Video Snaps

@CCFox Ok, I managed to reproduce the error, EmulationStation freezes while loading said video. However, using omxplayer it looks fine, there's no freeze and the video plays fine. It's VLC that's not working fine.
VLC is automatically installed on RetroPie, since it's used internally by EmulationStation. If you'd like to run VLC manually, from the command line, use clvc <path/to/video/file>.

Can you try toggling the 'OMXPlayer' HW accelerated player in the EmulationStation settings and see if you still get the crash ?

CCFox

@mitu

Thank you for getting back and confirming the error. I have tried to toggle the OMX Player HW settings in Emulation Station testing all options and I still get the same error. This is also after a complete re install.

You also say that VLC is the problem. Why is it not working on the Pi but is on a PC?

Don't really know what to do except try and re encode the files.

Kind Regards

CCF

mitu

You also say that VLC is the problem. Why is it not working on the Pi but is on a PC?

Because the Pi version has specific patches for hardware decoding, so it behaves a bit different. Strange that it's not working with omxplayer. Can you try playing the video, from the command line, with omxplayer ?

omxplayer </path/to/video>

Don't really know what to do except try and re encode the files.

That would work until we find the root cause and fix the bug.

CCFox

@mitu

Thanks for the info.

@Tricko

I have tried to get the converter to run but even though I read and copied the readme and a few attempts to convert the videos it comes up with the error :

'to_ces' value (mandatory) not found in '/home/pi/RetroPie-Convert-Videos/retropie-convert-videos-settings.cfg'

This is what I have in my config file:

Settings for RetroPie Convert Videos.

TIP: run the 'ffmpeg -pix_fmts' command to get a full list of Color Encoding Systems (C.E.S).

From color (optional)

Target only videos with this particular C.E.S.

If left blank, it will target all videos, regardless of the C.E.S.

(e.g. "yuv444p")

from_ces = "yuv444p"

To color (mandatory)

Convert videos to this particular C.E.S.

(e.g. "yuv420p")

to_ces = "yuv444p"

Scraper (mandatory)

The scraper used to get the videos.

Available scrapers:

- "sselph" (Steven Selph's Scraper).

- "skyscraper" (Lars Muldjord's Skyscraper).

scraper = "sselph"

ROMs folder path (optional)

Set the path to the ROMs folder. By default it's "/home/pi/RetroPie/roms".

(e.g. "/path/to/your/roms/folder")

roms_path = "/media/usb0/retropie-mount/roms/atari2600/snap"

Any pointers?

Rgds

CCF

CCFox

Should I just re scrape?

Tricko

@CCFox
You want the --to-ces set to yuv420p, looks like you've got it at yuv444p there!

EDIT: just read your post again, it also sounds like it's complaining about the format missing completely.
You could try running these individually to set them in the config file to be sure.


./retropie-convert-videos.sh --to-ces "yuv420p"

./retropie-convert-videos.sh --from-ces "yuv444p"

CCFox

Update

Tried to re-scrape the videos using both Stephen Selph and skyscraper.

SSelph: Didn't do anything. Every game came up as an error.

Skyscraper: Did a few then quit citing needing membership. Looked into it and you need to contribute. Didn't realise that raspberry pi gaming was becoming a closed shop. Very disappointing.

Will now try and convert but my hopes are not high.

KR

CCF

CCFox

Update Part 2

Finally got the script to run however none of the video snap converted.

each line in the log after each game was : Can't convert! Doesn't use the Color Encoding System (C.E.S set in 'from_ces': 'yuv444p'.

How do I find out what the videos were converted to?

Rgds

CCF

CCFox

Update Part 3

Left the from ces blank....now running the script....Fingers crossed.

CCF

CCFox

Final Update....

Didn't work so I give up

Thank you both @Tricko & @mitu for your help. It is appreciated.

Kind Regards

CCF

mitu

Can you give it one try - use Omxplayer for video, but disable the video sound from the Sound menu - see if you still get a crash.

ohmycommodore

Regarding the scraping part of your problem. I had done some scraping for a new build yesterday using skyscraper. I found that several systems worked great, and some not at all. It wasn't a spotty performance for those systems, it scraped lots of data and made the game list fine with no errors, but didn't actually populate any of the images. NES. SNES and Megadrive were three systems that I remember as they are pretty notable. Not sure if that was part of your problem or if you saw similar behaviour. I then tried Selph scraper and it missed 100% again on those same systems.

CCFox

@mitu

Just installing Mame cores at the moment but will try later. Thank you kindly for suggesting that.

@ohmycommodore

Ironically I've got NES, SNES and megadrive working fine! It's Atari 2600, N64 & Sega CD that I am problems with. I am currently trying a program called Skraper and it seems to be working on Atari 2600 but it is sooooooo slow.

ohmycommodore

Yeah someone pointed out Skraper to me, but there's no OS X version yet. Not sure if there's an old PC laptop of my wife's around that still works where I could try it.

Maybe I'll have to read up on doing some of this stuff manually. It's a shame that a lot of good work has been done on these scrapers but they end up a bit scattershot, or at least have stints where it seems like they are.

Let me know how you get on @CCFox - maybe start a new thread for Skraper if there isn't one. I've been diving into RetroPie again recently so some stuff I remember and some I'm learning all over again again.

Tricko

Strange, I literally did a scrape myself yesterday for Atarti 2600 using Skyscaper, and the screenscaper.fr source and it was pretty much 100% for everything including videos.

I've signed up for the free account on screenscraper just to get the daily 20000 limit just in case, and apart from Arcade games it's been great. And to loop back to one of your original points, it was when using arcadedb as the source for mame, neogeo etc that normally found the incompatible yuv444p format videos, whereas everything I've got from screenscraper.fr has worked without needing conversion.

I'd say give it one more go, it can take a long time to complete as given there are usage restrictions, but it's been the best scraping experience for me for sure.
Good luck!