Trying to resolve issue with video files and gamelist.xml

calcu10n

Pi Model or other hardware: Pi 4
Power Supply used: Canakit Pi 5 power supply
RetroPie Version Used (eg 3.6, 3.8.1, 4.1 - do not write latest): 4.8.7
Built From: Pre made SD Image on RetroPie website
USB Devices connected: PiCade joystick and buttons
Attachment of config files: Snippet of gamelist.xml I'm testing with:

                <name>After Burner 2</name>
                <thumbnail />
                <image>/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/arcade/media/screenshots/aburner2.png</image>
                <marquee>/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/arcade/media/marquees/aburner2.png</marquee>
                <video>/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/arcade/media/videos/aburner2.mp4</video>
                <rating>0.7</rating>
                <desc>After Burner is another Sega game rendered with their then-ubiquitous 3-D sprite-scaling technology; this time putting the player into the seat of a powerful F14 Tomcat jet fighter. 

Players must fight their way through 21 colourful, fast-moving stages, shooting down waves of enemy fighters while avoiding the enemy's incoming missiles. The F14 is equipped with a machine gun and a limited number of homing missiles. The gun has infinite ammunition and targeting is achieved by maneuvering the Tomcat so that the targeting cursor situated just in front of the jet is placed over an enemy fighter. 

After Burner's straightforward shoot-em-up gameplay is simple and repetitive, but the game's incredible visuals ensured its success.</desc>
                <releasedate>19870101T000000</releasedate>
                <developer>SEGA</developer>
                <publisher>SEGA</publisher>
                <genre>Shooter / Plane, 3rd person, Shooter</genre>
                <players>1</players>
                <lastplayed>20210512T150548</lastplayed>
                <playcount>1</playcount>
        </game>

ls -lah media/videos/aburner2.mp4 
-rw-r--r-- 1 pi pi 4.7M May 26 17:58 media/videos/aburner2.mp4

as you can see the file exists in the path specified (full path in the config is correct), however when I try to use this config nothing actually shows up. It actually removes all of the images/descriptions/etc.

The gamelist.xml for arcade only exists in the roms folder, so AFAICT, this shouldn't be happening?

find / -iname gamelist.xml 2>/dev/null
/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/arcade/gamelist.xml
/opt/retropie/configs/all/emulationstation/gamelists/retropie/gamelist.xml

end goal: have videos playing for the games when scrolling through the gamelist AND have the random video screensaver use these videos.

I've been googling this for a few hours and as best I can tell my gamelist is right and this shouldn't be an issue.

To note: I manually inserted all the video links into the gamelist using bash 1 liner. Not sure if that's the reason or what, but I'm stuck so I'm throwing myself at the mercy of the forums :D

sleve_mcdichael

@calcu10n said in Trying to resolve issue with video files and gamelist.xml:

however when I try to use this config nothing actually shows up. It actually removes all of the images/descriptions/etc.

I would double-triple check the XML tags in the gamelist. Can you upload the whole file to pastebin.com?

Also ~/.emulationstation/es_log.txt might hold some clues, if you can upload that one also.

mitu

In addition to the full gamelist.xml, can you also mention which theme you are using and which gamelist list style is selected in EmulationStation ?

calcu10n

@mitu Thanks for the reply to both of you.

It turns out, I had set my ui settings to detailed. I switched it over to video and made sure the theme I was using supported video and... bingo. all set.