LGR - Recording CRT Computer Monitors

Rob Caporetto

This was a great watch. I don't have any CRT's handy to film from (boo), but there's a lot here which was real handy to note down (the last time I tried to do an LCD, it was a horrible mess - and I've not really gone back to try it again.

Uncleawesome

Very nice video! I can't hear the high pitch sound. I wonder how many of my videos have them. One thing to note, the indoor lights may also be flickering at 50 or 60 hertz,,that's something that I have forgotten a few times.

AlexPeaks

Omg 3D pinball space cadet 😂 I forgot about that. This was fascinating, I love “interaction” between cameras and computers. Thanks, Clint

LGR

I must admit that there's a kind of catharsis in showing this, haha. Like, "you all always ask why I only do one video a week? Well LOOK." 😁 The process only seems to grow more involved as time goes on, too. Used to be I'd shoot a scene, plop it onto my Premiere timeline and be done without a second glance. Now it's not uncommon for every single shot to take a good ten to twenty minutes perfecting, between setting it up, shooting it, editing it, color correction, and so on. Multiply that by how many individual shots are in each video and... Yikes

Hernando Heilbron

Man, after watching this I have way more respect for the post production y'all do on your videos. Once you got into color correction, I knew that I personally could NEVER be bothered to do that myself.

LGR

I wish you luck whenever you start! No time like the present, we're all just getting older -- both us and our computers :)

LGR

Sure is! Feels like overnight seeing a working CRT went from an everyday occurrence to a rare treat. Well, out in public anyway. They've certainly never gone away in *this* house.

LGR

Heh, it is one of those things where once you notice it, you'll always notice it. Bit of a curse I'm sorry to say :D

Laurent

I didn't care about the Moiré pattern in recorded videos, but thanks to your great explanation and demonstration, I see these patterns now everywhere! Maybe I should clean my glasses, that could help too. ;-)

John Lawson

PS what's with the coat? Is your heating broken. 😜

John Lawson

Great video, very useful, its really interesting to see the effort you put into your videos. I suggest a name change: Diligent Game Reviews (DGR). 😁

Alyxx the Rat

CRT's are a fascinating technology. It's weird living in a world now where they're so scarse since I grew up with them.

Joe Moorman

This is a very valuable and information-dense video. Many thanks! I would like to someday do videos of my own focusing on "failed" computers (like the Xerox 820 gathering dust in my garage) and I have very, very much to learn!

LGR

Seriously though. I'm not sure how many people actually use that feature, but I'm extremely grateful for it!

LGR

Me too, dang it. Far too often I have to lower the exposure while taking pics or correct things after the fact, a circular polarizer purpose-built for my specific phone would be great.

LGR

That's exactly what it does, yes! Highly satisfying wooden mechanism. https://twitter.com/lazygamereviews/status/1109945913869512704

LGR

Of course! Goes up this Friday morning :)

LGR

I'll look into it! EDIT: re-rendering the whole video and took the opportunity to record a new outro.

Yes, polarised filters. I want one of those on my phone.

JennaKay

What is the CD caddy behind your monitor & Roland speakers? Do the little toggles pop up the jewel cases?

Andrew Ferguson (DominateEye)

Is this going to be uploaded to the channel? I like to watch your videos with everybody else for that Authentic New LGR Experience™

TBthegr81

Maybe it's just me or my headphones but During the segment of talking about Moire patterns there is some weird buzzing on the right audio channel, some weird distortion of the speak. I can hear it quite clearly at 8:21 and a few seconds forward Can also hear it in the outro

Asaf Sagi

That is CRAZY how Panasonic incorporated that super fine adjustment. How niche is that?

BastetFurry

Makes me wonder how bad the first "consumer" cybereyes will be. o.o

John Covil

Someone needs to make a camera that satisfies the Nyquist requirement for all possible refresh rates. Going up to 85Hz? Set the shutter speed to 170 fps. Trying to _match_ the frequencies exactly is like relative tuning a guitar, except that instead of hearing or feeling the "beats", you're seeing them wash across the screen.

LGR

Hey, knowledge is still power even if it's never wielded, right?

LGR

Sweet, happy to share it! Also good to hear that past efforts in making CRTs look nice on video hasn't gone unnoticed :)

LGR

Heh, yeah I forgot that I hadn't shown that in a video yet. Made it really quick in the MS-DOS Edit program in an attempt to mimic the IBM logo. I love ASCII art, might make for a fun LGR topic someday.

LGR

Hey awesome!

LGR

You and me both, argh! As a kid it drove me nuts when a particular TV downstairs was turned on, that thing just had the worst whine. Parents couldn't hear it, but I was always like "ARGH STOP WATCHING TV DOWN THERE"

LGR

Excellent, you're quite welcome!

LGR

Happy it's appreciated! That 15kHz whine is tolerable in person, but truly one of the worst sounds ever within a video. Glad I can still hear well enough to pick it up and remove it.

Lennart Sorensen

Oh good, it came back.

Lennart Sorensen

Half way through watching and the video disappears. Oh joy.

Absolutely priceless advice. And I appreciate the talk on sound. A lot of people don't pay attention to that, and it drives me bananas.

Beegotron

Thank you for all this information. Very useful insight and experience gained.

evistre

i appreciate how careful you are with the monitor whine - i can still hear it quite well and it drives me bonkers!

Nate

Hey this was neat

Have Goals

Can you talk about the NUxt ASCII image we see in this video?

John Bailey

I always wondered how you managed to make CRT shots look so good when so many others totally fail at it. This was a fun insight into your process!

Terminally Nerdy

I love vids like this even though I will never use this knowledge :D

LGR

Awesome, happy to hear it. And yeah they sure did! Sometimes when I'm watching CC episodes I feel a real connection with the camera crew. A true understanding and a shared irritation across decades, haha.

Steve Lovelace

I'm not planning on filming any CRTs, but I still found this video pretty interesting. I can tell you put a lot of work into it. Even Computer Chronicles often had CRT problems on air.

LGR

Thanks!

Myles MAN

Very interesting!

LGR

After a certain point, sure! One "advantage" of shooting videos on a VHS camera back in the early LGR days was that I could simply film any monitor and there was no moiré pattern at all. Because everything was blurry, period! It also did a decent job of adjusting to the refresh rate on its own. Whenever I first upgraded to a digital HD camera, I was shocked at how bad CRTs looked. Avoided showing them for a long time until I figured things out.

LGR

That's quite the superpower, sir. Kind of envious honestly!

The Enforcer

It's definitely looks a struggle with trying to keep so many factors (refresh, moire, filters, sounds) just so you can get the nice crisp CRT picture. I'm sure it must have killed you in your early videos when you'd try to film a CRT and the results were not that optimal.

Kris Asick

I couldn't hear the 15 KHz sound at all and that's with a decent pair of headphones on. In fact, I'm pretty sure my frequency range for hearing tops out just slightly less than the average person, though on the flip side, I remember hearing 20 Hz test sounds on a pair of headphones supposedly incapable of producing anything below 25 Hz, so even though I can't hear high frequencies very well, I hear low frequencies perhaps TOO well. :P

LGR

Aw yeah https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTr3wssJFYU

LGR

Glad to hear it! Makes me wanna do a more involved video on my whole creation process. Sometimes I take a step back from the work and think "wow, why did I spend half an hour getting that ONE SHOT correct. No one will even notice!" 😁

LGR

Ayyyyyy

LGR

Good tip on the brightness lowering, I should've mentioned that! I've done that a time or two myself, it can certainly help out in a pinch. On a related note, for whatever reason some of my monitors have a "brighter" black level to the screen than others, and man those are a PAIN to get looking half-decent.

Tim Bisley

When your shutter's in sync, But the picture still stinks, Thats-a-Moiré.

Jason Olshefsky

For what it's worth, this is definitely helpful. First for the literal practicality of dealing with these things. Second, for a demonstration on how even (especially?) simple-looking videos are way more complex to produce than they appear.

The 8-Bit Guy

This hits home. I deal with this all of the time. Sometimes I have pulled my hair out trying to get a particular shot of something and its like okay, if I move the camera here I can get rid of the moire pattern. But NOW I have a glare from a light or a window. And quite often I just give up and have to live with the lesser of two evils. I do have one trick that I should share with you that you didn't mention. I find that my camera always makes the CRT appear much brighter than it really is compared to the surroundings. So, I often turn the brightness down on them when recording. It's weird because in person I look at the monitor and I'm like "dang that's really dark." But then it looks just perfect on the recorded footage. Not sure exactly why that is, but I do that a lot.

Frederic St-Georges

I miss those nights in the glow of my 17" CRT monitor, playing Civilization II, getting that super weird noise and screen flicker just before my cell would ring...

LGR

Nothing like a bit of technological serendipity👍

Another trick I used to do back when I had nothing but a normal video camera, was run the game on a laptop with both the LCD and VGA outputs enabled. Most laptops run the LCD at 60Hz and if both are enabled simultaneously the laptop will run both LCD and VGA at the same 60Hz scan rate and format. It's cheaper for laptop video hardware to just send the same pixels to both than try to scan convert between the two, after all. The only exception to that rule I've seen so far are PC-98 laptops that run the LCD at 56Hz since that is the normal refresh rate of that platform anyway.

LGR

Your email definitely reminded me I needed to finish this project, so thanks for that!

LGR

Heh, well the terrible ones were terrible at least, I'll give ya that ;) But yeah, the noise can be a pain to deal with, no arguments there!

Tim J

I work as an editor and was just thinking about this topic yesterday, so your timing is both eerie and useful. Insights into your process are always fun and appreciated. =)

LGR

Heh, I had a feeling you might be doing that with certain CRT shots I've seen on your channel. It really makes the image pop! And yeah, highly recommend the CPL, even though you need to blast the area with light to take advantage of it. It's also an excellent thing for shooting PC game boxes, computer cases, motherboards. Just anything with even a slightly reflective or matte finish is improved.

LGR

Ooh, fascinating. I'll give that a try!

I wrote a program to force DOS games to 60Hz (as long as they don't tweak video modes), though I wrote it for a picky VGA capture card that didn't like anything below 640x480. It's an MS-DOS TSR. https://github.com/joncampbell123/doslib/blob/master/hw/vga/vga240.c EDIT: Link is to the source code. Binaries are in the release section. Recommended to use the dos86s version.

Tech Tangents

I totally do the separate CRT mask in post for color correction as well. Bright filming lights just excite the phosphor too much and washes out the image. I try to edit it to match how I "feel" it looks. I'm going to have to get a CPL filter now, that makes way more of a difference than I would have thought. That syncro shutter feature is crazy handy! My BMPCC4K doesn't have anything like that. I'm now going to have to start petitioning them to add that in a future firmware update.

CRTs are terrible the old ones made this horrible hissing sound.

Jim Leonard

Well, heck, you must have been reading my mind that day. Can't wait to get home and watch this at 65"

LGR

Oddly enough it still makes a difference to my camera though, which is why I mention it! Recording at a shutter speed of 60 results in a visible rolling line. Recording at 60.1 does not.

LGR

Yep, this is an early draft version as usual so there might be a few errors like that before I render the final video. Thank you though!

It sounds like your CRT is just estimating the refresh rate and it's off by .1 sometimes.

Modren

There's some corruption/encoding weirdness going on at around the 1:06 mark. You may want to re-export the video to address that, but I don't know if you'll have enough time to do that.

That was so bad, it was painful. On a scale of 1-100, I'd say it was 60 Hertz. I'll leave now...

Adam Christensen

I will begin to monitor this video... 😂