM 256MB.
Displayed on Samsung made built-in TFT 15.4" screen.

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--edit-- BTW, Just thought I'd add Trimension software decoder doesn't even require "today's multi-core CPUs", requirements are a P4 and 256 MB RAM.

Without video co-processors such as PureVideo HD or Avivo HD, multi-core CPUs would be required to decode Blu-Ray or HD-DVD HD content.

BTW, Trimension middleware is not the decoder i.e. it's post processing.
Amiga 1200 PiStorm32-Emu68-RPI 4B 4GB.
Ryzen 9 7900X, DDR5-6000 64 GB, RTX 4080 16 GB PC.
 

Offline Hammer

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Re: Is Amiga Emulation better than the real thing?
« Reply #16 on: May 02, 2008, 01:46:01 PM »
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arkpandora wrote:
@Hammer

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It's fine for SuperFrog.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZfX-EvDeNc


Animation in this video is quite ugly, you know.


Well the encode quality is poor..  
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Ryzen 9 7900X, DDR5-6000 64 GB, RTX 4080 16 GB PC.
 

Offline Hammer

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Re: Is Amiga Emulation better than the real thing?
« Reply #17 on: May 02, 2008, 01:49:50 PM »
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The software, UAE, actually pretends to be the hardware... there is no re-targeting of calls (except in the RTG emulation)... the Amiga display is built entirely in software and then simply displayed via the host OS.

Don't forget AHI, Warp3D, Midi.
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Offline Hammer

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Re: Is Amiga Emulation better than the real thing?
« Reply #18 on: May 02, 2008, 02:05:11 PM »
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I don't quite follow you, but my technical knowledge is poor. Do you mean that Amiga graphic cards too are stuck in this planar system ? In order to compare a 1990 PC with a 1990 Amiga for example, you have to compare machines that both have a graphic card, or it makes no sense to me, as the PC had no custom chips on the motherboard.

One can treat Amiga’s custom chips as PC's IGPs.

Anyway, my laptop’s GPU (Geforce 8600M GT) and audio chips are mounted on the motherboard. I preferred a MXM-II gfx card btw…
Amiga 1200 PiStorm32-Emu68-RPI 4B 4GB.
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Offline Hammer

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Re: Is Amiga Emulation better than the real thing?
« Reply #19 on: May 02, 2008, 11:57:18 PM »
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-D- wrote:
@Hammer

You crack me up, man :pint:

About the video processing - it's not really an area of huge interest or concern to me, all I'm pointing out is that any type of processing introduces its own elements (this is common knowledge, product literature aside), some will be more or less happy with different technologies. In regard to so-called "framerate conversion" (specifically, 50 Hz content -> 60Hz), it looks like {bleep}e to me and

Which type of framerate conversion?

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I'm afraid that's simply a matter of subjective taste. This also goes for an emulator output set at 50 FPS "synced" to a display refresh of 60Hz. If it looks OK to you... then rock on! :D

I may get a few videos up to try and illustrate the difference.

Example of judder effects refer to
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lik4zcmPoY
24FPS
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1E8j6hvEf0E
50FPS

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVZip0uYX_o
Judder issues (Motion Plus 100Hz set to low) with Transformers Movie. I’m assuming we all have this movie for common reference.

Playing Pinball-I AGA on my WinUAE setup(as posted on this topic) doesn't have these effects i.e. the scrolling is smooth.

Also, the latest NVIDIA driver 175.12 or 174.93 enables the user to create custom screen modes and refresh rates without the use of Powerstrip.

Amiga 1200 PiStorm32-Emu68-RPI 4B 4GB.
Ryzen 9 7900X, DDR5-6000 64 GB, RTX 4080 16 GB PC.
 

Offline Hammer

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Re: Is Amiga Emulation better than the real thing?
« Reply #20 on: May 03, 2008, 12:05:36 AM »
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-D- wrote:
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persia wrote:


Indeed, but I guarantee it's far more hillarious from my standpoint. :lol:

If 50Hz material looked perfect at 60Hz, there would be no need for frame rate conversion. Same with film. This is just common knowledge...

Most of my post shows FPS smoothing post-processing.

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Ever played a fast 3D game without vsync?

Yes, and also for benchmarking. VSync can be locked from driver's control panel or in game settings.

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 Why do you think 120Hz capable LCDs are becoming available? Synchronized display (f.e, 60 FPS @ 60Hz) is always better for smooth gaming... amiga games are no exception. Ask any 133t PC gamer which argument makes more sense. :-)

My other PC is built around Intel Core 2 Duo@3Ghz (not overclocked) and CrossFire Radeon HD 3870 setup i.e. (Radeon HD 3870 X2). Enough performance to play 2007/2008 era games (and Fold@Home) beyond PS3 or X360 (you only need one Radeon HD 38x0 or one Geforce 8800 GPU to beat these "next-gen" consoles).

I have bought Unreal Tournament 3, Crysis, Assassins Creed (XBOX 360/PS3 port), Quake 4, Doom 3, Two Worlds (XBOX 360 port), Half Life 2 EP1/EP2, Hellgate London, The Witcher and 'etc'.

Btw, ASUS G1S is a "gamer" 15.4" laptop. I could have brought MacBook Pro...
Amiga 1200 PiStorm32-Emu68-RPI 4B 4GB.
Ryzen 9 7900X, DDR5-6000 64 GB, RTX 4080 16 GB PC.
 

Offline Hammer

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Re: Is Amiga Emulation better than the real thing?
« Reply #21 on: May 03, 2008, 01:04:03 AM »
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This also goes for an emulator output set at 50 FPS "synced" to a display refresh of 60Hz

The catch is "FullScreen + VSync" which disables "FPS Adj".
Amiga 1200 PiStorm32-Emu68-RPI 4B 4GB.
Ryzen 9 7900X, DDR5-6000 64 GB, RTX 4080 16 GB PC.