Video Preview in EmulationStation

[Nismo]

@Kischa I'll try to upload a new theme version this night or maybe tomorrow, I only added Sega game gear, but I want to add support for retropie menu.

So i'll upload both 1080p and 720p versions and you can test how it's the performance on both, and choose what's better for you.

[**Scannigan**]

@Kischa even the 720p caused some stability issues for me on my Pi 3, including flickering video previews, art work and marquees being just white boxes, ES in game menu not displaying correctly and eventually a total white out, I was running 16 systems in total, however reducing the image size totally removed that issue

[Nismo]

@Scannigan Fieldofcows is working hard on a fix for that issue and it happens with most of the themes. I don't have an rpi but in windows work perfectly.

Fieldofcows tried the theme in his rpi3 and also working well for him, but I think he only tried 11 systems.

I suppose if you don't have more than 10 or 11 systems the theme should work well.

Anyway that issues would be fixed relatively soon because fixing that it's the priority for fieldofcows right now.

Can i ask to you what size do you use for the images? and exactly what images? bg.jpg? system_art.jpg? both?

[Kischa]

@Nismo Great! I will test them out for both my Rp2 and Rp3.

@Scannigan I quote you: Even the 720p caused some stability issues for me on my Pi 3. Same issues for 1080p version? Lets hope Fieldofcows fix this :)

[**Scannigan**]

@Nismo I used a mixture ot Zoids blur images and your 720p old room images, but had to put them through an image resizer to reduce them, The images are now no larger than 90kb and am not having an issues

[Kischa]

@__Scannigan__ Would you mind sharing those images so I can test them out also?

[**Scannigan**]

@Kischa In all fairness I don't think it would be worth it, if I were you I would take Nismo's 720p images run them though FastStone Photo Resizer, have a bit of a play with the reduction settings so you can get the optimum quality for you.

Now I know that I can get away with images about 90kb, I was planning to resize the images again so I can retain some of the quality, but it sounds like fieldofcows in on the verge of a fix, so I'm going to hold fire then just use to optimised 720 images.

[Kischa]

@__Scannigan__ said in Video Preview in EmulationStation:

was planning to resize the images again so I can retain some of the quality

Yeah just downloaded FastStone Photo Resizer worked like a charm. Thanks!

[Nismo]

@Scannigan But you only reduce the quality or also resize them?, and if resize, can you tell me to what size?

I'm affraid 90kb images the quality will be so poor.

Thx.

[**Scannigan**]

Unfortunately I lost a noticable level of quality in the images, but due to the number of systems I found that under 90kb was the only was to stop issues, I reduced the physical size by 50% and reduced quality by 30% in the image resizer

[Kischa]

@__Scannigan__ Oh that was to bad...well maby Fieldofcows is our savior then ;)

[Nismo]

@Scannigan It's too much loose of quality, it's better to wait for the fix if you have more than 10 systems.

Thanks for the response.

[Kischa]

@Nismo Second that...

[**Scannigan**]

Agree with you both :)

[MWGemini]

@__Scannigan__ Here are instructions for installing his WSOD fix:
https://retropie.org.uk/forum/post/47998

But you'll need to scroll down for the latest version, which is currently:
https://github.com/fieldofcows/EmulationStation/releases/tag/v0.3-RPi-4/emulationstation

The fix is definitely a fix. It solves the white screen of death issue, and I'm sure it will be in the official builds of RetroPie in the very near future.

He's also working on fixes/improvements for the video preview feature (the topic of this thread), and more info can be found here: https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/5823/looking-for-testers-for-es-video-preview-on-raspberry-pi

[Kischa]

@Nismo Im about to test your theme v 1.8 for my Pi2 and Pi3 but I need to have one thing clear before I start. Im runnin a fresh installed 4.1 retropie image, with roms prepared and also scraped. Now, do I only need to "update all installed packages" before runnin your great script "video and marquees that put tags into gamelist" ?

I read Fieldofcows thread with same snaps diskussions but for Pi and he writes in one of hes first posts that you need to update emulationstation also etc...

now Im confused :/

[mattrixk]

@fieldofcows: I'm having some troubles with the windows version of your Video Preview build.

I downloaded this version from your github. I got it working with your SampleConfig without any hassle, but where the video should be was black. After I turned on my speakers I realised the video sound was playing. I turned off the background images and there was the video, behind everything else.

I looks like a z-index issue where the video sits behind every other element on the screen, no matter where it sits in the XML.

I'm also curious if we can get <maxSize> on the videos so that they maintain aspect ratio. At the moment you have to set a specific size, but what if your videos are different sizes? I'm not sure if that is a big problem or not, as I haven't really looked into videos much yet. I think all the ones from screenscraper.fr are 640x480, but I don't know what is usual for other sources.

ps: I'm sorry if this has already been answered, but at 428 comments long, this is a pretty long thread to slog through to find a possible answer.

[darknior]

@fieldofcows i have made two test this evening :

const char* args[] = { "--vout=omxil_vout", "--quiet"};
mVLC = libvlc_new(sizeof(args) / sizeof(args[0]), args);

But it don't works fine :p
My Raspberry Pi was always at 70° ... and i always have the green glitch :(

I also try your new beta release :
https://github.com/fieldofcows/EmulationStation/releases

And it works like a dream :)
My proc was at 53°
And the green glitch have disappear :)
Yes the video is rendered on top of GUI menus ... but you will fix it later ;)

Thanks a lot :)

[mattrixk]

Okay, using the Carbon-with-video theme I discovered that if you call you background image <image name="background"> and remove the extra="true", then the video will appear on-top of the background image. Any reason it was done this way instead of just having the videos on-top of any extra element?

[Nismo]

@mattrixk Any extra images will be displayed on top of videos, just because for theming sometimes you need to create a frame around the video. Like in my theme that i used it to make tv round borders around the video, an overlay with green color on Gameboy system, or an overlay with scanlines effect, etc... lot of possibilities.

Also that way you can place some elementes on top of video like marquees.

The problem you have it's because you were using a theme without video support.

I'm using the windows version and it works like a charm, but if you use videos, you need a theme with video support, of course.