Looking for testers for ES Video Preview on Raspberry Pi

[fieldofcows]

Hi everyone,

I've produced a Raspberry Pi build of EmulationStation that adds support for video preview of games in the gamelist. The ongoing discussion of the development of this feature is here: https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/4820/video-preview-in-emulationstation.

I would like to get this feature pulled back into the retropie ES fork in order for others to make use of it. To achieve this, seeing as it is quite a major feature addition I am asking for volunteers to help test the feature to ensure it works reliably. Really, I'm just after getting people to try this on their raspberry pi's and report back any issues or suggestions.

I have made a build available that can be installed on retropie 4.1 for Raspberry Pi 2/3. I have personally only tested it on RPi3 so would appreciate some feedback on how well it works on RPi2. It may work on RPi1 but I doubt it.

The build only includes the video preview view - none of the other fixes or improvements from the development thread (such as the screensaver) are included. This is so I can isolate just this change and ensure it is stable. I highly recommend you install this on a fresh SD card rather than trying it on your configuration you have spent many hours on - I cannot be held responsible for losing hours of work because of issues in this build.

I would recommend try @Nismo 's theme as an excellent example of how to theme this new view. @Nismo has spent a lot of time developing a theme that supports video preview for multiple systems. This can be downloaded from the development thread I linked above.

Installation instructions:

1. Download a fresh copy of retropie from https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/releases/download/4.1/retropie-4.1-rpi2_rpi3.img.gz and install it on an SD card
2. Connect the raspberry pi to the network
3. Boot the raspberry pi and exit ES back to the terminal
4. Install dependencies:

sudo apt-get install libvlc5 libvlccore8 vlc-plugin-sdl

5. Download or copy the new ES that supports video from https://github.com/fieldofcows/EmulationStation/releases/download/v0.2-RPi-beta.1/emulationstation into the home directory, e.g.

wget https://github.com/fieldofcows/EmulationStation/releases/download/v0.2-RPi-beta.1/emulationstation

6. Make executable and replace the original ES

chmod +x emulationstation
sudo cp emulationstation /opt/retropie/supplementary/emulationstation/

7. Setup your themes and games

Theming:

Themes now support the "Video" view:

<theme>
	<formatVersion>3</formatVersion>
	<view name="video">
		<image name="md_marquee">
			<pos>0.0293 0.039</pos>
			<origin>0.0 0.0</origin>
			<size>0.5488 0.181</size>
		</image>
		<video name="md_video">
			<pos>0.3050 0.472</pos>
			<origin>0.5 0.5</origin>
			<size>0.3740 0.3540</size>
			<delay>0.0</delay>
			<default>~/resources/default.wma</default>
			<showSnapshotNoVideo>false</showSnapshotNoVideo>
			<showSnapshotDelay>false</showSnapshotDelay>
		</video>
	    	<text name="md_publisher">
			...
			

The <video> tag as well as the standard properties supports the following:

delay
The time in seconds to wait between selecting the game and the video starting. This may take some load off the system when scrolling quickly through the list (although the RPi3 seems to cope fine with a delay of 0)

showSnapshotNoVideo
If true, shows the "snapshot" or "image" metadata element if no video file is present. If false then either shows a blank area or the default video if defined

showSnapshotDelay
If true shows the "snapshot" or "image" metadata element during the video start delay
default: Path to a video that is displayed if showSnapshotNoVideo is false and the current game has no video

Gamelist.xml
The gamelist.xml has a couple of extra fields too:

<game>
	<path>./1944.zip</path>
	<name>1944 - the loop master (000620 USA)</name>
	<desc>1944 - the loop master (000620 USA)</desc>
	<video>~/.emulationstation/videos/1944.xmv</video>
	<image>~/.emulationstation/images/1944.png</image>
	<marquee>~/.emulationstation/marquees/1944.png</marquee>
	<rating>0.5</rating>
	<releasedate>20000101T000000</releasedate>
	<developer>Capcom / 8ing / Raizing</developer>
	<publisher>2000 Capcom / 8ing / Raizing</publisher>
	<genre>Shooter / Flying Vertical</genre>
	<players></players>
</game>

The 'marquee' tag is used to display in image in the md_marquee theme element. The 'video' tag defines the video file to play.

[Nismo]

@fieldofcows I can't test it but maybe the systemsound tag can break the theme for a build that doesn't support it.

Anyway if it cause some problems it's so easy to fix it.

Open folder theme named "oldroom" and edit oldroom.xml file and delete this text between lines 16 to 18:

<sound name="systemSound">
            <path>./art/systemsound.wav</path>
        </sound>

Regards.

[fieldofcows]

@Nismo said in Looking for testers for ES Video Preview on Raspberry Pi:

maybe the systemsound tag can break the theme

Good point. It worked ok on my Pi yesterday but maybe I was using an older theme without that tag.

[herb_fargus]

@fieldofcows I still need to find some time to test this out but when I was testing the gridview fork, there were some issues with theming options not being backward compatible eg if we used a gridview theme on the non gridview ES things crashed. Is that likely to happen here with nismos theme and if so is there something that can be done to mitigate that?

[Nismo]

@herb_fargus almost on windows the theme never crashed ES. Sometimes i was needed to "downgrading" ES version to test some commits from fieldofcows, and never crashed, simply the theme doesn't load if the version doesn't support some features, you know, on system view only black text and white background, and on simple or detailed view looks without theming, white background and black text, but no issues with ES.

Regards.

[fieldofcows]

@herb_fargus If you try to open nismo's theme on the current Retropie version of ES then you get a warning in the console saying "unknown tag 'video'" but the theme loads OK and drops back to the detailed view. Any <video> or <marquee> tags in the gamelists will be lost if the metadata is saved on exit though.

[Nismo]

@fieldofcows That remembers to me that i need to work in the detailed view of the theme, but actually i'm focused in video view and add more systems.

[GtBFilms]

said in Looking for testers for ES Video Preview on Raspberry Pi:

Make executable and replace the original ES

chmod +x emulationstation
cp emulationstation /opt/retropie/supplementary/EmulationStation/

Hi,

I got to this step (6) and on my install it fails, turns out this was because the directory doesn't have capital letters, also I didn't have sufficient permission?

So I used:

sudo cp emulationstation /opt/retropie/supplementary/emulationstation/

and it worked.

However got stumped on step 7, as I'm not sure what I'm editing?

I tried putting the oldroom theme (entire oldroom directory) into \etc\emulationstation\themes using WinSCP but don't have permission.

Sorry.

[fieldofcows]

@GtBFilms said in Looking for testers for ES Video Preview on Raspberry Pi:

However got stumped on step 7, as I'm not sure what I'm editing?
I tried putting the oldroom theme (entire oldroom directory) into \etc\emulationstation\themes using WinSCP but don't have permission.

Thanks for pointing out the error in the capitalisation. I'll fix that.

You're on the right track - using oldroom is what I would recommend is it looks fantastic and shows what the video preview can do.

Try downloading the oldroom theme to the home directory and then using the following command:

sudo cp -r ~/oldroom /etc/emulationstation/themes

[GtBFilms]

@fieldofcows Thanks for that, I managed to get a copy of the oldroom theme onto my pi now.

It appears as a selectable theme now:

But unfortunately when selected, it's a bit sparse!

I thought this might be a permissions issue so I went and chmod +rw everything I could find in /etc/emulationstation/themes but that didn't fix it.

The oldroom/mame/art directory contains:
bg.jpg
borders.png
scanlines.png
static.mp4
system_art.jpg
system.svg

...and the images look fine.

Ah, when I shut down, I'm getting a load of error messages flashing up briefly saying "Unknown element of type 'video'!"

[Nismo]

@GtBFilms No problems with the theme. That is the detailed view, that is not finished.

To get the theme working properly, you need to have almost one video for one game in each system, and of course the correct path in the gamelist.xml.

If ES detects one game with video then automatically changes to video view, and load the theme.

[GtBFilms]

@Nismo Ah, that makes sense, sorry for being dumb!

I'll stick some videos in!

Thanks!

[Nismo]

@GtBFilms Anyway i notice you select "arcade", there is no arcade system on my theme, in my theme there is mame system or neo geo system so change your settings for arcade system in es_systems.cfg or rename the folder mame to arcade inside oldroom folder.

If not you still no theming on arcade system.

Or simply copy mame folder and paste inside oldroom theme and rename to arcade, that way you still have mame folder and arcade folder.

The theme still work in progress and i'm concentrated on video view, that's because detailed view looks ugly.

Don't forget the paths in game list like this example for each game:

<video>~/.emulationstation/roms/mame/videos/1944.mp4</video>
<marquee>~/.emulationstation/roms/mame/marquees/1944.png</marquee>

Marquee is not neccessary for theme to work.

[Nismo]

@GtBFilms Also be sure you have the latest version of theme: http://www.mediafire.com/file/jzkfqe796w00qij/oldroom_1.6_720p.zip

You can see if it's the latest version opening with text editor themes>oldroom>oldroom.xml on top you can see version and must be 1.6.

[Bluescreen]

it works fine
i can´t find any bugs.
The only thing ist my pi goes overheating
The temperature at the video preview is 76.9'C

sorry for my bad english ;)

[fieldofcows]

@Bluescreen Thanks for testing.

The only thing ist my pi goes overheating
The temperature at the video preview is 76.9'C

Wow! What RPi are you testing on? Has it been overclocked? What codec do your videos use and what size are they?

[GtBFilms]

@Nismo

Thanks for your help, I now have this working on my Rpi3!

My problems were twofold:

i) I was being a dumbass last night and using the wrong SD card - which didn't have the updated version of Emulationstation on it - doh! (it was too late at night and I had had a few drinks, sorry)

ii) Using the arcade folder was still causing me problems, despite making a copy of the mame folder in oldroom called 'arcade', I got the oldroom theme to display, but it still wasn't finding the video clips for some reason. I gave up on the arcade folder, and just moved my ROMS to the mame-libretro folder as you have on yours, edited the appropriate gamelist.xml in /home/pi/.emulationstation/gamelists/mame-libretro/gamelist.xml to add in the <video> and <marquee> tags pointing to the appropriate mp4 and jpg files (which I placed in a video and marquee directories in my roms folder) and it all worked!

Awesome work, thanks!

For the record, my rPi is in a case like this:

with a copper heatsink on the cpu:

It's not overclocked.

...with the case lid closed, it's running at 65 - 70 degrees centigrade when running the video preview system (ambient room temp is about 20C)

My video clips are all 240 x 320 clips from Emumovies.com

The whole menu is running pretty smooth, no noticeable pauses.

I'll try it with a bunch more roms and video clips over the weekend, my test setup has a smallish set of roms (about 150) that benefit from a 4-way controller.

[Bluescreen]

i use the x264 codec with 640x480 for all videos. I have the same case and no overclocking.
now with heatsink 65-70´C

[Nismo]

@GtBFilms Nice, i'm happy you finally you got it working, when I have time I want to make a little tutorial to automate the process for the gamelist and I want to upload optimized art that fix in the theme.

[Nismo]

New little update for oldroom theme:

• added Game boy system.
• added Game boy Color system. (I need better gbc image for this theme).
• Fixed detailed view.

Somebody have a Game boy Color and can make a photo holding it in his hand?

Now detailed view looks this way :

Download: http://www.mediafire.com/file/ur2k9sbp2ua6yn9/oldroom_1.7_720p.zip (Recommended for Rpi)

1080p version: http://www.mediafire.com/file/vvylrsgh8waqkkk/oldroom_1.7_1080p.zip

Sorry @fieldofcows this time i didn't have time to provide an 800x600 fix but i'll do soon.

I can't make work marquee on top of "rating" on detailed view, i'm not sure if can't be possible on detailed view or it's my fault.

Enjoy.