Background Music [Continued from Help/Support]

retrobean

I can confirm that this code works like a charm!

The only thing I would mention, being a new Raspberry Pi user, is that i had no idea how to create the .py file. It turned out that I needed to download python and pygame for PC, copy the text script in, and then save the file, then move it to the pi and make sure it was in the correct folder! ugh!. Good fun though.

Big shout to livewire for making this. I too, though am having the same issue with some MP3's playing at half speed, any fix for this would be great.

All in all, fantastic to have background music on my retropie.

Ra

josete2k

Great work!!!!!

Sometimes the music is still playing when a game is already running.

I've tested lr-mame2003 with arkanoid and the music stops in the check ram screen...

I have launching.png screen too...

How can I stop it sooner? I'm changing values in the volumefadespeed (from 0.02 to 6.0) and sometimes there is a little difference.

Thanks again.

retrobean

I think i may have figured out why some mp3 files will play at slower speed.

When the PyGame mixer is intialized using the default settings

pygame.mixer.init()
initialize the mixer module
init(frequency=22050, size=-16, channels=2, buffer=4096) -> None

So i suppose the mp3 files HAVE to be this format to play correctly, now i downloaded most of the music I am using and some files play at the correct speed and some play slower, so what I will do tonight is look at the information of the files and check to make sure they are the same.

Once i have checked this I will update.

Would anyone be able to conifrm or deny if this could make a difference?

Thanks

felleg

@retrobean Nice find! I'm excited to see the results :)

retrobean

@felleg I shall report back when i've had a chance to look into it :D

synack

@retrobean Not to derail the thread or take away from @Livewire's contribution here, but you can also just use an external mp3 player such as mpg123 to play music without worrying about details.

install mpg123

sudo apt-get install mpg123

edit /opt/retropie/configs/all/autostart.sh and before emulationstation is called;

while pgrep omxplayer >/dev/null; do sleep 1; done
mpg123 -Z /home/pi/bgm/*.mp3 >/dev/null 2>&1 &

edit /opt/retropie/configs/all/runcommand-onstart.sh

pkill -STOP mpg123

edit /opt/retropie/configs/all/runcommand-onend.sh

pkill -CONT mpg123

edit /home/pi/.bashrc and add

[[ $(tty) == "/dev/tty1" ]] && pkill mpg123

This will randomly play mp3s from the specified folder (step 2), pause the player upon entering a game, resume when exiting, and also stop the player when exiting emulationstation and dropping to a bash shell.

retrobean

@synack nice! this looks like its worth doing.

Thanks.

retrobean

@synack

just added the code in now! fantastic works well first time.

Thanks for that.

Emulatiosstation with bgm is go go go!!

josete2k

Does mpg123 also work with ogg files?

synack

@josete2k no, but ogg123 does. It's available in the vorbis-tools package.

sudo apt-get install vorbis-tools

j.e.f.f

Script is working for me -- Thanks for this!

I'm having one small issue where the music isn't fading out out properly when I start a game. I just cuts right out. If I set the fade delay to something really slow, the music comes back in partially faded after a couple of seconds and completes the fade out. So fade out is working but it is momentarily muted during the fade. Any ideas? If it helps, I'm using an MP3. I know you said there might be issues with MP3's... is this what you meant? Other than the fade problem, playback is fine.

Thanks!

Jeff

retrobean

@j.e.f.f Try the new code that synack has put up on the forum, it works like a charm and stops when it needs to and starts when it needs to.

Fantastic stuff, also fixes the issue with any slowdown in the mp3 tracks that pygame has.

josete2k

@synack thanks I've tested ogg123 and it works fine.

But as the previous pyton script from Livewire, the music starts before my opening splash video ends...

synack

@josete2k
In that case, edit /opt/retropie/configs/all/autostart.sh, before the ogg123 command, add the following:

while pgrep omxplayer >/dev/null; do sleep 1; done

felleg

@synack said in Background Music [Continued from Help/Support]:

@josete2k
In that case, edit /opt/retropie/configs/all/autostart.sh, before the ogg123 command, add the following:
while pgrep omxplayer >/dev/null; do sleep 1; done

@synack

Thanks for the quick fix, synack!
I think you should edit your how-to post and include this step in it, I had the same issue as josete2k right off the bat with splash videos.

Alsom, quick verification. Can ogg123 play mp3 ffiles as well? Because if I have to call both mpg123 and ogg123, I'm scared of what will happen!

synack

@felleg No problem, and good suggestion -- I updated the post.

Unfortunately ogg123 will not play mp3. The simple fix would be to convert your .ogg files to .mp3, or vice versa.

To mass convert .ogg files to .mp3 on your pi, you can do so by installing libav-tools

sudo apt-get install libav-tools

then navigate to your folder with the .ogg files execute the following

for f in *.ogg; do avconv -i "$f" "${f%.*}.mp3"; done

felleg

@synack Sweet, thanks for the reply! Everything seems to be working smooth. Is it possible that your method doesn't "protect" against playing the same song twice? Maybe it's a mistake on my end, but somehow the same song played twice just now, and I have no duplicate in my playlist.

One last question: can you think of an easy way to output the name of the songs played to a text file (so that I can look via ssh what is currently playing and keep track of what has been played)? I had modified the Python script in such a way that, every time the program started, it appended "====== [date & time] ======" and the song names (as they came) at the end of a file called songs_played.txt. However, since your solution uses many script files, I don't really know where I could put this.

synack

@felleg the randomization algorithm is within mpg123, and in my tests it worked as expected. You might have just gotten lucky :-)

If you'd like to see what is / has been playing, you can change the mpg123 command to the following

mpg123 -Z /home/pi/bgm/*.mp3 2>/dev/shm/playlist &

then cat /dev/shm/playlist to see what's been played (the last entry will be what's currently playing).

Of course, you can change the output file to whatever you'd like.

felleg

@synack Awesome!

... And finally, one last last question, for real. I notice the only things your version are missing compared to Livewire's original method is the fadeout when starting a game, and the option to start a new song after quitting a game (instead of starting the song from where we left off). Can this be quickly implemented as well?

Thanks for your great help!

synack

@felleg fade out is not possible with my method, as far as I know.

To start a new set of tracks (upon game exit) instead of continuing from the last, you'd replace the original instructions do the following

edit /opt/retropie/configs/all/runcommand-onstart.sh

pkill mpg123

edit /opt/retropie/configs/all/runcommand-onend.sh

mpg123 -Z /home/pi/bgm/*.mp3 >/dev/null 2>&1 &

or if you wanted to keep logging the played tracks, you'd use this line instead in the runcommand-onend.sh script

mpg123 -Z /home/pi/bgm/*.mp3 2>>/dev/shm/playlist &