Hi all, new RetroCopy user, loving it so far. Not sure which forum is more appropriate for this thread, but here goes:

1) I noticed that RetroCopy stretches NES games horizontally from 16:15 (256x240) to 5:4 (1350x1080 in my case) when the aspect ratio is set to Full Frame or Content. Why 5:4 and not 4:3, which I was under the impression is the aspect ratio of non-widescreen TVs? Moreover, why would you want to distort the image at all? Is there anything I can do about it? I know I can run RetroCopy in windowed mode at 1280x960 and that'll make the window height exactly four times the NES's vertical resolution, but it'll still stretch it horizontally.

2) When running RetroCopy in windowed mode on Windows 7, should I disable window compositing (aka Aero)? Why/why not? Also, does Fullscreen mode give better performance than windowed mode?

3) Does RetroCopy only remove the top and bottom borders from games when the aspect ratio is set to Content? I noticed some borders to the left and right of Super Mario Bros 3. How do borders work at the hardware level anyway? I.e. What's the difference between borders and content, and do border sizes vary across games or consoles? I read the news post called "Emulation Aspect Ratio" but that didn't go into the technical aspects.

4) What's the point of converting ROMs into .game files? Are .game files compatible with other emulators? If not, is there a way to undo the conversion? If not, shouldn't RetroCopy leave the original ROM when doing the conversion or at least give some sort of warning/confirmation?

5) Seems RetroCopy only allows one save state per game. Are there any plans to change that in the future?

6) Is it possible to turn RetroCopy into a portable app? I.e. To run it from a USB flash drive.

I know these are questions that probably don't have short answers, so sorry about that. Thanks in advance!

Kind of disappointing to see no one has answered...maybe I should've posted this in the Help forum instead?

I've found a temporary solution to #1. I configured NVidia Control Panel to not scale the video if it's a lower resolution than my monitor's. I found a small and simple program (http://bcheck.net/apps/reso.htm) that lets you automatically change the desktop resolution when you launch an application by creating special shortcuts, so I made one for Retrocopy. I set the resolution to 1024x896, which is basically the NES's borderless 256x224 scaled by x4. I set RetroCopy's aspect ratio to Stretch, and I get perfect x4 scaling.

The problem with this is that I need to relaunch RetroCopy if I want to change the resolution (e.g. to play Sega Genesis), and it probably doesn't work with HDTVs (even if they don't scale the image, you'd be making it more laggy by giving it a lower resolution.) That aside, I can't keep the borders using this method because there's no "Stretch with borders" aspect ratio. Still, it's not a bad workaround.

If anyone could shed some light on the other questions I'd appreciate it greatly - especially #6. I also read in the bsnes documentation that not disabling Aero can affect video performance, so #2 is also partially answered.

Hi

@6:
Did you try copy the "retrocopy" (Root C:) folder on a usb stick?
Retrocopy doesn't use any registry keys.. so as far as i know it will work portable then.

@2:
Disabling Aero is always better for your computer overall performance. But on the other hand "disabling" Aero makes Windows 7 (feels) less smooth.

I think if you read this forum deeper it will answer most of your other questions..

Thanks! So the installer basically just sets up some shortcuts. That's what I wanted to know.I'll take your word for it in the case of RetroCopy (since bsnes and a lot of other games disable Aero) but I thought for normal every day computer use Aero *improved* performance by having the video card handle the windows instead of the CPU?Will do. Been kind of busy this week so I didn't have a lot of time to dig around for answers. Thanks to you I know most of what I wanted to know though. I did try though!