Neo Geo and Arcade not showing video previews - Steven Selph Scraper

pjft

Just a note on this. I happened to find I still had a few videos in my library that weren't rendering, so I had to convert them.

The common item on them was the following, from MediaInfo:

Writing application                      : Lavf54.20.4
Comment                                  : Created with: Mame version 0.162,  / Played by: adolfo69,  / Game name: rbff1 - Real Bout Fatal Fury / Real Bout Garou Densetsu (NGM-095)(NGH-095),  / Date game played: 21 giugno 2015,  / Date video creation: 6 novembre 2015,  / Type: shortplay single-screen,  / Manufacturer: SNK,  / Display resolution: 320x224px,  / Link for info: http://adb.arcadeitalia.net/?mame=rbff1,  / Copyright (C) - All rights reserved - Tutti i marchi e loghi appartengono ai rispettivi proprietari

So, I'm led to believe that these arcade videos were created via the in-MAME video capture, which apparently is/was set up to encode and store the videos at that particular profile, at least for the videos that don't work, which explains why it's mostly on the MAME (arcade, NeoGeo) videos that this manifests itself.

Not on all, though, but worth noting that.

theWinterDojer

@pjft

Probably dumb question, but is OMX Player used for anything other than playing video snaps? Would it be beneficial to enable it for any reason if I don't have videos loaded?

pjft

@thewinterdojer It won't have any effect, it's really only for videos - in this case, video snaps. Screensaver videos are always rendered via OMX Player anyway, unless that is disabled.

theWinterDojer

@pjft Okay thank you. I have it enabled but not currently using snaps, if it doesn't hurt to leave it enabled I will in case I do decide to load some.

Wombat

I had this problem as well. Neo Geo videos wouldn't work with OMX enabled.

However, following what others said, I re-encoded the videos using Handbrake. Once completed, they work! Thanks y'all.

Kairoslair

I also had this issue. If you dont feel like re-encoding all those videos tho, the scraper will work for NeoGeo videos. After deleting the images folder and gamelist.xml (only if you've previously scraped), I set console scraper in Selph's Scraper to OVGDB and ran it just for neogeo. It works! EVERY SINGLE rom had a video and they played just fine even with OMX enabled! This worked for me, hope it helps any who run into this issue

jthemad

Hi! It is because neogeo is seen as console, but arcade and fba are seen as 'arcade' by sselph scraper, and you can choose only arcadeitalia or screenscraper as source. I tryed both.. with arcadeitalia omx player works but the mp4 files are bigger than screenscraper (more big!). With screenscraper omx players doesn't work on rpi3 (tried on x64 and works). The best solution was update omx player to support arcadeitalia mp4 compressed video, or shrink manually with handbrake software. The problem is that I have 2500 games is arcade folder and shrinking all of theme is a huge work.. anyone has a better solution for this? Thank you all!

flagrant99

I just got opposite results. Arcade Italia vids for mame only work with OMX Player OFF. Is it possible to update OMX Player to work with these?

pjft

@flagrant99 OMX Player is not really ours to update, and to the best of my knowledge it hasn't been updated to support that profile.

Read this bug in their repository.

Not supported. Pretty sure no hardware decoder (on any platform) will handle this.
It's not a consumer profile, it's for professional (studio) masters.
We support Blu-Ray quality video (4:2:0 with 8 bits per channel).
This is 4:4:4 with 12 bits per channel. See: http://www.digitalpreservation.gov/formats/fdd/fdd000218.shtml

You may try to update OMXPlayer on your Pi, but I'm not confident anything will have changed in that regard.

Your best option is to either use VLC, or re-encode them, as described in the previous posts.

Sorry about that.

akafox

I take it you have them downloaded and converted? I downloaded mine on my pc with Steven's scraper as the pi was struggling a little. I had an AWFUL time trying to run the ones from emumovies until I converted then down. (the scraper does that "on the fly")

flagrant99

Thx for the responses. You are correct looks like High 4:4:4 Predictive Profile will not play in OMX Player. They also will not play on my windows 10 desktop. Seems Most videos scraped from Arcade Italia are High 4:4:4 Predictive Profile. Most videos scraped from screen scraper are not and play fine in OMX Player for me. So I just re-scraped from screen scraper. Here's another interesting link on the many flavors of h.264.
http://blog.mediacoderhq.com/h264-profiles-and-levels/.
Without OMX Player (Hardware acceleration) the High 4:4:4 Predictive Profile play fine as well.

akafox

@flagrant99 I see your problem now. I forgot I had used emumovies for my arcade.
Looks like the videos themselves come from Progetto-Snaps You can run them through handbrake and that will fix them.

Read this thread for converting.

Valhalla_Pi

I have the same issue NES, SNES, Genesis and Master System all work amazing

Images, Marquees and Videos all worked using Stephen Selphs scraper

The images, Marquees work for MAME but the videos do not play even though they downlowed during the scrape

WHen I turn off OMX the videos play good but they play very choppy for all the systems that worked perfect with OMX on.

Valhalla_Pi

@pjft what do I do in Handbrake to convert them so they work with OMX turned on?

Valhalla_Pi

@wombat can you please share what steps I do in HandBrake to convert the files proper

pjft

@valhalla_pi re-encoding then in one of their MP4 presets seemed to work for me. Ultimately they just need to be encoded in a compatible format, which the majority are.

Valhalla_Pi

@pjft thanks, just the default settings in Handbrake made them all work

one related question, if the scrapper missed a few roms and I found the videos, renamed them put them in the images folder

the games still dont work, when I go to the meta information for the rom the path for video is blank, do I have to manually type this in?

obviously the roms that scrapped using Stephen Selphs scrapper filled in the path for the video file but if I mannually add does that mean I manually update that video path?

akafox

Yes you will have to manually add this info. I would suggest working through filezilla or putty (windows or linux) then download a copy of the gamelist.xml to your hard drive on your PC. Make a copy of it somewhere. Then open it in your text editor. You can add the information by hand. Test by opening it in your web browser. If no errors pop up then copy it to the ~/pi/roms/neogeo folder.

Or you can use the ES gui to type it in by hand there. Either way works..done it MANY times. I even have info and snaps/vids for homebrews too.

I made my friend's list in the info for kirby's avalanche say that "you suck at this game so you are not allowed to play it! :P" yeah I'm bad lol

Charco

I've tried converting my arcade video snaps with Handbrake to no avail, is there a source in Steven Selph's Scraper with arcade video snaps that play well will OMX Player? It would be easier for me to just delete my video snaps and rescrape than to convert the ones I have.

akafox

Are you using the gui or the cli of handbrake? More on that with this thread:
https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/12590/how-to-properly-convert-video-snaps-for-emulationstation/24

As far as I know, no there is no other source for video snaps through the scraper. I got mine as a pack (as most do) and then converted those down. That was the only way I could get mine to work. I let the scraper build my list so all the video that were there deleted the videos the scraper brought down and converted my own down.

I guess you could convert the ones the scraper brings down too..it might fix them. I have still have my script somewhere I think...l I'll post it when i have the time.