Video Screensaver Issue - Displaying Game Info (Always or Start & End) causes black screen after a few seconds

[parkbenchy]

Hi there,
I've just configured a clean Retropie (4.3) install on a new Raspberry Pi 3, Model B. Everything has been very straight forward and has gone to plan like others I've set up.

With that said, I've come to set up my video screensaver and noticed that when I have the option "Show Game Info On Screensaver" set to "Always" or "Start and End" a video will play momentarily for 2/3 seconds before then reverting to a black screen (presumably when it tries to display game info).

The screensaver runs fine when "Show Game Info On Screensaver" is set to "Never".

Has anyone else had this problem and can you advise a solution?

Kind Regards

Parkbenchy

[parkbenchy]

I found a solution, it appears that when sound is video sound is activated and game info set to always or start and end then this issue will happen.

[pjft]

@parkbenchy what solution did you find - did you disable video sounds?

When you activate the video screensaver there should be a warning popup that tells you about that and something you can try out.

Basically some TV models, resolutions and frequencies may cause that. I haven't found a proper way to address that other than not displaying the game name, or disabling overscan which seems to work in some cases. It's an OMX Player issue and shares similar workarounds to getting a splash video working, unfortunately.

See if the overscan thing does the trick - let me know if you need help setting that up. I'd recommend making a backup copy of /boot/config.txt just in case - not that it's very problematic, but it'll make it easier to revert to the current situation should it not fix it or cause any undesired secondary effects.

If you disable the video screensaver, return to the home screen, and then re enable it you should get the instructions on how to set that up as well, if I recall correctly. You should be able to run it with sound :)

[parkbenchy]

@pjft Thanks for your response, yes I disabled sound which did work initially however certain video clips then cause the same problem.

I haven’t checked out the overscan issue you mentioned, thanks for mentioning it, it certainly sounds like that will help resolve this issue.

Thanks again, I’ll let you know if it resolves the issue.

[pjft]

@parkbenchy Not a problem, do let me know.

A more drastic alternative is to tell ES not to use OMX Player for the screensaver, but truth be told it isn't something I'd recommend as VLC's performance is a lot worse overall.

You'd probably be better off without the captions, as if you want to launch the game in display you can press Start and it launches it.

It's not ideal, but can be an option.

[m3chstaa]

@pjft
Thank you for this, I found that disabling overscan solved the problem!