Preview with sound but no video

Diosyntaxa

OK, so I too tried out video previews as the scraper had this option, and I also get sound but no video. Tried switching back to Carbon and doing the above (Omxplayer, fiddling around with VRAM etc) and the same happens. No sound OR video at all.

Worth mentioning perhaps is that when I get sound there is a static black image where the video should be.

mitu

@Diosyntaxa Omxplayer has problems with some videos that use a certain video codec. Do the videos work without OMXplayer (i.e. using the VLC based player in Emulationstation) ?

Diosyntaxa

@mitu
Not sure what you mean, but I'm guessing you're asking if it works without HW acceleration (Omxplayer) turned off, and the answer is: I get sound but not video.

mitu

@Diosyntaxa What is your system configuration - https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/3/read-this-first. What scraper did you use to get the videos ?

Clyde

@Diosyntaxa In addition to @mitu's request, you could show us the codecs of one of the videos. Maybe they are in some exotic video format.

To do so, execute the command ffprobe in the command console you land in if you press F4 in Emulation Station, followed by the path and name of the video file, e.g.

ffprobe /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/arcade/images/somegame.mp4

Use brackets if either the path and/or the filename have spaces or special characters:

ffprobe "/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/arcade/images/some game with spaces.mp4"

If the command is said to be not known or installed (though it should be on a standard RetroPie), you can install it with this command:

sudo apt install ffmpeg

You can exit the console with the command exit.

nogolem

it was all ok for me since a long time... but last update killed my video screen to black... sound still there...
omx does not want the videos : black screen no sound
it used to work without OMX...
I compared the videos with an older version of retropie.. they are the same (same size, same name.....) after an update/upgrade it came to black screen with sound... screen saver does the same...

(I can remotely play the videos via samba with a PC and VLC... so it is a double check those videos are ok)
mp4 type...)
any clue ?
thanx a lot !

mitu

Can you add more info about your system and - maybe - upload one of the videos somewhere so we can take a look at it ?

nogolem

thank you very much indeed for such a quick answer !
those are the screens with black videos (all videos look black but sound is clearly audible and normal)
Aerofighter black video with sound
https://www.casimages.com/i/190717105659278761.jpg
another game video :
https://www.casimages.com/i/190717105659538424.jpg

this is the view of my retropie linux prompt when I hit F4 from within emulation station
https://www.casimages.com/i/190717105700226746.jpg

this is the wetransfer link to the rar file containing tested videos from the lan...
https://we.tl/t-xMMgreDAT2

Rapberry pi3
wireless 2.4 ghz generic keyboard
wireless microsoft 360 gamepad
Sony tv 40" 1920x1080 hdtv
hdmi cable
retropie version:
https://www.casimages.com/i/190717112436240225.jpg

do not hesitate to ask if you need more info..

thanx a lot

mitu

OK, so it seems it's the old problem with video from ProgettoSnaps, recorded from MAME. They're encoded with a rarely used color encoding space that's not supported by the hw Mpeg4 decoder on the Pi (yuv444p), so that's why the video display isn't working.
There are several scripts to re-encode these videos (https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/15764 is one) to make them show correctly in Emulationstation.

What's new is that the VLC based (internal) video player in Emulationstation doesn't show them either and it used to work. I guess that since the VLC player got patched by RPF to also use HW accelerated video decoding, the same omxplayer behavior happens.

For now, converting the videos is the only solution. Using `ffmpeg, this can be done quickly with

ffmpeg -i <input_video> -pix_fmt yuv420p <output_video>

but any of the conversion scripts available in the forums will do.

SteffenBrauner

@mitu Hi. I've found this thread, since I have the same problem with video previews in MAME, where there is sound but no video.

I'm a noob so sorry for dumb questions...

I have used Skyscraper, and I've installed ffmpg using this guide: https://snapcraft.io/install/ffmpeg/raspbian
And it seemed succesfull

I've then tried to write this command, you mention:
ffmpeg -i <input_video> -pix_fmt yuv420p <output_video>

But I get an error message, which I suspect is because I need to write something else where it says <input_video> and <output_video>, right?

But what should I put there? I'm not sure things are located if that's the thing. I used the default in Skyscraper.

mitu

@steffenbrauner There is a set of scripts that make the video conversion easier - check out this topic.

SteffenBrauner

@mitu Thanks. The link doesn't seem to work, but is it this topic?:
topic link

Which has resulted in this guide? https://github.com/hiulit/RetroPie-Convert-Videos

I hope I can figure it out. I have other videos (in Amiga system), which are shown, but only when OMX player is set to OFF (otherwise everything freezes and have to force a reboot).

The MAME videos, that I can hear, but can't see in the preview, seem to look fine when I open them on my PC. Here is an example:
https://1drv.ms/v/s!ArHJ_44zE0UUg6lV0EnPeTrrbD6sQA?e=VaUstf

So should I try to convert the MAME videos to something like yuv420p, which I see mentioned?

TrisM

Understand this is an old thread, but after hours of researching to solve the same issue, nothing really answered the full question and provided a full easy quick solution.

My issue, with"Use OMX Player (Hardware accelerated)" option OFF the video only played with audio and just black screen (no video). With the option ON, no sound and black screen (no video).

Understanding that I had to re-encode the video files, and not wanting to do it on Raspberry Pi power (or lack of), I opted for running Selphs Scraper on the Pi selecting the option for the images/videos to be saved to the ROM folder. I then copied the roms/arcade/images folder (with videos) to my Windows PC via network share and then ran ffmpeg to encode the videos (Thanks to @mitu for the command)

In command prompt, I ran the following command from the copied folder to encode all videos to another folder . After completion I copied the re-encoded videos back to Retropie replacing the original ones.

NOTE: Replace {{YOUR_NEW_FOLDER_PATH}} with your destination folder

for %i in (*.mp4) do ffmpeg -i "%i" -pix_fmt yuv420p "{{YOUR_NEW_FOLDER_PATH}}/%i"

kiro

@TrisM hi, I've seen this behaviour with most videos used by a lot od scrapers, RPI is just not able to decode them. Try https://github.com/zayamatias/retroscraper-rpie, all videos have been converted and tested on regular RPIs, so they should not have this issue

TrisM

@kiro Thanks for that, I searched high and low last night for a PC app, the full RetroScraper seems like it will do the trick, but more than likely will just do direct on Retropie using your suggestion RetroScraper-rpie.

kiro

@TrisM no problem, pls let me know if I can help you with anything.