Analogue NT Mini color pallete question

[F34R]

Ok, here is three different looks at SMB.

 

Emulator (unknown palette)

 

Analogue NT Mini (FCEUX palette)

Original NES



I'm really interested in getting the looks of the first picture, but not sure which palette that is. None of the options in the NT Mini produce that type of result.

 

Any suggestions on how to reproduce that, or is the NT mini with the FCEUX or FirebrandX palettes really close to the original? Can we add another palette?

[F34R]

I've loaded a few palettes from FirebrandX, but haven't found the same output as the top picture.

[Newsdee]

FirebrandX's palettes tries to be as close to the NTSC colors as possible. The thing is the sky in SMB is not supposed to be blue.

 

Maybe the NT mini will have the ability to customize a palette. You can try asking in the relevant thread from Kevtris.

Edited February 24, 2017 by Newsdee

[F34R]

FirebrandX's palettes tries to be as close to the NTSC colors as possible. The thing is the sky in SMB is not supposed to be blue.

 

Maybe the NT mini will have the ability to customize a palette. You can try asking in the relevant thread from Kevtris.

I did think about posting in there. After doing a cap on my original NES, I can see that the look isn't that much different. I just liked the blue sky lol. I appreciate the reply.

[Newsdee]

Well, on some emulators you can just load a palette file to customize. In the MiST there's two palettes (FCEUX and FirebrandX UnsaturatedV6) and you can recompile the firmware to change them if you'd like.

 

Personally I find FbX's palette great for games with gritty/"realistic" graphics and FCEUX nicer for some cartoony games where you want brighter colors.

[Kismet]

FirebrandX's palettes tries to be as close to the NTSC colors as possible. The thing is the sky in SMB is not supposed to be blue.

 

Maybe the NT mini will have the ability to customize a palette. You can try asking in the relevant thread from Kevtris.

 

I thought it had a way to customize the palette.

 

As for "what are the correct colors" that depends on the equipment. Take for instance the color palette on the WiiU virtual console. If you look at your HDMI screen, it will almost certainly be too dark because Japanese games were NTSC-J, while North America games were NTSC-M. Then look at the WiiU controller screen and notice the color doesn't even match what is on the HDMI screen.

From wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTSC-J

 

It is based on 'regular' NTSC, but is slightly different. The black level and blanking level of the NTSC-J signal are identical (at 0 IRE), as they are in PAL, another video standard, while in American NTSC, black level is slightly higher (7.5 IRE) than blanking level. Because of the way this appears in the waveform, the higher black level is also called pedestal. Since the difference is quite small, a slight change of the brightness setting is all that is required to enjoy the "other" variant of NTSC on any set as it is supposed to be.

NTSC-J also uses a white reference (color temperature) of 9300K instead of the usual NTSC standard of 6500K.

 

That is why NES/Famicom games look really off on the HDMI screen, because the HDMI monitors sold in North America are calibrated to sRGB, which is roughly 74% of NTSC colorspace. Plus you have the 16-235 vs 0-255 (which is another reason for dark pictures or over-saturated ones.) A TV is calibrated to do Rec. 601 (SDTV) Rec. 709 (HDTV, and sRGB) and/or rec.2020 (UHDTV)

 

You can not be sure the NT Mini produces correct output over the HDMI connection primarily because you can't rely on the HDMI monitor or TV screen to be setup correctly. Capture equipment will typically switch to Rec.601 over Composite/S-Video but will switch to Rec. 709 over RGB/YPbPr.

 

So the question about "what is the correct color" is really a question of "what color do I see?"

 

Let me take my own images for examples:

Real NES, NTSC-J, Composite

 

Real NES NTSC-M, Composite

 

WiiU - Bypass BT.709

 

WiiU - Expand BT.709

 

WiiU - Shrink BT.709

 

Thing to note, the WiiU Tablet shows the sky as Blue. So there is something certainly different going on here, and this is typically why the WiiU's NES emulation gets put down frequently for being so dark.

 

All captured on SA7160 ( micomsoft sc-512n1-l/dvi )

 

See http://www.firebrandx.com/nespalette.html(updated two days ago) about NES Palettes on the NT Mini

Edited February 24, 2017 by Kismet

[F34R]

Yeah, I've loaded all the palettes from that link already. Thanks for the comparison shots. I'm not so much concerned, I guess, about what I see. I'm interested in what is captured and what others see. I'm probably making this out to be more than it is lol.

[Newsdee]

Yeah, I've loaded all the palettes from that link already. Thanks for the comparison shots. I'm not so much concerned, I guess, about what I see. I'm interested in what is captured and what others see. I'm probably making this out to be more than it is lol.

This review shows that custom palettes are already supported, so there you go

 

Edited February 25, 2017 by Newsdee