Posted: 1/25/2023 11:21 PM
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VDO
He/Him
Joined: 1/25/2023
Posts: 2
Location: UK
Hi folks, I'm using BizHawk 2.8 to create in-game screenshots of my PS1 games. Works great for games like Alien Trilogy where the resolution is 320x240, but some games have an odd resolution - for example Asteroids is 640x240, Colin McRae Rally is 512x236. Screenshotting these games using the "1:1 pixel size" aspect ratio option produces a very undesirable narrow image. Does anyone know why such resolutions were used? Presumably the old CRT screens analogue-stretched the image out...? Seems odd. If anyone has gone through a similar screenshotting process, what solution did you use? I note BizHawk has an option to force a "system recommendation" aspect ratio, but the resulting image looks a bit compromised. Other options on the table - forcing a custom 640x480 (4:3) resolution or importing the image into a paint package and vertically stretching it (pixel resize) to be double the original. Which do you think would be best?
Posted: 1/26/2023 1:47 AM
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Spikestuff
They/Them
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These arbitrary resolutions were done by developers mainly to aim for the width of a 640x480 television rather than the height to make it better in being represented. Obviously there's the cases where it squishes to a sub 320 image, but that's dependent on the game, and the PS2 actually kept this "quirk" but at higher resolutions. (Unironically the modern systems actually also do this, but it's not noticeable unless you go in to pixel count) Using an external program to go up double res (nearest neighbor), and then down to a 640x480 (with Lanczos/Bilinear) is your best/better bet.
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Posted: 1/28/2023 12:09 AM
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VDO
He/Him
Joined: 1/25/2023
Posts: 2
Location: UK
Thanks for the interesting info. In the end I decided to keep everything at native resolution, however with letterbox images I used a paint package to apply a vertical stretch by however much was necessary to make the image 4:3 ratio, so I.E. a 512x240 native image becomes 512x384. For what it's worth to anyone doing something similar in future, BizHawk is easier to utilise for getting the native images than other emulators I tried. You do need to crop the overscan areas though.
Posted: 1/28/2023 5:21 AM
(Edited: 1/28/2023 5:22 AM)
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CasualPokePlayer
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Joined: 2/26/2020
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You may want to instead screenshot the "client" image instead, using Ctrl + Shift + C. Do this while also having aspect ratio at "system recommendation"