Emulationstation Screen Savers?

Garavar

Pretty new to this and not sure if this is correct forum...was curious if there was a way to make emulationstation play custom videos I made?

Specifically, what I am asking is I know if you set the screen saver to video it will play random video snaps from the games I added. But is there a way to have it play a specific video I created rather than random game videos?

sleve_mcdichael

@Garavar I don't think so. Or rather, it seems there's meant to be, but it's broken.

There is a "slideshow" screensaver option, and in the settings for "slideshow" you can set a custom media directory, and filter extensions for custom video files, but it don't seem to work.

When I put a video in the custom media dir, screensaver just shows a black screen. When I put an image there, it works. When I put an image and a video, it alternates between the image and the black screen as if it's trying to show the video, but can't.

Additionally, in the ES menu, the text for the custom video filter extensions is misaligned, the choices (but not the label) are cut off at the bottom:

Lolonois

@Garavar said in Emulationstation Screen Savers?:

But is there a way to have it play a specific video I created rather than random game videos?

Never tried this but the video has to have a specific format. There have been some threads about it:

https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/15362/script-batch-convert-yuv-4-4-4-videos-to-yuv-4-2-0-in-retropie-linux

and this is a spinoff of the original script IIRC:

https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/15764/script-retropie-convert-videos/

If you have exactly one video it should be played everytime when put in the right format into the custom media folder.

@sleve_mcdichael thanks for the screenshot and note. I filed a PR to rectify the layout.

sleve_mcdichael

@Lolonois said in Emulationstation Screen Savers?:

If you have exactly one video it should be played everytime when put in the right format into the custom media folder.

Should, but doesn't. I'm testing with a video snap (yuv420p as reported by ffprobe) copied from downloaded_media, that works in gamelist and works in "random video" screensaver, but doesn't work in "slideshow" screensaver. PNG image in the same folder does work in slideshow. Enabling or disabling OMX player from "other settings" has no effect.

Lolonois

@sleve_mcdichael I can confirm this behavior. It is a bug introduced roughly two years ago (which also affects the background music). I will file a PR the next days.

sleve_mcdichael

@Lolonois I saw your PR(s). Can confirm that videos now show. I cannot comment on the background audio as I do not use that feature (I don't usually have sound turned on at all on my system.)

Videos don't play to the end though. They play for as long as the image timeout, and then cut to the next one. If the video is shorter than this timeout it just loops until then. If you only have one video (or they are all the same length) then you can set the timeout to match its length, but this doesn't work if you have multiple videos of different lengths.

I suppose the "random video" mode (from the gamelist) does this too, it's just that they're all the same 30s long anyway so it's set to that like I said before.

The different modes are kind of a mish-mash. "Random Video" gets videos from the gamelist, and uses one timeout value; "slideshow" uses a different timeout value and uses either 1) images from the gamelist, or 2) a mix of images and/or videos from the custom folder.

If I were designing it from the ground up, I might do something like:

Type: choose from image/videos/(both?)

Source: choose from gamelist/custom/(both?)

Timeout: set independently image timeout(1-n seconds)/video timeout(0-m; 0 plays once and go to next)

...I don't know how feasible it would be to back-port this into the existing framework, but that's how I'd set it up if I were making it from scratch.

Lolonois

@sleve_mcdichael should be good to update via the Emulationstation-dev package as the PRs are merged (thanks @pjft).

For the other topics ("restructure Screensaver Menus" and "allow videos to play full once" in slideshow/random video) I would suggest to table it in "Ideas and Development", as the scope is different from the original poster's issue.

Garavar

Thanks all. Will keep on trucking.