RetroPie 4.6 crashing with video snaps on Rpi 4 4GB

Daistaar

What theme are you using? Are you using a theme that supports video snaps? Where'd you get the videos? Was it from scraping or direct download from a website or Youtube rip? I've downloaded videos from screenscrapers and they wouldn't play even though the gamelists.xml for the specified systems had them included. Turned out I had to convert the color formatting to 422 (or 420 can't recall) then the videos showed. I recommend you start with one game or video to troubleshoot, then once that's sorted replicated your steps to resolve for everything else.

deathr0w

@Daistaar said in RetroPie 4.6 crashing with video snaps on Rpi 4 4GB:

What theme are you using? Are you using a theme that supports video snaps? Where'd you get the videos? Was it from scraping or direct download from a website or Youtube rip? I've downloaded videos from screenscrapers and they wouldn't play even though the gamelists.xml for the specified systems had them included. Turned out I had to convert the color formatting to 422 (or 420 can't recall) then the videos showed. I recommend you start with one game or video to troubleshoot, then once that's sorted replicated your steps to resolve for everything else.

The videos actually show but the system locks completely once they start playing now I scraped the videos with Scraper now all these worked on my Pi 3B with no issues. Now I can't say where others got them when I tested a couple of premade Pi 4 packages with the same results.

Clyde

I stumbled upon video freezing when I tried to fix the recent sound problem after an upstream update of Retropie's sound system.

My temporary solution was to reinstall Retropie from the official image which fortunately wasn't updated to the new system yet. That also fixed the freezes, although I don't dare to update the system packages now until Emulation Station is adapted to the new audio system.

Maybe your problem is also connected to this. You could try to turn off the sound for videos in Emulation Station to test this.

See these threads for more information:

deathr0w

I have added a video clip of the Pi freezing showing how the video file glitches and then the system locks.

mitu

@Clyde said in RetroPie 4.6 crashing with video snaps on Rpi 4 4GB:

Maybe your problem is also connected to this. You could try to turn off the sound for videos in Emulation Station to test this.

They're not related. The video freezing is a VLC/OMXPlayer problem, the sound output is just a configuration issue on the EmulationStation side - can be worked around by manually by changing the audio device in the .cfg file.

deathr0w

@mitu I actually disabled the audio for a test live in that video my self and as you could see it went plonk once the video started playing.

Clyde

@mitu So it was only a coincidence that both problems started to occur for me at roughly the same time, or are both problems somehow connected to the latest Raspbian updates? (Just a quick off-topic question that I won't follow up here if there's no clear answert to.)

In-topic, is the freezing a known problem? If so, is its cause also known? I assume that you would've mention it already if it was, but I want to be sure. 😇

mitu

@Clyde said in RetroPie 4.6 crashing with video snaps on Rpi 4 4GB:

@mitu So it was only a coincidence that both problems started to occur for me at roughly the same time, or are both problems somehow connected to the latest Raspbian updates?

No, it's just a coincidence.

In-topic, is the freezing a known problem? If so, is its cause also known? I assume that you would've mention it already if it was, but I want to be sure. 😇

Yes, it's a VLC issue. If switching to omxplayer doesn't solve it (incompatible codec), then re-encoding the videos with a compatible codec is the only solution right now.

Clyde

@mitu Okay, thank you. Though it was really strange that the videos were perfectly fine with OMX player until I updated all packages (Retropie & OS). Also weird: With OMX, the videos froze the Pi 4 only in the game list, while VLC froze only in the video screensaver. 🥴

The re-installation from the official image without updating afterwards "fixed" it for now (along with the sound problems), and I made a full backup of the newly installed system, so I will test another full update as soon as I have the time. I'll report back here if and how the freezes return.

mitu

@Clyde said in RetroPie 4.6 crashing with video snaps on Rpi 4 4GB:

: With OMX, the videos froze the Pi 4 only in the game list, while VLC froze only in the video screensaver.

Hm, that may be something new. If you disable the audio for video, do you still get the crash with omxplayer ?

deathr0w

Ok I have been trying a few more things and this includes the converting of the videos with RetroPie-Convert-Videos so not all of them converted but the ones that did I put in a new videos folder and renamed the old one then rebooted I tested out the new videos and still the same result scrambled video then the system locks.

Current changes to try and fix the crash

converted videos and tested with the ones that did convert
turned off Omxplayer also tested it with it back on with the new videos
turned off audio for videos
installed from the official 4.6 retropie image on retropie.org.uk
tried multiple SDcards x2 Samsung x1 kingston

So that is the list of things I have tried that I can remember off the top of my head and also read on other posts on what should be done but still same old results for me I don't need video snaps but It's a nice addition to any mans Pi setup with RetroPie.

Clyde

@mitu I don't have access to the old system before the re-installation right now (it's on a backup medium that's stored at my workplace). I'll get back to your question when I either get the backup back, or update the new system and the freezing returns.

Clyde

@mitu said in RetroPie 4.6 crashing with video snaps on Rpi 4 4GB:

@Clyde said in RetroPie 4.6 crashing with video snaps on Rpi 4 4GB:

: With OMX, the videos froze the Pi 4 only in the game list, while VLC froze only in the video screensaver.

Hm, that may be something new. If you disable the audio for video, do you still get the crash with omxplayer ?

I couldn't reproduce this in my new installation from the official image before the update. In fact, I found out that it was not the videos that crashed, but the navigation sounds from Emulation Station! I did suspect the videos because any time I tried to move to another game in the list, the system froze so hard that only the Magic SysReq keys REISUB or a hard reset could help.

I'll post my further findings in the thread Failed to find mixer elements… since they are definately off-topic here now.