> Has there been any word from MAMEdev about how they might make use of raw captures? > They could be software decoded and converted to the existing CHD format fairly > easily, but the potential for decoding improvements in the future would be lost. Raw > RF support in MAME is a much longer road, but it's really best in terms of > preservation.
This MAMEdev's word is that I cynically expect the people involved in this project to bikeshed for about 5-10 years and then maybe we'll see something.
In the event that doesn't happen, I would suggest two stages, inspired by the recent "AppleSauce" Kryoflux killer that the Apple II community developed: 1) do the initial reads in the rawest, largest, most lossless way you can reasonably manage. 2) Write something that downconverts to a format more amenable to real-time emulation. I'm thinking 640x480 RGB deinterlaced video frames with VBL data using LZMA or similar modern lossless compression would work best. After all, waiting for someone to write a live deinterlacer for MAME for the last 15 years hasn't worked out.
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