The following is an interview with Ingo Korb, one of the
developers behind the GCVideo
project. GCVideo is an effort that analyzed the GameCube’s digital AV output in
order to produce a more affordable way to get high-quality video out of the
system. As a user of one of its implementations, I wanted to know more about
the process.
Where are you from, and how did you get into video games?
I’m from Germany and I was gifted a Commodore 64 in the late
1980s, which has a pretty great selection of games. An SNES with a few games
joined the collection sometime in the early 90s, but except for an N64 that I
bought for exactly two games (Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask), I stayed on
the PC side for gaming for a bit. When the Dreamcast went on clearance, I
grabbed one and a few cheap games and got back into console gaming, picking up
the other contenders in that generation whenever I found a good offer.
How did the GCVideo project get started?
A long time ago, I happened to be sitting in the games room
of a convention talking with ikari_01 about that pesky [GameCube] component
cable and how it was ridiculously expensive already (he was lucky because he
bought one much earlier). Since we both knew our way around FPGAs[1]
(he from the SD2SNES, me from dabbling
with them over the years), we both wondered why nobody had yet tried to decode
the digital video from the console and feed it to a DAC[2]
to clone that cable.
What were some of the most interesting technical
challenges?
Making the product easily configurable required some work.
For example, the original release of GCVideo-DVI did not have an on-screen
display. Instead, you had to select line-doubling and scanline settings using
jumper wires to various pins of the FPGA board. I had expected that users would
just choose one set of options and be done with it, but someone announced on a
forum that he planned to add switches for everything to his console-or maybe he
showed a completed version, I don't remember exactly. I didn’t want to
encourage people to do that, so I decided to put the flexibility of an FPGA to
good use by adding a CPU with enough peripherals to the system to build an OSD.
The nice thing about doing that on an FPGA is that you have full control over
these peripherals-with a standard microcontroller, if some part of it does not
work exactly how you need it to, you can only work around it, but with an FPGA
I can just make it work exactly as I want.
Other times the challenges were more annoying than
interesting. For example, when you have a digital AV interface, most consumer
devices will just show a variation of “no signal” if you don’t get it mostly
right. Debugging that can be a pain because the only option is to capture what
your design generates and then comparing it manually to something that is known
to work. There are professional analyzers that could tell you what you did
wrong, but they are pretty expensive even on the used market, if you can find
one at all.
One of the biggest challenges overall that I can remember
was the ICAP[3]
interface of the Spartan 3A though. It is an internal interface of the FPGA
that is used to reboot the chip into another configuration, and while the
documentation looks good at first glance, it glosses over lots of tiny details.
There are some other projects on the internet that also access that interface,
but they mostly just to tell the chip to reboot with a different configuration,
which only needs to write to that interface. GCVideo needs more than that
though: The internal flasher tool can be started either when the console is
turned on, in which case it should just silently start the main firmware, or it
can be started on user request to upgrade the firmware. The only data in the
entire FPGA that survives that reboot is in the ICAP interface, so I had to be
able to read data back from it that was written before the reboot. I have not
found a single project online that does that on a Spartan 3A FPGA, but some old
discussions on the chip vendor's forums pointed me in the right direction. It
took me about two weeks to find a sequence of accesses to make that thing work
reliably and I still can’t fiddle with that part of the code too much because
it breaks easily.
What are your future plans (GCVideo or otherwise)?
That’s a secret. =) I find it easier not to talk about
future plans for a project because that allows me to scrap them if they don’t
work out. Announcing plans in public creates expectations on the user side that
such plans are eventually realized and it is much nicer to suddenly hear that
there is a new release with some new feature than to hear that the feature you
were waiting for will never come.
I’m tempted to do a release with 720p HDR capability on the
first of a certain month in the near future, but I'm not sure if I have enough
spare time to make that happen. ;)
[1]
Field-Programmable Gate Arrays-a technology that enables mimicking other
hardware without having to build an exact replacement.
[2]
Digital-to-analog converter-converts a digital signal to its analog equivalent
(or vice versa).
[3]
Internal configuration access port-does pretty much what the name says.
Anne from Pikapi Podcast joins in to discuss the music of Pokemon
Stadium 2 for the N64. While not as well-known as its predecessor, there’s
still a lot of material to cover, both on the battling side as well as in the minigames.
Honestly, it’s pretty impressive for a game with only a single composer. If you
want to know what we thought of the game itself, be sure to listen after the
outro:
In the first segment (1:18-12:33), I interview Veronica Weygandt, a percussionist who's done several covers of Pokemon music. Despite being relatively early in her career, we still had a lot to talk about, including how percussion is much more than just drums, how those instruments have been brought into the digital realm, and how she's revisited some of her earlier work.
Our second segment (13:43-1:10:11) is a discussion of the music of Pokemon Puzzle Challenge for the Game Boy Color. While most of this title is similar to its N64 counterpart, the music definitely isn't, and Anne from Pikapi Podcast was happy to help me cover it. As usual, we have a game discussion after the outro:
Percussionist Veronica Weygandt (V-Ron Media) joins me to discuss her history as a musician, experience with Pokemon, and recent covers of music from Pokemon Pinball: Ruby & Sapphire, and Pokemon X/Y:
Transcript:
Steven: Hi folks, Steven here. I'm on the phone with Veronica Weygandt, who is a percussion teacher, but more directly relevant she has been doing a number of Pokemon covers. We're going to talk about a couple in particular. She recently did a cover of the "Duskull Graveyard" theme from "Pokemon Pinball: Ruby and Sapphire" for Halloween a few weeks ago, but that's just one of the things we're going to talk about. But first of all, Veronica where are you from and how did you get into doing music?
Veronica: I'm from Spartanburg, South Carolina and I actually got into music...my father just retired as a band director, so when I was growing up, like if we were cleaning the house, instead of just whatever's on the radio we would have music such as 80's pop or jazz or classical or romantic era music playing in the background, so I grew up listening to a large variety of different types of genres of music.
Steven: And what was your sort of formal training like? Did you take instrument lessons as a kid, or how did that work out?
Veronica: So I started-dad and I would kind of play around at our piano in the living room, but then I did start band in fourth grade and I played percussion in band class through high school, and then in high school I actually joined a class called "percussion ensemble" so instead of sitting in the back of the band room every day. we all played on percussion instruments the whole time, so it was only percussionists in the class, so we got some specialized instruction, which is always kind of nice.
Steven: Yeah, it's always nice when you can get that sort of specialized training there. What were sort of your main instruments because a lot of folks they think, "percussion? Oh that's just drums," but it's actually a fairly wide array of instruments. What were some of the ones you learned back then?
Veronica: Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned that, because sometimes people just say, "I need a drummer," or you'll get piano players that can only play mallets, but I'm thankful that I get to play a lot of them, such as the marimba, the vibraphone, xylophone, bells/glockenspiel which are all under mallets, and then I did some snare drums, some concert snare drum and rudimental marching snare drum, and some bass drum and other auxiliary...or the toy instruments like triangle and tambourine. I also learned to play timpani and drum set.
Steven: That's a really great variety there. I think you mentioned a little bit about marching band there. Have you ever had to perform at sporting events? What's that like?
Veronica: So, my freshman year of high school I was in the front ensemble, and I played marimba and then I marched a bass drum for one year and snare drum for two years, and now I actually work at that same high school and now I teach for the front ensemble.
Steven: That is a neat little circle of life there, I suppose. All right, well let's talk about the Pokemon side-how did you get introduced to that franchise?
Veronica: So, funny enough I was actually obsessed with "A Bug's Life" as a kid, and my parents couldn't get me to watch anything but "A Bug's Life" and then one day they showed me the first Pokemon movie and specifically the "[Pikachu's] Vacation" special, and then I became obsessed with Pokemon. That was followed by the whole movie, starting the cartoon or anime, and then I got a little bit into "Pokemon Silver" and "Pokemon Red and Blue", but I mainly played a lot of the side games, such as "Pokemon Stadium", "Pokemon Stadium 2"-I love the minigames-and "Pokemon Snap" is always dear to my heart.
Steven: Yeah, especially that first generation, they did really experiment with what they could do with the Pokemon franchise, and the side games really do show that. We're hopefully seeing more of that now with the "New Pokemon Snap" and whatnot, but moving on let's talk about your little YouTube channel that you created-how did that get started?
Veronica: I started it back in college-my junior year, I believe my third year of college-and I just started out kind of messing around on the piano figuring out what I could do and what I couldn't do, and then I would put that into a music writing software or notation software-I use Finale, some people use Musescore or Sibelius but dad had Finale, so I just always learned Finale-and then I would export that when I finished it. I would export it as a MIDI file-it's an electronic sound font or so-and I would import that into Garageband, and then I would mess around with the library samples to see what instruments those sounds sounded on the best. Then I would just upload those to YouTube, so it was all electronic based when I started, but last December I got what's called a Vibekat, and it's actually an electronic vibraphone that comes with a bunch of different sounds such as xylophone, bells, and a bunch of other things that I've mentioned previously, and now instead of filling up a room with a bunch of different big percussion instruments, I can just change the channel on this one Vibekat, so it's really useful for recording, and now I can perform in my studio and have it feel more like a live recording.
Steven: Yeah, one thing if folks look at your more recent videos, you do that sort of split-screen thing where you're performing each part of the of the composition and stuff like that, so it's it's really interesting how that's evolved over time.
Veronica: Yeah, and I do want to point out one more thing is that a lot of different percussion instruments-specifically mallets-use different mallets on the mallet instruments, such as the xylophone uses harder mallets whereas marimba you use yarn mallets-it's just softer mallets. And so, even though I'm performing on the same instrument, I still use the different mallets in each part so you can tell the instruments apart on the screen, such as the top left or bottom right.
Steven: That'll be a great thing for folks to look for the next time they watch one of your videos. That's pretty interesting. All right, well let's talk about one of your covers in particular. The one you put out at the end of October for Halloween was the "Duskull Graveyard" theme from "Pokemon Pinball: Ruby and Sapphire". Now, I do know that you had earlier done a cover of "Lavender Town" from "[Pokemon] Red and Blue" which is sort of the default Halloween thing that a lot of folks do. So. aside from having done that already, what made you choose this one for for this year's Halloween?
Veronica: I've always loved the spin-off games-like i mentioned previously with "Pokemon Snap"-and I was actually watching a live stream on YouTube of someone playing "Pokemon Pinball", and that sort of gave me some inspiration because I had been looking for something I was thinking maybe "Jack's Theme" from "Animal Crossing" because I've done a bunch of "Animal Crossing" arrangements, but I just really love "Pokemon Pinball Ruby [and] Sapphire", and when I heard the "Duskull Graveyard" theme, I was like, "oh, that's it." I mean I get that feeling and that you pulled into it and then suddenly you lose a couple days in the studio. That's how that works.
Steven: Yeah, inspiration can often strike in a manner like that where you just happen across something and you realize it's exactly what you've been looking for, and it sounds like that's what happened there. Are there any particular parts of the cover that you wanted to call out that were interesting or difficult or you learned something from?
Veronica: Yeah, a couple things come to mind. The first thing is in the original version that's in the game, some of the instruments are actually a little bit out of time in the melody. The clarinets are not with the bass part-the bass line per se. It's electronic so it's a little hard to figure out what instrument it is sometimes in the older games, but in my arrangement I still played it in time, and at first I wasn't sure if that was going to work out or not, but in the end it did and I'm really glad that it did. I think it sounds better from a 2020 performance.
Steven: Yeah, it can be a little difficult sometimes to tell exactly what they meant there. Obviously they were trying to have a little bit of fun-we're talking about a graveyard you know in a Pokemon game not Silent Hill, so it's going to be a little bit different there, but yeah it sounds like you did some experimentation there and took some risks and sounds like you're happy with the result, which is you know an important thing for musicians to do sometimes.
Veronica: Yeah, one thing I'm really happy with is the part where the drum set comes in because before it's just kind of spooky and ominous with [just] the auxiliary instruments-the triangle, the claves and the wood block and and just the marimba and the bass marimba part and xylophone on the melody, and you're like, "oh, is that it is it over?" And then the drum set comes in and the melody doubles on vibraphone and bells and it just kind of builds, and then towards the end the marimba changes to four mallets and it just becomes an epic ending of sorts, and I'm really happy with how it built up the entire time.
Steven: Yeah, you had a great experience, which you know given that making a video like that is a is a lot of work, I'm glad you have some positive emotions to show for it. All right, well you did another Pokemon cover recently. Do you want to talk a little bit about that one? It's from "[Pokemon] X and Y".
Veronica: So, "Laverre City" was actually the very first arrangement I did for my channel, and after graduating college and growing as both a musician and an arranger, there are some things I felt like i could do better, especially now that I have microphones and proper recording equipment and the Vibekat. Now I could do it for my main instrument-percussion ensemble-rather than just plugging it into Garageband and figuring out what kind of worked the best but wasn't really what I wanted, now I could really do what I wanted, so I upped the tempo a little bit and I had some fun with that. I had a pretty challenging marimba part-I had to practice those notes quite a bit-but I'm really happy with how that turned out at the end. I had a nice blend with the bass marimba and piano as well. I've gotten a lot better piano this year too. so I was able to put all those things together, and I was really happy with that.
Steven: Absolutely-the more you practice the better you get. That's true for pretty much anything. Alright, well anything else you're planning on doing in the near future that you wanted to share with the audience?
Veronica: I'm planning on doing "Snowbelle City" sometime in December or January to fit the wintry theme. It's going to be kind of similar to "Laverre City", but I'm going to have a lot more auxiliary instruments in this and I'm really excited to show some of those off for sure, and I'm probably going to do some Animal Crossing too, maybe "Turkey Day" hopefully I can get that out on Thanksgiving, and a couple others as well, one that I'm really excited for.
Steven: Yeah, "Animal Crossing" another big one on your channel there, so if folks are interested in that great place to look. Speaking of which, why don't you go ahead-what's your YouTube channel name and also why don't you tell us, do you have any social media accounts yeah you can find me on YouTube at "V-ron Media" , and if you go on my YouTube channel you can find my social media in my banner or you can look it up on site so on Facebook it's @vronmediamusic at Twitter it's @vronmediamusic and then if you want to follow me on Instagram my personal account is @vlweygandtand it's mostly updates on my channel along with pictures of my cats.
Steven: All right, well thank you very much Veronica-it's been great having you on.
Veronica: Thank you for having me-I really appreciate it.
Anne from Pikapi Podcast drops by to discuss a number of "disputed" Pokemon songs. "Flying Without Wings", "Happy Together", and several others go under the microscope to determine just how tied they are to the franchise. In the process, we cover a Whoopi Goldberg movie, a car commercial, and some other oddities, so it's definitely worth a listen:
Charmander returns to Community Day, though Pokemon Go itself has changed a bit in the interim. Does the addition of a loose storyline add enough to the experience to justify it?
In this episode, Anne from Pikapi Podcast helps me discuss the music of "Hey You, Pikachu" for the N64. While this title is most famous for having the player speak to it, there's also a lot of sound output to go over. Even if you've never played this game (sorry Anne), the discussion definitely has something to offer. As usual, we also have a game discussion after the outro:
