Does OMXPlayer Support Overlays?

[AlphaBetaPie]

When using the screensaver option in ES set to "random videos," I assume that the gameplay files that are being played from the ROM folder are handled by the OMXPlayer.

Does it somehow support overlays within ES/Retropie?

I'm looking to do something similar like what RetroArch does with emualtors, where you can add custom images to the sides of the screen, to fill in the empty black widescreen past the 4:3 box. Is that at-all possible to do with OMXPlayer? Or maybe joining it with another app?Would be cool if I could fill the widescreen up with some additional game graphics, while the videos are playing in the center.

[mitu]

No it doesn't support overlays. It just plays the videos it finds, without any additional processing.

[jandalf81]

I don't know if it works with video but take a look at PNGview. I use it with my savestate selector script to show thumbnails layered on top of a BaSh dialog.

See https://github.com/Jandalf81/savestate_selector/blob/74fe40799ee8c22d13bea2a485f929f33b0d63a5/savestate_selector.sh#L623 for an example.

IF that works with videos you'll need to create the PNG image to layer on top of the video (make it transparent in the middle). Show that image via PNGview when the screensaver starts (don't know if there's a hook a la runcommand_onstart.sh there), kill the PNGview process when the screensaver stops.

[AlphaBetaPie]

Thanks for the info everyone. And to the point about PNGview, it does sound like a good option outside of Retropie as a possibility. But to the best of my knowledge, you have to use a video player like OMXplayer to load the video snaps for the screensaver, so any solution would have to integrate with that right? So I guess there isn't a good way to do what I'm hoping for with the current technology (unless I'm wrong, or someone reads this in the future when the software has advanced that wants to update us).

[jandalf81]

Any solution would have to be notified when the screensaver starts and stops. That is - to my knowledge - not possible currently.

[mitu]

Actually, Emulationstation has had some scripting added recently (see the docs about it), but it currently doesn't have any related events for screensaver start (the wake event might be used when stopping the screensaver).