I’ve spent more time than I’d like to admit troubleshooting a streaming setup in bava.studio for Madden 2001. I’m going to capture some of my various failed attempts below so I don’t repeat the errors:
- Tried RetroPie with AV/RCA run through AV->HDMI convertor that forces 4:3 into YoloBox. After that, monitor HDMI out was converted from HDMI->AV into CRT TV. Worked decently when enabling Settings –>Program Out in Yolobox, but the latency effected game play.
- Tried RetroPie with HDMI splitter to YoloBox and 27″ CRT TV that’s run through an AV to HDMI convertor forcing 4:3 ratio. This looks good on the YoloBox, but it is vertically rectangular on the TV with black bars to right and left. The image on the TV looks better when 16:9 is pushed from RetroPie in the Retroarch configuration. Alternatively, when I force 16:9 at the AV -> HDMI convertor the TV looks perfect (no black sidebars) but image on YoloBox is stretched.
- Tried Batocera using an Elgato HD60X box but ran into the issue that when I went from USB-C out of the HD60X with USB 3.0 -> YoloBox the Batocera image wouldn’t resolve. I finally thought to go USB-c out of HD60X and USB-C -> YoloBox, and while image from Batocera resolved, when trying to play a game you are pushed back to the menu.
- Tried Batocera using an Elgato HD60X box with USB-C -> USB 3.0 into Mac Mini running OSB and that worked perfectly.* [Scratch head]
- Tried Batocera HDMI out -> HDMI splitter with HDMI -> YoloBox and HDMI converted to AV/RCA -> CRT TV. This was the simplest setup yet, and will it blend…YES! Figured out that auto video settings out of Batocera into YoloBox gets me closest to what I want. This setup is HDMI out of Raspberry Pi 4b into HDMI splitter. First HDMI output from splitter runs into HDMI -> AV convertor that goes into RCA plugs on CRT TV. Second output is HDMI -> YoloBox.
Ironically, this was the simplest setup and it worked best. Part of why it works is Batocera builds in a buffer on left and right sides of the screen for 4:3 ratio (a background image with the sides of a PS1 console), which makes output to YoloBox less stretched—although it squeezes image on the TV a bit. That said, since it’s highlighting an image of the original Playstation’s circular Power and Open buttons it’s more tolerable. More importantly than any of that, I can’t waste another minute on OCDing over this.
Note bene: Madden 2001 audio source from HDMI should be around -20 to -17 dB when mic audio is at 0 dB.
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*To be fair this was on a 27″ 4K LG monitor, so it doessn’t really count for the CRT theme of this post.
PS: Noticing my audio is low in recent videos with Batocera. Wondering if that’s because I’m using line-in for Rode Wireless Go II vs plugging directly into camera or there is a setting in Batocera for game audio. Alternatively, maybe wireless mic attached lower than it’s been in videos with good audio last week (https://bava.tv/w/uVN5ikKoHMv7as3m1BsKRw). Need to continue to play with audio levels for this almost done setup.