Screensavers not working - just black screen

[blonqe]

Hi,

First of all I have no video scrapes and I have doubled checked every systems gamelist.xml for <video> and </video> all my mp4s are in the screensaver folder under ~/retropie/screensaver/ and the retropie gamelist.xml is in this location:

/opt/retropie/configs/all/emulationstation/gamelists/retropie/gamelist.xml

Within the file it looks like this e.g.

<game><path /><video>~/RetroPie/screensavers/mario.mp4</video></game>

I've even tried it with just

<video> ~/RetroPie/screensavers/mario.mp4 </video>

I've even tried putting the video in the roms/downloaded images folder and updating the specific gamelist.xml with a rom I have while also changing the MP4 file to match the ROM file.

I've switched omx player on and off and changed the timings to various levels but nothing still just a black screen.

Anyone got any ideas to what it is?

I have a raspberry pi 3 and I'm on the latest updates of retropie.

I feel as though the video player just isn't working, any idea how to check this?

[mitu]

@blonqe said in Screensavers not working - just black screen:

I feel as though the video player just isn't working, any idea how to check this?

Run the player on the file directly. Quit ES, then run from the command line

# 1 omxplayer
omxplayer ~/RetroPie/screensavers/mario.mp4

# 2 - VLC
vlc ~/RetroPie/screensavers/mario.mp4

EDIT: I think only Omxplayer is used for video screensavers, so try to see if the video is recognized by it. Have you set up the video screensaver's options in the ES configuration ?

[cyperghost]

@blonqe Test first the suggestion of @mitu
Then be sure to put the line

 <game><path /><video>~/RetroPie/screensavers/mario.mp4</video></game>`

the <video>-tag alone won't work!

between the Tags! The gamelist-tag is the starting and ending tag of a whole gamelist!

<gamelist>


</gamlist>

and restart Emulationstation.
Can you establish a SSH connection and enter ps -a command in?
This will show you all processes running ... if you start the screensaver can you see an instance of OMXPlayer running?

[blonqe]

Hi guys,

Well testing the omx player in terminal worked on the videos, so that's working. Typing ps -a brought up the following:

bash
bash
mpg123
ps

I switched off the background music in es but still nothing, all my es settings for the videos to work are set up properly, I'm really stumped :(

I would upload my gamelist.xml but it won't let me, says I don't have privileges.

Any further ideas?

Cheers

[mitu]

@blonqe For large files, you can use pastebin.com to upload the info. You should upload the ~/.emulationstation/es_settings.cfg, ~/.emulationstation/es_log.txt files and your gamelist where you've set the video tags.
Also, would you mind give some details about your setup - https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/3/read-this-first

[blonqe]

@mitu ,

My gamelist.xml link
([https://pastebin.com/GyiANpGs](link url))

My es_settings.cfg link [https://pastebin.com/vu6K3n9N](link url)

My es_log.txt link
[https://pastebin.com/ctbZsWLc](link url)

My setup:

Pi Model or other hardware: (3 b+ overclocking 1.3 with heatsink and fan installed)
Power Supply used: (generic with power switch built in, however I have the nes case with power and reset button which I use)
RetroPie Version Used (eg 3.6, 3.8.1, 4.1 - do not write latest): 4.3.9
Built From: basic image with loads of stuff added from various sources
USB Devices connected: generic SNES controller and usb keyboard
Controller used: ipega 9062 and 8bitdo sf30 pro

Thanks for the help so far,

Cheers

[mitu]

@blonqe Well, your gamelist is not correct, since the video tags you added are not attached to an actual game, seems like you added them to the Retropie system, but they're probably ignored by Emulationstation:

Parsing XML file "/home/pi/.emulationstation/gamelists/retropie/gamelist.xml"
lvl1:   File """" does not exist! Ignoring.
lvl1:   File """" does not exist! Ignoring.
lvl1:   File """" does not exist! Ignoring.
lvl1:   File """" does not exist! Ignoring.
lvl1:   File """" does not exist! Ignoring.
lvl1:   File """" does not exist! Ignoring.

I've dug up the old video screensaver thread - which you probably read - and the advice there is to create a dummy file and attach the video to it. So create an empty file /home/pi/video.txt (run touch /home/pi/video.txt from a command line), then replace in the retropie system gamelist the entries for video with:

  <game>
        <path>/home/pi/video.txt</path>
        <video>~/RetroPie/screensavers/LTTP.mp4</video>
    </game>
<game>
        <path>/home/pi/video.txt</path>
        <video>~/RetroPie/screensavers/Mario.mp4</video>
    </game>
    <game>
         <path>/home/pi/video.txt</path>
        <video>~/RetroPie/screensavers/Sonic.mp4</video>
    </game>

Restart ES and see if it works.

[blonqe]

@mitu

After doing all the steps i still get a blank screen.

However when going to the terminal (F4) after doing these steps I can see the following error :

lv10: file path ""/home/pi/video.txt"" is outside system path "/home/pi/RetoPie/retropiemenu"
lv10: Error finding/creating FileData for ""/home/pi/video.txt"", skipping

This is repeated several times

Edit: I've changed the path to /home/pi/RetroPie/retropiemenu/icons/video.txt

The error disappears from terminal now, but it still doesn't work and I get the same error in the es_log.txt stating no file exists.

Uneven tried renaming the txt file to match the video files e.g Mario.txt but still didn't work.

I'm so stumped :(

[mitu]

@blonqe said in Screensavers not working - just black screen:

/home/pi/RetroPie/retropiemenu/icons/video.txt

Did you also created the file /home/pi/RetroPie/retropiemenu/icons/video.txt ?

[blonqe]

@mitu said in Screensavers not working - just black screen:

@blonqe said in Screensavers not working - just black screen:

/home/pi/RetroPie/retropiemenu/icons/video.txt

Did you also created the file /home/pi/RetroPie/retropiemenu/icons/video.txt ?

Yeah I also done that, sorry I forgot to say.

I also changed that to Mario.txt when changing the patch to try and match that too

[mitu]

@blonqe Then I guess you need to add the video tag one of the real game roms you have. Modify the /home/pi/.emulationstation/gamelists/nes/gamelist.xml and add a video tag with the path to the .mp4 file to one of the games in the file.

[blonqe]

@mitu

You know what I'm going to say next :(

Nothing is working, im going to try different videos, see if that's the case but can't see that being the issue.

Hopefully a future version of retropie will let me choose a custom video path like you can on pics now.

It's hurting my head now!

[mitu]

@blonqe Well, you can use the metadata editor in ES on a game (press Select while you're positioned on the game) and you can enter the Video path. See if that works, but you'll need a keyboard.

[blonqe]

@mitu said in Screensavers not working - just black screen:

@blonqe Well, you can use the metadata editor in ES on a game (press Select while you're positioned on the game) and you can enter the Video path. See if that works, but you'll need a keyboard.

Finally I have screensavers, for some reason the only way I could get it working was to do it via es metadata edit as you suggested.

I left the mp4's untouched in the screensaver folder e.g /home/pi/RetroPie/screensavers/Mario.mp4

Selected a random game in my SNES setup (I picked top down so I know where they are in the future) and pressed select to edit metadata for game, input the file path above.

Restarted es and now screensavers :)

Thanks to everyone who helped but big thanks to @mitu for sticking with the issue throughout ;)

P.s the retropie gamelist.xml method must not work for all as obviously everything was in the right paths etc just didn't parse correctly, strange.

[cyperghost]

@blonqe @mitu
Thanks for digging deeper :)
Sadly I must admit that the way I told to install screensavers in @Malixx Animated Screensaver Thread does not work anymore!!!

The last funcitonal version of ES that works with this hack is ES 2.6.2, version 2.6.3 is deliverd with RetroPie 4.3 and this one does not work ..... again sorry guys!
It can be downloaded here: https://github.com/crcerror/emulationstation-binary-archive

Sorry guys!

[cyperghost]

@blonqe said in Screensavers not working - just black screen:

Hopefully a future version of retropie will let me choose a custom video path like you can on pics now.

That would be the masters-path!

[lycros]

@blonqe Did you have to edit the meta data for multiple games? ie. 1 game per video or just the one?

[snapchris]

@lycros Sadly, I had to put them in all manually. Im sure you figured that out by now.