Video Preview in EmulationStation
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@fieldofcows : I've prepared a nice topic for you to share your build-strategy for Linux and Windows : here
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@fieldofcows I've found whats wrong with relative paths for marquees and video. You need to disable option "save metadata on exit" (enabled by default) in "other settings" menu to keep relative paths untouched. So that's the option that overwrite the relative paths.
In other hand now i can redefine more buttons than before on "input config" but now i can't use L shoulder and R shoulder to go fast up and down on the gamelist, simply doesn't do nothing.
About the video, it may stop when you lauch a game but still playing 10 or 15 seconds after the game is launched (I can hear the sound).
If you are in gamelist with video, and then go back to another system without videos, video's sound of the last system still playing until you join a game, and when you leave the game, video's sound come back, so whould be good to make the code only play video when game is focused on gamelist or stop when you change system.
It works ok when you are inside a system that some games have videos and other games not, works like expected, if you focus another game in the list without video, the video's sound stop, but doesn't happen if you change system. Maybe is because the other system doesn't have any videos and doesn't use video view and use detailed view, i need to test this later.
I'm working in a simple video theme to contribute a bit with this project, i hope to finish soon.
Keep the good work. Regards.
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@Nismo Great - thanks for testing this. I'm pleased you managed to get it to work. Just to stress again (for anyone else that is willing to try it), it is very much a work-in-progress at the moment and I haven't performed any testing beyond making sure the videos work and the theme looks ok so feedback like this is really helpful.
I'll take a look at the issues you have reported ASAP.
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@fieldofcows I have finally tested the themes and yes, if the systems use video view it works well, the problem with the sound when you change system it's only if the other system doesn't use video view (basic view or detailed view), but between systems using video view it works as expected (except for the 10 seconds sound when you launch a game XD).
One more thing, in video view, if the game doesn't have video it doesn't display the image (md_image), so whould be nice to add some checks like this:
emulationstation check gamelist.xml
if no video string
then use image and read place from md_image from theme.I hope not so difficult to implement...
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I would absolutely love to see a version of ES with both the GridView and this video preview.
Where do the video previews come from? Are they animated gifs from a scraper service?
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@enderandrew Not animated gifs, real video files inside a folder. There are a lot of places around the web where you can obtain it.
Regards.
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@Nismo How much storage does it take for actual video files for all the roms? Video has the advantage of sound but I wonder if animated gifs would be more efficient.
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I have about 3800 videos and they take about 14Gb in H.264 mkv format.
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@fieldofcows said in Video Preview in EmulationStation:
I have about 3800 videos and they take about 14Gb in H.264 mkv format.
I've seen several warnings that I shouldn't use a SD card over 32 GB with a Pi or in a RetroPi project, so additional 14 GB of storage seems like a lot for this feature.
I presume you're using something more like a 128 GB card. So I presume that must work for you.
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For over 32 GB, the difference is that you'll have to format the SD cards from exFAT to FAT32 so they'll be compatible with RetroPie. In terms of which SD cards actually work well with the Raspberry Pi, you can check out Embedded Linux Wiki - RPi SD cards.
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I haven't setup a card with all the videos on it. I think my current test setup has 850 or so on a 32Gb card. You should be able to use any video format or size that VLC supports as long as the rPI has the CPU grunt to decode it. I would have thought it possible to process the videos down to a much smaller size.
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@enderandrew Depends on quality of video, resolution, bit rate...
For example, I have:
1130 mame videos - 986mb
495 nes videos - 337mbBut i have converted the videos myself with high quality (slow) parameters to reduce disk space without loosing too much quality.
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@Nismo said in Video Preview in EmulationStation:
@enderandrew Depends on quality of video, resolution, bit rate...
For example, I have:
1130 mame videos - 986mb
495 nes videos - 337mbBut i have converted the videos myself with high quality (slow) parameters to reduce disk space without loosing too much quality.
Would I be able to find video previews for most of the common systems?
And I know you can't link or share ROMS, BIOS or anything copyrighted, but if you've already taken the time to compress your videos, could you share them on a Google Drive or something like that?
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@Nismo Thanks again for testing the video feature.
I'll take a look at the following issues and get a new version built:
- Video continuing to play when launching a game or going back to system list (I've already fixed this one)
- Shoulder buttons not working - I can't see how the changes I made would have broken this but I'll have a look
- Specify default image, or maybe default video if video does not exist for a game
I should have some time over the next couple of days to get these sorted.
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@fieldofcows Thanks for taking your free time to fix the code.
@enderandrew Since fieldofcows included video preview in emulationstation, i'm making a new version of my old video snaps with more quality. Yes, when i finish i could upload somewhere for who interested. Of course more quality means more size.
Anyway you can find packs for systems here: http://insertmorecoins.es/hyperspin-media-packs-actualizado-10-03-16/
or here: http://www.arcadepunks.com/download-hyperspin-video-media/
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@fieldofcows I downloaded the windows build but couldn't for the life of me get it to find any roms, ES kept displaying the message telling me to check es_systems.cfg and rom paths :(
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@robertybob What directory were you putting your config in? This version looks in %HOMEPATH%\.emulationstation
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@fieldofcows Aha thanks !
The 1942 video isn't playing (just a black screen). The plugins folder is a subfolder where emulationstation.exe is. Not sure what's going on?
I've tried to make my own gamelist.xml for GameBoy but having checked the ES log it's unable to parse the XML.
http://pastebin.com/hSr1kzwM -
@robertybob Be sure all your configs and path are ok, also to see video you need to use video theme inside SampleConfig folder, copy the video theme and paste on your themes folder, then select the video theme on emulationstation options.
Also the video theme actually only works for mame, i have a video theme with allmost all systems working but I need to do some changes and adjusts.
This build worked fine for me since first boot, only need to set it correctly.
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@Nismo I've built a new version with the fixes for shoulder buttons and video continuing to play when the view is closed. You can get it from here:
https://github.com/fieldofcows/EmulationStation/releases/tag/v0.1-beta.2
Interestingly, the page-up/down issue seems to be present in the retropie branch as well as a couple of others I've looked at.
Keep me posted with any other bugs/improvements you (or anyone else for that matter) want. I don't get much time but I'm enjoying this so I'll try my best!
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