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Upscalers, CRTs, PVMs & RGB: Retro gaming done right!

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Peltz

Member
I cant find anything on this subject, does anyone know the best settings for the scanlines on the framemeister?. I've got them turned on but there are 2x other settings for the different lines, presumably the alternate scanlines like A and B, both values from 0 to 127, but I cant get an even looking spacing for them.

You won't at 1080p. There is a problem when running scanlines at 1080p and they get drawn incorrectly at that resolution. Drop the output resolution of the Framemeister to 720p or 480p for properly spaced scanlines.

Or, if you're dead set on 1080p output, I think the scanlines will be drawn properly in 2x mode, but that scales things quite a bit differently.
 

megamanfan1500

Neo Member
How does it wobble? Does it manifest as sine waves moving up or down
the screen? If so, does the distortion decreases while approaching the
vertical center of the screen from either side of the tube, or does the
distortion remains the same across the screen?

Actually, I was able to find a youtube video showcasing the same thing on a different monitor, apparently it's pretty common and doesn't necessarily mean the end.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vwognv5HhDE&list=UUBJRCv0tNMQ2rnCm7VKYOkA

The part I'm referring to starts at 8:45
 

OmegASIT

Neo Member
I Got my Duo-R and Omega CMVS on SCART cables now (JP-21). I am looking to get Genesis and SNES ones soon. Can anyone recommend a good selector?
 

Peltz

Member
I Got my Duo-R and Omega CMVS on SCART cables now (JP-21). I am looking to get Genesis and SNES ones soon. Can anyone recommend a good selector?

Not for JP-21. I made that mistake. Very few selectors are made for that format. Try to go with SCART if a switchbox is necessary.
 

Khaz

Member
Looks like the last one went for $200+ on ebay. Not going to spend that much on a selector.

You need to buy Scart cables for your console, a Scart switch box, and a single Scart to JP21 adapter or cable for your Japanese upscaler box.
 

Bar81

Member
Looks like the last one went for $200+ on ebay. Not going to spend that much on a selector.

They are quite expensive since they were never that common to begin with and were $100 or so new. $150-175 is a more realistic price on Yahoo JP or in forums.

If that gives you sticker shock then SCART switchers are your other option but be careful about quality.
 

megamanfan1500

Neo Member
^ Is your wobbling more pronounced (geometrically, moving left to right) as
compared to the video above?

It's actually exactly like in the video above, pretty uncanny. At 32in, it's a behemoth, and I was wondering if it's something that is more prevalent in larger screens.
 

angelic

Banned
You won't at 1080p. There is a problem when running scanlines at 1080p and they get drawn incorrectly at that resolution. Drop the output resolution of the Framemeister to 720p or 480p for properly spaced scanlines.

Or, if you're dead set on 1080p output, I think the scanlines will be drawn properly in 2x mode, but that scales things quite a bit differently.

I read about that, Im using 720p and making adjustments to the 2x sliders, but I have no idea what the default values were (i bought the framemeister from someone).
 

flyover

Member
I don't know if this is the same issue angelic is having, but I'm new to the Framemeister, and I'm also having scanline issues.

I'm running a PS2 via component into the FM, mostly to play PSX games. I've got the FM set to output 720p via HDMI, and my TV (a Sony W600 series) is set to Full Pixel. The screen looks to be taking up 960 pixels vertically, which is what I want, right?

Everything looks great, except that when I turn on scanlines, they're spaced like this (big gap, small gap, big gap, small gap, etc.):

DFvTD0Y.png


Anyone have any advice on how I can I get them spaced evenly using my current setup? Nothing I've tried has worked, but maybe there's a setting I've missed.
 

Peltz

Member
I don't know if this is the same issue angelic is having, but I'm new to the Framemeister, and I'm also having scanline issues.

I'm running a PS2 via component into the FM, mostly to play PSX games. I've got the FM set to output 720p via HDMI, and my TV (a Sony W600 series) is set to Full Pixel. The screen looks to be taking up 960 pixels vertically, which is what I want, right?

Everything looks great, except that when I turn on scanlines, they're spaced like this (big gap, small gap, big gap, small gap, etc.):

DFvTD0Y.png


Anyone have any advice on how I can I get them spaced evenly using my current setup? Nothing I've tried has worked, but maybe there's a setting I've missed.

Yep. you want 960 pixels. Info:

http://junkerhq.net/xrgb/index.php/XRGB-mini_FRAMEMEISTER

TV Scaling

Naturally, the scaling of the Framemeister is very good. Unfortunately, it's possible for the quality of the scaling to be undone by the internal scaling performed by a TV, especially those with LCD/LED panels. Assuming that you are using a 1080p panel and you are running an NTSC source into the Framemeister, there are two rules that must be adhered to for the TV to yield good results. These are:
Rule 1: if set to output 1080p then the TV must not apply overscan
Rule 2: if set to output 720p or less then the TV should scale the image to occupy exactly 960 pixels vertically

Regarding the first rule, overscan is harmful because it prevents each pixel of a 1920x1080 image from being directly mapped to the corresponding display element in your panel. Instead, the TV will slightly enlarge the image in the course of rendering. This will cause two side effects. Firstly, the image quality will be reduced. Secondly, the border of the image will effectively overflow the visible area of your panel and thus, cannot be seen. Many televisions will allow overscan to be avoided. For instance, Sony TVs may have a "Full Pixel" option and Samsung TVs may have a "Just Scan" option.

Regarding the second rule, if the Mini is set to output 720p or lower then there is obviously no longer a 1:1 relationship between the number of pixels in the image and the number of pixels in a 1080p panel. Hence, the TV will have to perform some scaling. The danger here is that some televisions will stretch the vertical dimension to exactly 1080 pixels instead of 960 (which is a perfect multiple of the 480 lines in NTSC). If this happens, the quality of the scaling will be reduced. It is particularly noticeable when running 240p sources through the Framemeister and will completely ruin the appearance of scanlines, if enabled.

The scaling can be corrected in Sony Bravia televisions by going to Display > Screen from the main menu or crossbar and setting the Display Area to "+1" (as opposed to "0" or "-1"). Note that the exact location of the Screen options may vary slightly between Bravia models. Upon correction, the image won't quite fill the screen vertically, leaving a 60px gap at both the top and bottom. If you can observe these gaps then you will know that your TV is doing the right thing. Readers with other TVs are invited to report their experiences!

NOTE: You may be wondering what the point is in setting the Framemeister to output anything less than 1080p if it is connected to a 1080p panel. The reason is that it does not render scanlines correctly. Instead of darkening two out of every four lines, it darkens just one which results in the scanlines appearing unnaturally thin. If you like scanline emulation then 720p and 480p are the feasible output modes, with 720p generally being the best choice (the output at 480p is very soft by comparison). If you don't care about scanlines then feel free to set 1080p as the output mode but do be careful to observe the aforementioned first rule.

I think my FM looks like that too at 720p (I haven't played at that resolution in a long time). I don't know how to fix it. 480p looks better though with nice even lines.
 

Ms. Tea

Member
I finally joined the Framemeister club! My girlfriend gave me one for Christmas and I'm really, really happy with it. I'm still waiting for RGB cables to get here but I'm still blown away by how good s-video's looking on it. It felt good to bust out Christmas Nights and play it over the holidays...

Now that I don't need them anymore, thought I'd gauge interest in a couple of the accessories I used to use with a Commodore video monitor back when I still owned a CRT. Not sure if they'd be useful to anyone else.

* Kramer FC-10D comb filter, like this. Takes in a composite signal and outputs a cleaned-up s-video signal (reduces dot crawl, etc.) Good for older monitors that don't have a comb filter built in. (Can also downconvert an s-video signal to composite, should you want that for some reason.)

* S-video to 2 RCA (female to two male) adaptor, like this one. Useful for old TVs (like the Commodore video monitor) that take s-video via two RCA jacks instead of via the s-video connector.
 

Peltz

Member
I finally joined the Framemeister club! My girlfriend gave me one for Christmas and I'm really, really happy with it. I'm still waiting for RGB cables to get here but I'm still blown away by how good s-video's looking on it. It felt good to bust out Christmas Nights and play it over the holidays...

Now that I don't need them anymore, thought I'd gauge interest in a couple of the accessories I used to use with a Commodore video monitor back when I still owned a CRT. Not sure if they'd be useful to anyone else.

* Kramer FC-10D comb filter, like this. Takes in a composite signal and outputs a cleaned-up s-video signal (reduces dot crawl, etc.) Good for older monitors that don't have a comb filter built in. (Can also downconvert an s-video signal to composite, should you want that for some reason.)

* S-video to 2 RCA (female to two male) adaptor, like this one. Useful for old TVs (like the Commodore video monitor) that take s-video via two RCA jacks instead of via the s-video connector.

Never knew they made external comb filters. I assume I have no use for this if I already have a PVM?
 
how important are operation hours when buying a crt? I'm looking at a bvm with 45,000+ hours. Its at a pretty good price but I can't check it in person since its online.
 
how important are operation hours when buying a crt? I'm looking at a bvm with 45,000+ hours. Its at a pretty good price but I can't check it in person since its online.

From what I got when researching PVM/BVMs, operation hours are important to color accuracy and longevity/reliability. The first part probably isn't all that important to someone who isn't super stingy about color accuracy (Many people seemed to think it wasn't a huge difference). The latter is quite important though. I don't know how reliable BVMs are, though, if you want more specific data. Might look into it.
 

Ms. Tea

Member
Never knew they made external comb filters. I assume I have no use for this if I already have a PVM?

I've never used one, but IIRC PVMs don't have integrated comb filters at all, or at least not all models do. I've definitely seen complaints online that the composite input is messy for that reason. I found someone with a PVM who apparently used the same model of comb filter I did.
 
I have some questions about the xrbg 3 and mini. I would like the connect my DC,GC,Xbox and ps2 to these. which of the 2 would be best suited for these consoles? How well do they scale 480p images? Xrbg 3 is cheaper and has a vga port(for DC) so im leaning towards that. :/
 

dodgeme

Member
I finally joined the Framemeister club! My girlfriend gave me one for Christmas and I'm really, really happy with it. I'm still waiting for RGB cables to get here but I'm still blown away by how good s-video's looking on it. It felt good to bust out Christmas Nights and play it over the holidays...

Now that I don't need them anymore, thought I'd gauge interest in a couple of the accessories I used to use with a Commodore video monitor back when I still owned a CRT. Not sure if they'd be useful to anyone else.

* Kramer FC-10D comb filter, like this. Takes in a composite signal and outputs a cleaned-up s-video signal (reduces dot crawl, etc.) Good for older monitors that don't have a comb filter built in. (Can also downconvert an s-video signal to composite, should you want that for some reason.)

* S-video to 2 RCA (female to two male) adaptor, like this one. Useful for old TVs (like the Commodore video monitor) that take s-video via two RCA jacks instead of via the s-video connector.


That comb filter seems interesting, although I am just a fan in general of older tech, it'd be interesting to see if it boosts my NES's output on my PVM at all.
 
From what I got when researching PVM/BVMs, operation hours are important to color accuracy and longevity/reliability. The first part probably isn't all that important to someone who isn't super stingy about color accuracy (Many people seemed to think it wasn't a huge difference). The latter is quite important though. I don't know how reliable BVMs are, though, if you want more specific data. Might look into it.

Thanks also does anyone have any recommendations on a really good set of speakers for the Sony BVM?
 

D.Lo

Member
I have some questions about the xrbg 3 and mini. I would like the connect my DC,GC,Xbox and ps2 to these. which of the 2 would be best suited for these consoles? How well do they scale 480p images? Xrbg 3 is cheaper and has a vga port(for DC) so im leaning towards that. :/
Neither are really great for any of those consoles. The XRGB machines are great at 240p - N64/PS1 backward. They're not that great at 480i and 480p which the machines you're mentioning mostly run at. The only thing XRGBs add that might be useful is scalines and low lag.

People use XRBSs for those consoles, but unless your TV's scaler absolutely sucks I wouldn't buy one for any of those consoles. I connect all of them directly to my Panasonic plasma and get IMO better results than through the Framemeister.
 
Neither are really great for any of those consoles. The XRGB machines are great at 240p - N64/PS1 backward. They're not that great at 480i and 480p which the machines you're mentioning mostly run at. The only thing XRGBs add that might be useful is scalines and low lag.

People use XRBSs for those consoles, but unless your TV's scaler absolutely sucks I wouldn't buy one for any of those consoles. I connect all of them directly to my Panasonic plasma and get IMO better results than through the Framemeister.

I've actually heard mixed reviews for the XRGBs for 480p and honestly it sounds like most people agree that the improvement is substantial, but not necessarily worth the investment. I bought mine cause I want to play it on my monitor with a nice look (and on OG hardware), but I also plan to play a lot of PSX games and I have an N64 on the way.
 

Peltz

Member
I've never used one, but IIRC PVMs don't have integrated comb filters at all, or at least not all models do. I've definitely seen complaints online that the composite input is messy for that reason. I found someone with a PVM who apparently used the same model of comb filter I did.

Composite on my PVM taken with a cellphone camera:

10858431_10100922370344340_8597706564473128432_n.jpg


10858431_10100922370314400_7736438166741412476_n.jpg


Does that look like it needs an external comb filter? (I'm not being sarcastic, I'm genuinely asking).
 

D.Lo

Member
A comb filter deals with dot crawl, which is a sort of 'unstable' look to objects as they move/scroll past. So hard to say with a still screen.

The test I would always use for a comb filter is Contra stage 1. It's got some strong black outlines that dot crawl like crazy.

I've actually heard mixed reviews for the XRGBs for 480p and honestly it sounds like most people agree that the improvement is substantial, but not necessarily worth the investment. I bought mine cause I want to play it on my monitor with a nice look (and on OG hardware), but I also plan to play a lot of PSX games and I have an N64 on the way.
My Panasonic Plasma does 480p scaling (to 1080p) at least as well as the Framemesiter does, and even with lots of fiddling I certainly would not be happy with it if I'd paid for the Framemesiter just for 480p.

PSX and N64 look fantastic via the FM though, far, far better than my TV's scaler.
 

Peltz

Member
I've actually heard mixed reviews for the XRGBs for 480p and honestly it sounds like most people agree that the improvement is substantial, but not necessarily worth the investment. I bought mine cause I want to play it on my monitor with a nice look (and on OG hardware), but I also plan to play a lot of PSX games and I have an N64 on the way.

I honestly don't think there is any improvement on a 480p image offered by the Mini. In fact, just the opposite. I've never seen 480p look so rough before.
 

BONKERS

Member
You run into diminishing returns when it comes to 480p scaling. Mostly just because, most 480p content is 3D rendered. So there's reasonable way that it's going to look mind blowing. Just as good as 480p can get with some decent scaling. Though some TVs scale 480p well. My 768p set doesn't do 480p scaling very well. So while an XRGB would be an improvement for sure, hard to say whether it's worth that investment alone.


It's basically like just firing up any PC game, run it at 640x480 and let your GPU or Monitor upscale it. (Nvidia cards can swap between the two. Neither are really great most times)
 

D.Lo

Member
You run into diminishing returns when it comes to 480p scaling. Mostly just because, most 480p content is 3D rendered. So there's reasonable way that it's going to look mind blowing. Just as good as 480p can get with some decent scaling. Though some TVs scale 480p well. My 768p set doesn't do 480p scaling very well. So while an XRGB would be an improvement for sure, hard to say whether it's worth that investment alone.

It's basically like just firing up any PC game, run it at 640x480 and let your GPU or Monitor upscale it. (Nvidia cards can swap between the two. Neither are really great most times)
Depends on your screen resolution. 1080p is 7ish times the resolution of 480p, so there are lots of pixels to scale with. 768p screens were always a bit of a mess, it was likely scaling 480p to 720p then scaling that to native.

480p from Gamecube and Wii look truly fantastic on my Panasonic. Especially games with clean images (e.g. Nintendo first party). It's a softer picture than a native 720p game (and obviously than a 1080p game), and you can see the pixel edges, but it looks as good as would be possible IMO.
 

Peltz

Member
Depends on your screen resolution. 1080p is 7ish times the resolution of 480p, so there are lots of pixels to scale with. 768p screens were always a bit of a mess, it was likely scaling 480p to 720p then scaling that to native.

480p from Gamecube and Wii look truly fantastic on my Panasonic. Especially games with clean images (e.g. Nintendo first party). It's a softer picture than a native 720p game (and obviously than a 1080p game), and you can see the pixel edges, but it looks as good as would be possible IMO.

Same here, also on a Panasonic plasma at 1080p. I can't really imagine 480p looking much better unless maybe it's on a native 480p studio CRT... but that's still a pipe dream for me until I find one at the right price.
 

missile

Member
It's actually exactly like in the video above, pretty uncanny. At 32in, it's a behemoth, and I was wondering if it's something that is more prevalent in larger screens.
One more questions. What's the line voltage/frequency you're running from?
What frequency can your TV handle, 50 and/or 60Hz? And what's the refresh
rate (field rate) of the input signal (video mode)?
 

antibolo

Banned
Dammit, watching the Tetris TGM exhibition at AGDQ has made me want to get a TGM board. I see a bunch of them on eBay but I would need a harness or supergun of some sort. Does anyone have any recommendations?

I already have Neo Geo sticks so compatibility with them would be a must. I also just need direct RGB output since I'll be hooking it up to my PVM.
 

missile

Member
Composite on my PVM taken with a cellphone camera:

10858431_10100922370344340_8597706564473128432_n.jpg


10858431_10100922370314400_7736438166741412476_n.jpg


Does that look like it needs an external comb filter? (I'm not being sarcastic, I'm genuinely asking).
Don't use comb filters, it's a trap. It kills vertical color resolution and
introduces wrong colors on color boundaries and, well, introduces dot-crawl
again yet differently. And the more expensive comb filters make you
additionally lag behind at least one or more frames. It's good for TV, but
not for games, unless the standard filter circuits in your TV's decoder are
really bad or damaged producing excessive dot-crawl and/or color errors.

Basically, comb filtering is broken for composite video right from the get-go
unless your scene contains large areas of uniform colors. This is a specific
problem to composite video only since in a non-uniform colored scene no two
lines will likely be the same making the decomposition of the composite video
signal into Y and C imperfect using for example a two-line comb filter. For
s-video (Y/C) it will "only" reduce color resolution while combing U, V out
of C.
 

antibolo

Banned
You can only do so much with a composite signal, in the end it's still a signal where two different data streams were smashed together. You can't repair the corrupted information without further damaging the end result.
 

Peltz

Member
Honestly, I tested it out before work, and I genuinely think my PVM plays composite sources the best of any set I've ever seen. Dot crawl is obviously there, but the noise is VERY minimal even in motion. I don't even notice the dot crawl unless I specifically look for it, and it's less on the PVM than even my Panasonic BT.

I sort of doubt composite could really look better with an external comb filter, and would be nervous about compromising my lag-free input to find out. So I think I'm set for now.
 

STG!

Member
Dammit, watching the Tetris TGM exhibition at AGDQ has made me want to get a TGM board. I see a bunch of them on eBay but I would need a harness or supergun of some sort. Does anyone have any recommendations?

I already have Neo Geo sticks so compatibility with them would be a must. I also just need direct RGB output since I'll be hooking it up to my PVM.

I don't use it myself, but the MAK Strike supergun looks like it fit's your criteria. Solid requirements though, I had a forum member on shmups build my supergun to the exact same specs but that was over 12 years ago (and it's still going strong!).

But I'd go with using Japanese arcade parts for your controller personally, much better quality than using stock Neo Geo AES sticks.

Otherwise, I'd look into a Japanese supergun like a Sigma. If I didn't get someone to build mine I would have went this route instead.
 

Danny Dudekisser

I paid good money for this Dynex!
Dammit, watching the Tetris TGM exhibition at AGDQ has made me want to get a TGM board. I see a bunch of them on eBay but I would need a harness or supergun of some sort. Does anyone have any recommendations?

I already have Neo Geo sticks so compatibility with them would be a must. I also just need direct RGB output since I'll be hooking it up to my PVM.

Glad I'm not the only one who's in the market for TGM now.

How much does that thing run these days, anyway?


Edit: Also, what's the best Supergun option out there now, for RGB out? It's been 6 years since I've looked into building one, but maybe I'm better off just buying a pre-built one.
 

missile

Member
You can only do so much with a composite signal, in the end it's still a signal where two different data streams were smashed together. You can't repair the corrupted information without further damaging the end result.
Indeed.

For the sake of completeness. If Y and/or C of the composite video (CV) is of
lower frequency, such that their spectra (with C shifted up to the carrier
frequency) won't overlap one another, one can separate them cleanly again.
Even in this case a comb filter would fail to reproduce Y and C cleanly,
unless the picture is uniform in color.

One part upon construction of the NTSC composite video format was to make Y
and C overlap to such a degree (stressing the spectrum space to its maximum)
such that the resulting interference (cross-luma/chroma) would only produce
weak objectionable artifacts which won't be recognized while sitting at the
design viewing distance. Well, dot-crawl was a design decision to counteract
the interference to some degree by carefully adjusting the color carrier
frequency. For, the eye will average the dot-crawl at the designed viewing
distance. This is pretty much what Peltz is observing (as he wrote above). Yet
with the advent of video consoles dot-crawl has increased a bit because the
video consoles produce fully saturated colors next to each other which require
more spectrum bandwidth making the interference stronger. Now we have two
choices to counteract the increased cross-luma/chroma interference. Either we
lower the bandwidth of the Y and C decoding filters, producing lower
resolution in Y and C, or we desaturate the colors of the image at the
transmitting end. Obviously, method one wasn't an option, but method two is.
So as a graphican of old video consoles you could control the interference by
carefully choosing the saturation levels of your colors. This wasn't known to
many, since it was a more technical thing. But some knew it and even used it
for creating new colors which weren't possible by the consoles, in arranging
dot patterns of saturated colors to let the interference produce a new color.
Which is awesome to say the least. :+
 

antibolo

Banned
missile, please stop manually line wrapping your posts!

Glad I'm not the only one who's in the market for TGM now.

How much does that thing run these days, anyway?


Edit: Also, what's the best Supergun option out there now, for RGB out? It's been 6 years since I've looked into building one, but maybe I'm better off just buying a pre-built one.

I currently see TGM1 on eBay for around $200 USD. Not cheap, but it could be worse.
 

baphomet

Member
missile, please stop manually line wrapping your posts!



I currently see TGM1 on eBay for around $200 USD. Not cheap, but it could be worse.

$200 is actually on the expensive end for TGM. Arcadetower(stv) on ebay is single handedly driving up the price of pcbs by multiple 100%'s.

Don't support that asshole and wait until its on there for $120 shipped. After, of course, I swipe mine.
 

Peltz

Member
Indeed.

For the sake of completeness. If Y and/or C of the composite video (CV) is of
lower frequency, such that their spectra (with C shifted up to the carrier
frequency) won't overlap one another, one can separate them cleanly again.
Even in this case a comb filter would fail to reproduce Y and C cleanly,
unless the picture is uniform in color.

One part upon construction of the NTSC composite video format was to make Y
and C overlap to such a degree (stressing the spectrum space to its maximum)
such that the resulting interference (cross-luma/chroma) would only produce
weak objectionable artifacts which won't be recognized while sitting at the
design viewing distance. Well, dot-crawl was a design decision to counteract
the interference to some degree by carefully adjusting the color carrier
frequency. For, the eye will average the dot-crawl at the designed viewing
distance. This is pretty much what Peltz is observing (as he wrote above). Yet
with the advent of video consoles dot-crawl has increased a bit because the
video consoles produce fully saturated colors next to each other which require
more spectrum bandwidth making the interference stronger. Now we have two
choices to counteract the increased cross-luma/chroma interference. Either we
lower the bandwidth of the Y and C decoding filters, producing lower
resolution in Y and C, or we desaturate the colors of the image at the
transmitting end. Obviously, method one wasn't an option, but method two is.
So as a graphican of old video consoles you could control the interference by
carefully choosing the saturation levels of your colors. This wasn't known to
many, since it was a more technical thing. But some knew it and even used it
for creating new colors which weren't possible by the consoles, in arranging
dot patterns of saturated colors to let the interference produce a new color.
Which is awesome to say the least. :+

giphy.gif
 

Yes Boss!

Member
Edit: Also, what's the best Supergun option out there now, for RGB out? It's been 6 years since I've looked into building one, but maybe I'm better off just buying a pre-built one.

I've had this one for a few years now and has served me very well! Seems solid as quality (picture and build, with an arcade PSU inside). They pop up often on shmups and other forums and are not that badly priced.

EF0057FF-A936-4F1F-8218-E7D38D48F5B4_zps9aiwbcdd.jpg
 
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