[SCRIPT] RetroPie Convert Videos

Alturis

Thank you!

Some additional docs for the script could include the info that it only reads the first option, not a list of options.

Also just FYI in case you want bug reports the first video it converts gets put into a folder called "converted-" then the rest go into a folder called "converted-<COLORFORMAT>"

So you have to call it once to set the from-color in the .cfg file, then again to set the to-color in the cfg, then a third time to actually run it with either --convert-all or --convert-system.

Running it now and crossing my fingers that this allows the OMX accelerator to work with my preview videos....

Noticed a couple of videos errored out with something about "invalid next size" - will have to look into fixing them or finding replacement videos.

Works great thank you!

hiulit

@alturis I'm glad it's working! I'll take a look at your comments later on when I have more time and I'll get back to you :)

meleu

@hiulit I didn't have time to test it yet, but WOOHOOL! the code looks very clean! At least at a quick read on the github web interface it seems to be a nice job! :)

Alturis

@alturis said in [SCRIPT] RetroPie Convert Videos:

Noticed a couple of videos errored out with something about "invalid next size" - will have to look into fixing them or finding replacement videos.

I ran this in putty so I could take a close look at the output. Looks like its a known bug reported in the libav bugs db: (basically a crash)

https://lists.libav.org/pipermail/libav-bugs/2014-January/002969.html

I have actually quite a few of them that error out this way. Kind of a bummer because I would like to have all games with videos. But in order to see some without garbling and slowdowns i need the video accelerator running, and in order to see others I need yuv420p. I guess I will live with the slowdown and stick with yuv444p for the time being.

Alturis

@hiulit I have some changes to the script that fixes a few things

Fixes the "converted-" folder issue with the first converted video
Checks the result of avconv and if it failed it logs the result code and renames the file <rom>-video.mp4-failed so that you don't unknowingly stomp your valid video with a now corrupt one. ( which I certainly never did, just looking out for other folks ;) )

I can email it to you?

hiulit

@meleu It's needs a little love, but it's ok! Thanks! ;)

hiulit

@alturis Hi there! If you have a GitHub account, I would prefer if you could create a Pull Request https://github.com/hiulit/RetroPie-Convert-Videos. If not, you can find my email at https://github.com/hiulit/ ;) Thanks a lot!

Alturis

@hiulit Hmm.. I do have a github account and use it quite a lot to work on my own projects. But I dont have much experience using it in this respect. It looks to me like in order to create a pull request I first need to be able to create my own branch of it. Which it is saying I do not have permission to do when I try it.

Ah ok i see. I am able to create a fork and create a pull request that way. Done.

hiulit

I've just released Retropie-Convert-Videos v1.0.2.

Fixed

Fixed some outputs.
Fixed git clone URL in README.md.

Added

Merged #3 - Thanks to Dan Edwards

Menion

@hiulit I have forked your repository here and modified your script so it uses ffmpeg and encode with VAAPI acceleration on a generic host machine (assuming that a VAAPI compatible GPU is present)
The results are pretty good speed wise (and also quality wise). The script takes the original video bitrate and set it for the encoded yuv420p. I am no expert of bash so there are few limitation, one is that the home directory is set in the script itself
Maybe you can/will merge everything in your script and adapt it so it can run on retropie or host and select the correct encoding?
Bye

Clyde

@Menion said in [SCRIPT] RetroPie Convert Videos:

I am no expert of bash so there are few limitation, one is that the home directory is set in the script itself

Just curious, why didn't you use the original home detection or the config variant you still have as a comment in your script?

Menion

@Clyde because the modified script shall run on a host pc without requiring to have Retropie

Clyde

@Menion Perfectly understandable, but reading the rom path from the cfg file or as an command line argument wouldn't be Retropie-dependant either, and yet more consistant with the other options.

Just some friendly feedback. And thanks for mentioning me in the credits. 😊

Menion

The script requires improvement, but I am very bad in bash script

Clyde

@Menion I would be very much inclined to help you, but my bash skills are extremely limited, too. My video conversion script is an example of the maximum level of my bash knowledge, and even for that I had to do some web research. Maybe @hiulit can give you some clues.

Menion

No problem. Meanwhile I need to figure out why the bitrate set seems to produce odd results. Without specifying anything the encoding goes up to double the bitrate of the original file, while setting it the result is 40% less. I know that with single pass enconding the bitrate cannot be precise, but this is a little bit too much

hiulit

@Menion Hey, thanks!

A couple of questions:

Does your script work with a Raspberry Pi? Or does it only work on a "host" machine?
Does your script only work with VAAPI compatible GPUs? And if so, how could we detect it with the script?

About merging your script with mine, I would be more inclined in creating a new branch and having two separate scripts, the "default" one and the "host version" one.

Also, right now i don't have that much time to take a deep look at your script to check it but I'll try in some time soon(ish).

PS. I'm with @Clyde about using home="$(get_config "home")" instead of hardcoding it into the script ;)

Menion

The script should work with any vaapi host, but there is no detection of it, it is just hard coded

furnace

@hiulit
I've started to use your script and works like a charm. I've even modified it to support video scrapes attained by using Skyscraper on the retropie. I was just wondering though the following.

1- When the conversion is done, the converted videos are put into the converted directory, correct? can these then be copied back to the original directory to override the bad videos to reduce space usage?

2- Also if I use the --convert-system flag and let say I already converted a set of videos but then scrape new ones. Will re-running the conversion tool reconvert all the videos or just those that had not been done? If it's all the videos is there a why to just convert specific videos.

hiulit

@furnace Hey thanks! I'm glad you find it useful :D

It would be great if you can show me what modifications you've done, so maybe I can merge it with my version. Do you have a GitHub account to create a Pull request to my repository with you changes?

Now, I'm talking without looking at the code:

The script creates this converted folder so you can check if the videos are converted correctly or not. If not, they will a -failed suffix. The ones that are converted successfully are to be copied manually to the proper folder. I didn't code it in the script just in case anything goes wrong with the conversion.
I think it won't reconvert all the videos. Well, it depends, if you pass a from_color argument, the script will only search for the videos that have that particular "color encoding system". If you don't pass any from_color then yes, it will reconvert all the videos. I think.

In that latter case, I think I will try and add another option to the script to detect the "color encoding system" of the videos you want to encode.