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Altirra 3.90 released


phaeron

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Some input work:

 

http://www.virtualdub.org/beta/Altirra-4.00-test4.zip

http://www.virtualdub.org/beta/Altirra-4.00-test4-src.zip

  • Input maps marked as quick maps now cycle in sorted name order rather than random order. This fixes Shift+F1 cycling sometimes cycling Joystick (port 2) -> Joystick (port 1) instead of the other way around.
  • XInput 1.4 is now supported if available. This allows use of the Guide button on Windows 8 and above without needing XInput 1.3 to be installed.
  • Improved 5200 jittering algorithm to only apply to digital input and large analog deltas, so that controllers that provide smooth input already bypass it. This avoids unnecessary jitter when using a mouse or analog stick.
  • Invisible mouse cursor is now constrained in relative mode so that the pointer can't escape no matter how fast it moves.
  • Added support for using the Windows Raw Input API to receive relative mouse input. This allows mouse acceleration to be bypassed and can provide smoother mouse input in some cases. It is off by default and enabled in Configure System > Input.
  • Added an option to force immediate pot updates on POKEY, in Configure System > Input. This allows a slight fib in pot scan timing to work around a latency issue inherent in the real hardware, which is that paddles require nearly a full frame to scan. This is emulated accurately, but adds another frame of latency on top of all the other sources of latency. With this option enabled, the POT0-7 registers can update based on host input immediately before the VBI, which helps reduce the latency for paddles and 5200 controllers.

With these changes, 5200 games that use absolute positioning like Gorf and Kaboom! should be more playable with a mouse, when the 5200 controller axes are bound to Mouse Move Horiz/Vert in relative mode.

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trying my luck here.

 

is there a way with altirra, to get a routine performance.

for example, to set a routine and get everything one can get on:

- clock cycles

- cpu usage

- fps

etc....

i saw there is an analyzer in altirra, i tried it and it didn't get me what i needed....

 

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This is a problem unique to Microsoft's cloud scanner, as VirusTotal shows no other antivirus having a problem:

https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/53c1988d77736234f80c17f5cf258bb1e1629aac427b2077b23630c13f000227/detection

 

...and it's not the first time this particular false positive has occurred in software:

https://twitter.com/avfalse?lang=en

 

I've submitted the file to Microsoft for analysis, but there's nothing I can do. I certainly didn't put a trojan in it and don't appreciate being falsely accused of such.

 

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Microsoft fixed the false positive and provided these instructions:

 

We have removed the detection.  Please follow the steps below to clear cached detection and obtain the latest malware definitions.

     1. Open command prompt as administrator and change directory to c:\Program Files\Windows Defender 
     2. Run “MpCmdRun.exe -removedefinitions -dynamicsignatures”
     3. Run "MpCmdRun.exe -SignatureUpdate"

Alternatively, the latest definition is available for download here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/wdsi/definitions

 

Antivirus false positives are still B.S., though.

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1 hour ago, phaeron said:

Microsoft fixed the false positive and provided these instructions:

 


We have removed the detection.  Please follow the steps below to clear cached detection and obtain the latest malware definitions.

     1. Open command prompt as administrator and change directory to c:\Program Files\Windows Defender 
     2. Run “MpCmdRun.exe -removedefinitions -dynamicsignatures”
     3. Run "MpCmdRun.exe -SignatureUpdate"

Alternatively, the latest definition is available for download here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/wdsi/definitions

 

Antivirus false positives are still B.S., though.

They have no issues with flagging other people's software as malware, but then turn around and blast Edge to everyone and ask them to install it!  Pretty sure they were getting sued for this same behavior before!

 

Good that it got cleared up.

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http://www.virtualdub.org/beta/Altirra-4.00-test5.zip

http://www.virtualdub.org/beta/Altirra-4.00-test5-src.zip

 

Started out with a simple idea, trying to collapse the majority of the presets into a common template-based generator so it's easier to set up all of the different kinds of controllers Altirra supports without having to add zillions of presets. However, in the process this also exposed a bunch of bugs in the input system. Might be some new bugs introduced, but hopefully it is Better(tm).

  • Templated input map presets can now be generated via System > Input > Preset > Create from Template. This allows generating a preset for any combination of controller port, controller, input source, and absolute/relative mode. As usual these maps can be edited after creation. The intent is to eventually replace the majority of the existing hardcoded presets and whittle down the default list a bit.
  • Normalized use of Left/Right/Up/Down as aliases for normal and inverted Axis0 and Axis1 inputs. This was supported for only some controller types and now also works for mice, trackballs, paddles, and 5200 controllers.
  • Fixed bug where the joystick trigger would get held down for the rest of the session after using an input map with a light gun or pen, even after turning it off.
  • Standardized some controller names to be of the form "Controller Name (CXcode)." Built-in presets are not renamed yet.
  • Mouse input now has a signed input mode, basically emulating an analog stick with the screen. It's in there right now just so that absolute mode input maps generate reasonably for mouse input, but in the future I might make the screen area configurable and visible.
  • Made some adjustments to relative mouse speeds so that they're more consistent with button/D-pad and analog stick bindings with the same speed settings, and fixed relative bindings of analog sticks so that the acceleration setting on the binding works. This means that existing input maps in relative mode may be faster and slower than they used to be and require readjustment, but now 'speed 5' should be reasonable speed in more cases.
  • Tablet controllers had their Left/Right relative inputs flipped.
  • Fixed a bug in the input manager that prevented digital mappings with the same target from being tracked properly as a group. The result was that if you bound two keys to the same target and pressed both keys at the same time, the target trigger would release with the first key-up instead of the second as intended. This improves operation of double-bound diagonals in numpad-based input maps as now the stick won't return to center while keys are still held down.
  • Fixed a nasty bug where accidentally dragging a profile in the profile editor could create a parent loop in the profile system and prevent that profile from loading or saving global settings. The visible result of this was that the profile would not load or save any settings unless it was set to store those settings locally. This is is now blocked in the UI and the settings code.

In the new template generator, the tablets bind to the secondary button for toggling "off tablet", which is a bit weird but required by prominent tablet painting programs that use button-off-screen to access the menu. There is an issue that you can't see where the stylus is without the mouse pointer -- not sure how to solve this, might require drawing a tablet and pen somewhere on screen.

 

I have an idea of what might have caused the Defender ML false positive, the new call to RegisterRawInputDevice(). This is apparently used by some trojans for keylogging, even though it has lots of other uses and in this case is being used for the mouse. We'll see if test5 trips another false positive, and if it does, I might have to try to rewrite the code because I don't want to go through whitelisting for every test release. Obfuscating it from the antivirus would be an absurd thing to have to do, though.

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Question not relevant to latest releases: is there a way to test loading from disk with various disk speeds ?

Today we have many different disk simulators, which vary in speed from original disk speeds to divisor 6, some even faster. AFAIK Altirra can only simulate various disk drives in its original speeds, or I use accelerated disk drive access, but the speed seem to be 'infinite'. I'd like something like 6 divisor. Is there a way ?

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5 hours ago, R0ger said:

Question not relevant to latest releases: is there a way to test loading from disk with various disk speeds ?

Today we have many different disk simulators, which vary in speed from original disk speeds to divisor 6, some even faster. AFAIK Altirra can only simulate various disk drives in its original speeds, or I use accelerated disk drive access, but the speed seem to be 'infinite'. I'd like something like 6 divisor. Is there a way ?

You can simulate faster transfer speeds without rotational delays -- use the standard disk emulator with the emulation modes at the bottom of the Disk Drives dialog, and uncheck Accurate Sector Timing. This will read the sector in zero time and then transfer it with the high speed divisor for the drive type selected, without running firmware as the full drive emulators would. The speeds will still vary slightly beyond the pure divisor as internally the disk drive emulator also simulates the original bit/byte rate of the drive firmware, as no disk drive sends at precisely the rate of the POKEY divisor.

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@phaeron

For preservation purpose, I want to record videos of some rare Atari tapes with audio I found and to upload them on Youtube.

 

Could you please tell me what are the best video recording settings at the moment? Video compression, frame rate, aspect ratio...

 

Thanks!

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8 minutes ago, Philsan said:

@phaeron

For preservation purpose, I want to record videos of some rare Atari tapes with audio I found and to upload them on Youtube.

 

Could you please tell me what are the best video recording settings at the moment? Video compression, frame rate, aspect ratio...

This is sort of off-topic for the thread and I don't have much experience uploading to YouTube, but I'll do one post here....

 

The most important thing to realize and account for is that VHS video tapes use interlaced video with 60 fields/second (480i). TVs have long handled this, but computer video largely doesn't or does a bad job of it. The #1 mistake I see is ignoring this and letting the video get resized as progressive 30 frames/second, which produces lots of ghosting and reduces the motion fidelity. This is worse with old VHS tapes since the horizontal sync drifts and the fields frequently won't be aligned. You want to use a good adaptive deinterlacer (i.e. not bob or weave) to convert to 60 frames/second (480p), then I think you need to resize up to 720p for YouTube to offer a 60 fps option (720p60). This is most important if the video was shot in live TV style with true 60 fields/second, as if this is done correctly you will be able to step through the result a frame at a time and see motion in each frame without ghosting. If it was shot in film then it was probably telecine converted from 24 fps and this won't help as much -- even in the best case with a clean inverse telecine you'll still get some shuddering as 24 doesn't divide evenly into 60.

 

Since you're capturing analog video from VHS, you should be capturing at max resolution and frame rate -- this should be 720x480 @ 29.97 fps for NTSC or 720x576 @ 25 fps for PAL. There is no point in capturing at anything less as it is tiny by modern standards. Any analog capture hardware can get nowadays should be able to do this and if it can't it's too old. Ideally this should be capturing the raw video uncompressed (~20MB/sec) or minimally compressed and preserving the raw fields. Connect your Atari to the capture device, record a game that has smooth scrolling, and step through the frames in a player -- you should see combed frames from the pairs of Atari frames getting combined into an interlaced frame. If you see them blended, you are getting unwanted deinterlacing in either the capture hardware or software that is probably going to be lower quality than you can get with good postprocessing. This will probably be the case if you are using a device that captures directly to a highly compressed format like H.264, and in that case you're going to have to do a visual check against the original video played on a TV to judge whether it's good enough.

 

Oh, and for heaven's sake, don't allow your video software or YouTube to distort the aspect ratio. Those old videos are 4:3 and allowing them to be stretched to 16:9 is a crime, people weren't universally fat in the 80s. Cropping the top and bottom to hit 16:9 is also bad. More subtly, NTSC 720x480 is non-square pixels with 10:11 pixel aspect ratio, so you would need to shrink horizontally by 10/11 = 90.9% to get square pixels. This means that if you need to upload as 1280x720 (720p), you'll need to upsize from 720x480 to 981.8x720 and then letterbox to 1280x720 with bars on the sides. PAL 720x576 will have a different PAR to compensate for. Video compression should be whatever doesn't have visible artifacts and YouTube accepts; this is almost universally H.264 when possible.

 

Audio is a lot simpler, it's such low bandwidth and complexity compared to video and so low quality from VHS that a high setting for whatever codec you've got available will be fine, whether it be MP3, AC3, or even just uncompressed audio for the upload. Most important is to avoid clipping from too high of a volume during recording; you can always normalize the volume if it's too quiet and YouTube will probably do it again anyway. Record 48KHz stereo even if you think the source might be mono, the cost is negligible.

 

Confused yet? This is just the surface of why I got out of desktop video.

 

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11 hours ago, phaeron said:
This is sort of off-topic for the thread and I don't have much experience uploading to YouTube, but I'll do one post here....
...

 


Thank you very much for your time and your detailed explanation.

But I only need to know what are the best settings for Altirra's video recording feature: video compression, frame rate, aspect ratio...
I wrote "best video recording settings at the moment" because over the years you added options (for example new codecs) and I would like not to choose wrong or suboptimal settings.
1211121568_Videorecordingoptions.thumb.PNG.9983c9a876dd45108c3314852b795d02.PNG
 

 

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Almost every time that I download Altirra, I get some anti-virus or Defender try to intercept.

 

I've seen comments of viruses, that it isn't downloaded very often and will need to be scanned (and also blocked me completely from using it, even if I tried to say it was OK, blocking me for 17 hours the once).

 

I know full well that it is genuine, reliable software so it rather frustrated me. I was using the anti-virus which comes free with Windows 10 (the name escapes me at the moment) and Windows Defender.

 

In the end, I've swapped my anti-virus provider. I've had enough of it.

 

 

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15 hours ago, Philsan said:

 


Thank you very much for your time and your detailed explanation.

But I only need to know what are the best settings for Altirra's video recording feature: video compression, frame rate, aspect ratio...
I wrote "best video recording settings at the moment" because over the years you added options (for example new codecs) and I would like not to choose wrong or suboptimal settings.

Hah, I was completely misled by "Atari tapes with audio". I thought you had rare ad or internal corporate footage or something....

 

I would try: Media Foundation H.264 + MP3, audio 192kbps, video 5Mbps-ish. Set aspect ratio to use correct aspect ratio, resample sharp bilinear, scale to 1280x720 (16:9), frame rate integral. The video may be a bit on the big side if you do a long recording, but it will probably drop a lot if you edit it in something like the built-in Windows 10 editor.

 

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Something simple, I hope.

I wanted to try 3.90 and 4.0, but neither of these will start under Windows 10 X86.  I get an error message that

"Windows cannot access the specified device, path, or file. You may not have the appropriate permissions to access the item."

 

I'm running it from the desktop, and running as administrator makes no difference.  3.20 works great with this setup.  3.90 also works great under XP-SP3 (on an older desktop).

 

Thanks,

Larry

 

 

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