Video Output

New in v0.4.0 — your settings reset once

Video Output replaces the previous Interlaced Out and Analog Out settings, which overlapped confusingly. The relayout moves saved settings to a new file, so every OSD setting returns to its default the first time you run v0.4.0. Releases up to and including v0.3.0 still have the old pair.

Video Output is the core's one output-mode choice:

Mode	Behaviour
Auto (default)	Follows MiSTer.ini: an analog TV configured there means Interlaced, otherwise Progressive.
Interlaced	The decoder emits the disc's authored fields as a native 15 kHz 480i/576i raster. The analog pins carry it directly for a CRT; HDMI shows it as 480i through the framework scaler. MiSTer reports 720x480i @ 59.94 Hz.
Progressive	The progressive picture, as before. HDMI at full quality, Film 24p available, and the analog pins carry the progressive raster for displays that take 480p/576p.

An explicit choice always overrides MiSTer.ini and persists across reloads.

Which one you want

Your setup	Mode
HDMI	Auto (lands on Progressive)
A 15 kHz CRT — composite, s-video, YPbPr, RGB SCART	Auto with the ini set up as below (lands on Interlaced)
A 15 kHz RGBHV rig the ini bits cannot identify	Interlaced, explicitly
A display that wants 480p/576p on the analog pins	Progressive, explicitly
HDMI, but a disc of true-interlaced video (TV, concerts) and you want native fields	Interlaced, explicitly

For a CRT there is nothing to set in the OSD — it engages from MiSTer.ini exactly like any other core:

vga_scaler=0        ; (the default) native video on the analog pins
composite_sync=1    ; or ypbpr=1, or vga_sog=1 — match your cable

What Interlaced mode does

DVD content shot on video — television, concerts, documentaries — is genuinely interlaced at 59.94 (or 50) fields per second. Weaving those fields into progressive frames throws away half the motion information, which reads as juddery movement. In Interlaced mode every displayed refresh is one genuine authored field of exactly one picture, which is what a CRT is built to show.

While it is active:

• The CRT gets the fields re-timed 1:1 on a native 15 kHz raster — the smoothest presentation for video-sourced discs, and the same thing a set-top player outputs.
• HDMI drops to 480i for the session, deinterlaced by the framework scaler. 480i Deint picks Bob (smooth motion, half vertical resolution) or Weave (full resolution, combing on motion). The scaler is not cadence-aware, so film content looks better in Progressive mode on HDMI — which is why Interlaced is not forced whenever a CRT is merely present, only chosen.
• Film 24p output is unavailable (a 23.976 Hz raster cannot carry fields).

Film on a CRT in Interlaced mode is fine — 3:2 fields at 60 Hz is exactly what an NTSC player fed a TV — so a CRT-only setup can simply stay in Interlaced (or Auto) for everything.

Switching mid-title works, with a brief interruption

Changing Video Output during playback interrupts playback briefly — a short cut to black while the raster and A/V sync re-anchor, like a chapter jump. Setting the mode before loading just avoids the interruption; it is not required. Auto reads the ini bits at boot and while nothing is mounted; it does not change the output mode under a playing disc.

Sound can come back out of sync, and often does. This is long-standing behaviour on every release, not something the recent fixes introduced. Skip a chapter to clear it — that re-anchors the audio to the picture. Setting the mode before loading avoids it entirely.

On v0.3.0 this could occasionally freeze the picture on a malformed frame instead, on any disc; skipping a chapter recovered it. The same thing happens on older releases when changing Analog Out.

Since v0.4.0 that freeze is fixed. A mid-title switch steps playback back to the start of the chunk it was reading — up to about a second — and resumes from there, so the picture always restarts from a clean point. On a VCD or SVCD the step back can be a little longer.

The screen also goes black for the changeover instead of showing the picture breaking up while the display re-locks — about a second, and the OSD stays visible over it. Sound continues throughout. A brief glitch as the picture comes back is normal, and is the same one a chapter skip produces — see Troubleshooting. The lip-sync caveat above still applies: that one is not fixed. If the black lasts noticeably longer than a second or so, or a mid-title switch still freezes, please report it.

Field alignment

On some televisions the picture could come back from a chapter skip, fast-forward or aspect change looking aliased, like a screen door. It is a field-parity coin flip in the display pipeline: the two interlaced fields land the wrong way round after an interruption. On older releases the workaround is to toggle Video Output away and back, sometimes taking a few attempts. Not every set shows it — a television with a tolerant sync separator may never see it at all.

Since v0.4.0 the core corrects this itself and the toggle is no longer needed. (An earlier development build's first attempt at the corrector had to be switched off again: it made both interlaced fields carry the same picture lines, which showed as a combed still image and a picture that jumped a line at field rate on every set, HDMI included. The repaired version only steps in for a misalignment that persists, so it cannot do that.) The same coin flip decided whether HDMI with 480i Deint = Weave came up combed on a still; that is fixed too, by a separate correction to the field flag the core hands the framework scaler.

The correction also applies while a picture is being held — a disc menu, an authored copyright or warning card, or a paused frame. Until v0.4.0 it did not, so a disc that boots straight to a several-second warning screen could show that screen misaligned for its whole duration and then play perfectly: the correction only ran when a new frame arrived, and a held picture never delivers one. A held picture now straightens itself within about half a second, so you may still catch it settling.

CRT owners: please report what you see

This is verified here on a composite set and over HDMI. It is not yet confirmed on the other analog sync modes, and the original reports came from rigs we cannot reproduce — a set's sync separator is exactly what decides whether the fault ever showed. Untested: YPbPr (ypbpr=1), sync on green (vga_sog=1), 15 kHz RGBHV, and PAL on any analog CRT.

If you run one of those, a short report is worth a great deal — please paste the analog lines from your MiSTer.ini and name your set, and say whether a chapter skip or a paused frame ever leaves the fields wrong.

Unreleased — those reports came in, and found two more faults

RGB SCART and a RetroTINK 4K did report, and between them turned up two problems that were not the field-parity coin flip above:

• The composite sync carried no equalizing pulses, which left the two fields 0.86 of a line apart instead of exactly half a line. Televisions differ in how much of that they tolerate, which is why some sets showed sawtooth or ragged vertical edges and others never did. The sync now carries the full standard vertical block.
• Fixing that uncovered a field-order error the broken sync had been hiding — the two faults had been cancelling each other out. Both are corrected, with no setting to change.

Verified here on a composite CRT and over HDMI. The two sets that found the faults have not retested yet, so if you are on RGB SCART or a scaler, that report is still the one worth having.

What changed from the old settings

• The old Analog Out = Native Fields is the new Interlaced mode, renamed — it was the mode worth keeping.
• The old derive modes (Analog Out = Auto/Interlaced), which rebuilt CRT fields from a woven progressive frame, are gone: field pairing on that path was structurally unstable (the "wobbly interlace" field reports) and Interlaced mode is immune by construction. This also means the old "CRT 480i and full-quality progressive HDMI at the same time" combination no longer exists — with a CRT active, HDMI shows 480i. Pick the output that matters and set the mode for it.
• The old Interlaced Out (HDMI fields) is subsumed: Video Output = Interlaced gives HDMI the same 480i-via-scaler picture. Its Auto content detector is retired — it switched mid-title, which never worked cleanly with audio.