Scraping Metadata Location

[LogicalUnit]

Hi everyone,

I'm using an external USB stick to store my ROMs (with the retropie-mount folder). I was just wondering where the metadata from the scraper is stored. Is it stored on the USB stick, or on the micro SD card?

I'm asking because I want to know if I need a bigger SD card to store more scraping metadata, and whether I'll need to scrape again if I migrate the USB stick to another RetroPie.

Thanks.

[LogicalUnit]

I've done some experimentation, and it looks like the scraping metadata is not stored with the ROM files, so it's probably somewhere on the SD card.

[akafox]

Location of your images:
/opt/retropie/configs/all/emulationstation/downloaded_images

Location of your gamelist.xml
/opt/retropie/configs/all/emulationstation/gamelists

Note that ES will check your rom system folder (i.e. /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/snes) for a gamelist.xml first. So placing your list there is fine. Also if you scrape videos they are placed in a folder called "images". Your artwork is categorized simply by a "type tag". (i.e. -video or -image) You will have edit your games list paths but that is easy to do with a find and replace.

I do all my scraping from my pc using retropie and then transfer all the stuff over using midnight commander (the file manger option on the retropie menu). Much faster and I can back everything up 1:1 without imaging it.

[LogicalUnit]

Hi, akafox

thanks for the info, this was a big help.

I'm working on a Bash script that will backup metadata and images from the SD card to the USB stick. It's working, but I want to make sure it's good.

Can you tell me, will it interfere with ES if I add an extra directory to roms? I'm trying to find the simplest way to copy all the box images.

Cheers.

[retroguy23]

Sorry for bumping an old thread but I couldn't find the answer to this anywhere.

How do I actually access this image folder? I downloaded some box art and want to replace the ones I currently have but cannot see any detailed instructions anywhere.

Thank you.

[mediamogul]

@retroguy23

You can use SFTP or the samba shares to to access the folder. The full path is /opt/retropie/configs/all/emulationstation/downloaded_images, but the samba share will start you off at 'configs', so from there it would be /configs/all/emulationstation/downloaded_images.

[akafox]

@retroguy23 mediamogui is correct but I honestly do not keep my images and gamelist there. I keep them in the /home/(user)/roms/(system) folder. Ex. home/pi/RetroPie/roms/megadrive/images/ (Just easier for me I guess :P I have done a LOT of hand editing on my lists)

Emulationstation is programed to look there in the default then there in the rom folder if one is not found in the default folder.

Just easier and faster to get to my roms on my pi (or other linux system)
so your gamelist.xml is in the rom folder. For example my megadrive list is in the megadrive/roms folder (one game list per folder). That is:

my megadrive gamelist is located in /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/megadrive/gamelist.xml

The start of my game list looks like this:
...
<game>
<path>./Sonic the Hedgehog (USA, Europe).smd</path>
<name>Sonic The Hedgehog <-(this can be anything you want)</name>
<desc>Sonic the Hedgehog is the first of many games...</desc>
<image>./images/Sonic the Hedgehog (USA, Europe)-image.jpg</image>
<video>./images/Sonic the Hedgehog (USA, Europe)-video.mp4</video>

see the image and video tags? the ./images tells emulationstation to look in the "parent" folder. (this folder is the parent folder because you already told ES to look for the rom in that folder with the <path> tag) In this case it means the rom folder of the game you are showing on screen from the list ..but now look in a sub directory called "images"

I can load ALL my arcade roms from the arcade folder. Any version of MAME, Daphne, or Final Burn Neo are all mixed in the arcade folder. So I have one arcade folder and the rest are consoles.

(But this is what works for me set it up the way it works for you!)