Animated Screensavers

chops888

@lycros this worked for me. thank you so much. and thank you to OP for providing these animated screensavers. they look amazing!

firemoth333

I got these screensavers up and running on my retropie and I was super inspired by them!

I thought I'd try to create one of my own for NES Dr. Mario. I've photoshopped most the elements I would need and tried them in a program I thought could animate them but it's not powerful enough. :/

Tomorrow I'm going to cut out and photoshop the last part (the 3 germs).

If I gave you all the finished pieces would you have some time to create a Screen saver animation like the others? I've attached a link to some screen shots of my progress and what I had in mind.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1MfDMR2_c2iOWYHWHiYcVToKdazpK6RIH?usp=sharing

Brigane

@Malixx Oh my god, I totally forgot about this great thread. I would like to request a Bubble Bobble screensaver, if you're up for it.

firemoth333

@firemoth333 @Malixx
I've finished creating all the elements. Everything is sized well enough for 1920x1080. I just don't have a program that can animate that ken burns/netflix effect and spit out a MP4.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/16pjbwCg7O8rWLEPymAKkoAZ2YcChQJUs/view?usp=sharing

firemoth333

@firemoth333 @Malixx

So it turns out I have After Effects. I didn't know because I don't know how to use it. So I taught myself how to build this in after effects. So here is my attempt at a Dr. Mario saver.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1chM9-1dgOhc-2-paG1IoSVzA_q3Ah467/view?usp=sharing

the original file is 1.2GB. I was able to knock it down to 20MB but I lose too much quality after that. So if anyone knows good settings for exporting from After Effects or converting to MP4 let me know.

Malixx

@Brigane I'd like to get back to it some day (I don't have so much free time lately) I have already started a Bubble Bobble one back then though!

@firemoth333 Well done I couldn't do it better, this is how I scale down the file:

I use Media Encoder CC with these preset settings:

Format: H.264
No Audio
1920x1080 (you can try 720p but the gain is not significant)
Frame Rate: Based On Source
Aspect: Square Pixels (1.0)
TV Standard: Based On Source
Encoding Settings:
Profile: High
Level: 4.2
Target Bitrate: 1
Maximum Bitrate: 2

But there is an alternative if you don't have this software, back then I was uploading the videos on YouTube and then when you download the screensaver from there you will get a decent scale down!

Brigane

@Malixx said in Animated Screensavers:

@Brigane I'd like to get back to it some day (I don't have so much free time lately) I have already started a Bubble Bobble one back then though!

Glad to hear that you are on the case, and no rush, just take your time. I'm just anxious to get a screensaver for my Bubble Bobble bartop someday, although a Bubble Bobble theme would be even better :)

Malixx

@Brigane - Added Bubble Bobble screensaver.

Brigane

@Malixx Wauw mate, this looks amazing! I have a cabinet like something near this bezel (except mine is a widescreen cabinet), would it be possible to change the background color to something close to this?

Malixx

@Brigane Sure ;) https://mega.nz/#!rXgEnCxa!-K_pwbRb0aUpxrffeyL2nRuigOhS3RMaFCZDv3bd7k8

Brigane

@Malixx Much appreciated, keep up the fantastic work! :)

clownnut

is this method still work for the newest retropie?
i am trying to get this to work, spend hours with no luck.
i have an mp4 file in RetroPie/ScreenSaver folder and
edit
opt/retropie/configs/all/emulationstation/gamelists/retropie/gamelist.xml
with
<game><path /><video>~/RetroPie/ScreenSavers/ScreenSaver.mp4</video></game>
no luck
also try to edit
opt/retropie/configs/all/emulationstation/gamelists/fba/gamelist.xml
add <game><path /><video>~/RetroPie/ScreenSavers/ScreenSaver.mp4</video></game>
no luck.
screen saver behavior set to random video.
i am running retropie on a laptop that run ubuntu.
any help will be great.

MrJordaaany

Yeah Ive done the post above me method. No luck. Anyone else have issues or any ideas to what i might be doing wrong?

skykid

@Malixx

I have this working to a degree, using @lycros 's code just above with the code appended to my megadrive gamelist.xml.

But the behaviour is weird. At 31 seconds the screensaver takes about 5 seconds to appear, then I saw the Tetris one play normally for the full duration. But then after that it took another 10 seconds of black screen before the next appeared, and when it did it only played for about 5 seconds before cutting out. And then this behaviour repeats.

I changed the screensaver settings duration to 30 seconds after seeing you mention similar issues above, but then nothing works at all (black screen only).

Any ideas?

Thanks for your great work!

steeeb

@skykid Ensure it's using OMX player, and go to Other Settings and turn on OMX HW acceleration.

QuixoticDev

@Malixx thanks for the great work - I can't imaging how long it took!

I spent a bunch of time on this and finally got it working. I initially tried to follow the instructions by @cyperghost but as he noted in his update this doesn't seem to work.

It seems we can no longer trick retropie into using videos that aren't associated with an actual game - I tried creating a text file but ended up with an error complaining about the text file not being a valid rom.

I ended up creating fake entries for each of the videos since I didn't want to associate them with my roms - this left me with a bunch of ugly games in my list ~~but I was able to fix that using the "hidden" flag and Kiosk mode.~~

Update: Welp that didn't work - when the roms are hidden (either by filter or kiosk) retropie doesn't use their videos - I just gave up and added them all to the end of the atari 2600 list since it's not used often

Here's a quick script that will do just that - create fake entries for all the screensaver videos - thought someone else might get some use out of it :)

Quick rundown

Create ~/RetroPie/screensavers
Copy all the video files there
Create the script below
Update the variables to match your environment
Run the script to create all the fake entries
Disable screensaver control (to avoid launch attempts)
~~Set to Kiosk mode or set the default filter to not show hidden~~
Enjoy @Malixx 's artwork!

#!/bin/bash
#=============================================================
# Title        : populate-screensaver-gamelist.sh
#
# Description  : Create fake game entries to load screensaver
#                videos without associated rom videos
#
# Author       : QuixoticDev
#
# Version      : v1.0 - 05/10/2020
#
#=============================================================
# Screensaver path - where all the videos are stored
screensaverPath="/home/pi/RetroPie/screensavers"

# A donor rom to copy around
# I chose an atari rom to reduce size requirements
donorRom="/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/atari2600/X-Man (USA).zip"

# Parent path to the donor rom
romPath="/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/atari2600"

# Gamelist associated with the rom
# I keep my gamelist and media in the same path as the rom, this
# isn't default so you'll probably need to change this
gameList="/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/atari2600/gamelist.xml"

# Get an array of all our screensavers
readarray -t videoArr <<< "$(ls -A1 $screensaverPath)"

# Loop through them and create dummy rom and gamelist entry
for i in ${!videoArr[@]}; do

    # Create fake rom
    if [ ${#i} -lt 2 ]; then num="0${i}"; else num=${i}; fi
    newRom="${romPath}/video-placeholder-${num}.zip"
    cp "${donorRom}" "${newRom}"

    # Build xml entries
    echo -e "\t<game>"                                            >> "${gameList}"
    echo -e "\t\t<path>./$(basename -a ${newRom})</path>"         >> "${gameList}"
    echo -e "\t\t<name>__$(basename -a -s .zip $newRom)</name>"   >> "${gameList}"
   # echo -e "\t\t<hidden>true</hidden>"                          >> "${gameList}"
    echo -e "\t\t<video>${screensaverPath}/${videos[$i]}</video>" >> "${gameList}"
    echo -e "\t</game>"                                           >> "${gameList}"
done

# Fix gamelist xml closing tag
sed -i '/<\/gameList>/d' "${gameList}"
echo '</gameList>' >> "${gameList}"

The end result looks like this in the gamelist specified

    <game>
            <path>./video-placeholder-01.zip</path>
            <name>__video-placeholder-01</name>
            <video>~/RetroPie/screensavers/Advance Wars.mp4</video>
    </game>
    <game>
            <path>./video-placeholder-02.zip</path>
            <name>__video-placeholder-02</name>
            <video>~/RetroPie/screensavers/Bomberman.mp4</video>
    </game>

all the rest...

MrJordaaany

@QuixoticDev Hey thanks so much for this. Gonna give it ago later. Makes sense what you've done. i was thinking my issues was due to it not being a "proper" game entry as well..

QuixoticDev

@MrJordaaany let me know if you run into any issues.

One bug that I haven't been able to track down is when browsing one of the roms that has a <video> tag, OMX player attempts to load it but then the screen jostles around and boom, a black screen which doesn't go away until I navigate away from the rom.

This is one of the reasons I didn't map the videos to their actual rom, I didn't want to see that behavior when I was browsing - with this setup I just need to avoid the last section of the Atari2600, not a huge deal.

Fails:

OMX Player (HW Acceleration): On
Screensaver use OMX: On
Theme: Pixel

Works:

OMX Player (HW Acceleration): Off
Screensaver use OMX: On
Theme: Pixel

It works but without OMX the playback painfully slow when browsing, screensaver functionality is unaffected as that's still set to use OMX.

One last thing - I recommend picking a donorRom that's fun or playable - in case someone turns on the screensaver controls, in which case pressing start will launch the fake entry. Just my luck the one rom I pick (X-man) turns out to be early video game smut, who knew!?

cnoto

These screensavers are amazing. Thank you.

cnoto

@Malixx Have I mentioned how awesome these are?

Have you thought about creating a tutorial about how you make these? I could certainly be under estimating how easy these are to create, but I would love to try and create a couple. Provided they aren't terrible (quite possible), I'd share them with the group.