Take and Scrape Your Own Videos

herb_fargus

@meleu Necropost AHOY!

With the advent of raspbian stretch and subsequently ffmpeg integrated in the repos
the runcommand onmenu functions integrated
and Retroarch compiled with ffmpeg support:

I think I'm ready to give this another go. The integration is all pretty much handled as far as no more need for source compilations, now the trick is just configuring the onstart/onmenu scripts and optimal settings for ffmpeg to capture native res gameplay without degrading performance.

Runcommand OnMenu Options

As far as onstart/omenu scripts go, a few options:

OnMenu that just launches the default config to the default video path with the saved video file being named after the rom.
OnMenu that creates a videos folder for the system being launched, uses the default config, and saves the video in the created videos folder named after the rom.
OnMenu with dialog options to select the saved video path and video config/container (mkv, mp4 etc), and maybe options to name based on rom, date, rom+date, etc.

Runcommand OnMenu

Per the docs, create a script called recordvideo.sh in `

opt/retropie/configs/all/runcommand-menu/`

With the contents todo incomplete!

recordvideos.sh

#!/usr/bin/env bash

system="$1"
emulator="$2"
rompath="$3"
launch="$4"
rom_file="${rompath##*/}"
rom="${rom_file%.*}"
mediadir="$HOME/RetroPie/roms/$system/images"
videofile="$mediadir/$rom-video.mkv"


# Create videos folder in system's rom folder
if [[ ! -d "$mediadir" ]]; then
    mkdir -p "$mediadir"
    dialog --msgbox "$mediadir created!" 20 60 >/dev/tty
fi

# Launch to record gameplay on RetroArch Systems.
if [[ "$launch" =~ retroarch ]]; then
eval "$launch" "--record '$videofile'" 
exit 1
    else
    dialog --msgbox "Video recording is not supported for this system" 20 60 >/dev/tty
fi

if you want to force ~30 second limits for your videos you can substitute the following code:

eval "$launch" "--record '$videofile'" & sleep 33
killall retroarch
exit 1

Configs

The default path for recorded videos is:

/opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch/records/

If you add a custom config for ffmpeg the default path is:

/opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch/records_config/

Examples:

default.cfg:

vcodec = libx264rgb
pix_fmt = bgr24
acodec = flac
format = matroska
video_qp = 0

optimised.cfg:

format = matroska
threads = 3
vcodec = libx264rgb
video_preset = ultrafast
video_tune = animation
pix_fmt = bgr24
video_qp = 0
acodec = flac

mp4.cfg:

vcodec = libx264rgb
pix_fmt = bgr24
acodec = aac
format = mp4
video_qp = 0

twitch.cfg:

vcodec = libx264
acodec = libmp3lame
pix_fmt = yuv420p
scale_factor = 2
threads = 3
video_crf = 25
video_preset = superfast
video_tune = animation
audio_global_quality = 75
sample_rate = 44100
format = flv

Clyde

Hello @herb_fargus, I'm thinking about streaming my Retropie's screen to my Kubuntu desktop PC that's connected to my video projector, so that an audience of guests could watch the games. Can you kindly give me some hints how to set that up?

herb_fargus

@clyde haven't the foggiest. Could try the twitch thing, or there is some experimental streaming thing that doesn't use a vnc server. Can't remember what it is, never tried it myself though I imagine there would be some latency

Clyde

@herb_fargus Well, thanks anyway. I may look further into it when I have the time and leisure, since it isn't urgent at the moment. Latency wouldn't be a big issue as long as it's not more than a few seconds, since the audience wouldn't play but just watch. edit: On the players' side, there should be as little lag as possible, of course.

herb_fargus

@clyde I started a post specific to the whole streaming thing and I think I came up\with a viable software solution, the uv4l raspidisp driver / webrtc server enables you to stream video with not a terrible latency that can be accessed from any web browser on the same network. Audio may be a bit of a trick to sort but I've tested it and it functions.

Further discussion on this thread if interested.

Clyde

@herb_fargus Wow, that's great. I'll check it out.

Valente

Great post. Unfortunately, I'm having an issue with the recording function on the RetroPie while recording gameplay. When launching an NES game, the emulator is really slow.

Has anyone encountered this problem?

Thanks,

Valente

Valente

Just to follow up, I noticed a YouTube video of a user also complaining about lag when using ffmpeg. Even with my Raspberry Pi 3B+, the lag makes NES games unplayable.

I've tried using other core emulators and recording settings to no avail. Let me know if anyone has any positive experiences with RetroPie and recording.

Thanks,

@Valente

herb_fargus

More necroposting,

There have been some changes with RetroArch with the video recording where in theory we should be able to use a hotkey to start/stop recordings. The latest Raspbian also has ffmpeg with hardware decoding so I wonder if that could help with some of the performance issues people have been having. though video recording is encoding a video so that may not help if it only has hardware acceleration for decoding.

corezon

@herb_fargus I found that relying on sleep to properly time a 30 second video was getting mixed results so I modified your script a little to crop the video afterward for a more uniform recording length.

It requires that you install ffmpeg beforehand though.

#!/usr/bin/env bash

system="$1"
emulator="$2"
rompath="$3"
launch="$4"
rom_file="${rompath##*/}"
rom="${rom_file%.*}"
mediadir="$HOME/RetroPie/roms/$system/images"
tmpfile="/tmp/$rom-video.mkv"
videofile="$mediadir/$rom-video.mkv"


# Create videos folder in system's rom folder
if [[ ! -d "$mediadir" ]]; then
    mkdir -p "$mediadir"
    dialog --msgbox "$mediadir created!" 20 60 >/dev/tty
fi

# Launch to record gameplay on RetroArch Systems.
if [[ "$launch" =~ retroarch ]]; then
eval "$launch" "--record \"$tmpfile\"" & sleep 120

killall retroarch 

# Crop video to 30 seconds
eval "ffmpeg -y -t 30" "-i \"$tmpfile\"" "-acodec copy \"$videofile\"" &

exit 1
    else
    dialog --msgbox "Video recording is not supported for this system" 20 60 >/dev/tty
fi