[Theme] CRT

Dominus

@alphatoanant I've actually done some more work and figured out how to add things, and fix it so I really liked it. This is a picture of it, just on my widescreen monitor. When I get a chance I will upload my theme.xml.

caver01

@mattrixk That seems an acceptable way to do it. Are themes that work on both aspect ratios without requiring any edits just built to a least common denominator such that they don't tend to take design cues from the extra width offered by wide screens? I can see how you might take advantage of the screen real estate on a widescreen TV with in ways that just wouldn't fit on 4:3.

mattrixk

@caver01 said in [New Theme] 'CRT' with support for Video Preview:

Are themes that work on both aspect ratios without requiring any edits[?]

None come to mind, sorry.

BertGoblin

I did a batch Handbrake convert to 30fps/23 quality factor to get videos working in attract mode. Somebody stated that 60fps videos were more of a problem than resolution. Haven't had any probs there.

I want to test videos out a bit for this ES theme, but I have no idea how to add my folder of videos without manually editing each gamelist entry (which is tedious). Any help on that score would be greatly appreciated.

alphatoanant

@BertGoblin this thread created by @Nismo may help with what you are looking for - https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/6589/easy-way-to-add-video-and-marquees-tags-in-your-gamelist-for-video-support

BertGoblin

@alphatoanant Thanks, I don't suppose there's a bash script that does the same thing? (I wouldn't know where to start as far as converting it from powershell).

Dominus

@BertGoblin Once you make the file, just right click and it should says Run with Powershell.

BertGoblin

So, I wanted to report back on my video usage with this theme. Converting to 30fps made all my videos work fine. I didn't have any particularly high res videos, but at 60fps, many would stop and go grey.

The one problem I do have is that it seems rapidly switching between videos actually overheats a stock clocked pie with a heat-sink fitted. That seems absurd right? I've tried the Pi indifferent environments and it's pretty cold at the moment. This wasn't isolated to this the theme though, attract mode also produced the same result.

If anyone out there has a live temp monitoring overlay, I'd be curious to see what their levels do with consistent video switching.

MWGemini

@BertGoblin That's somewhat of a known issue. The version of the video preview feature that is in the current official source tree uses VLC player, which uses a lot of CPU. There's a new version being worked on by @fieldofcows that uses OMX player instead. You can read more about it (with some temperature tests I did) here: https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/5823/looking-for-testers-for-es-video-preview-on-raspberry-pi/141

Furluge

@Dominus So, you get a chance to upload that xml yet? :p

Furluge

@alphatoanant Looks pretty good though I like what I see with dominus a bit better since I use widescreen too.

Dominus

@Furluge Yeah sorry, I wasn't sure if anyone really wanted it...

http://pastebin.com/QzucYj5n

alphatoanant

@Dominus, cool if I include your XML as a variation in the theme? I am working on adding a 4x3 option now using the approach that @mattrixk described... "you can use <include> this way to point to different templates, so you don't have to create and maintain a completely separate theme"

Working on that now and if you are ok with it I would happy to include your version as one of the options

Roxsteady

Has anyone tried this on a Pi Zero?? I would assume it would lag.

alphatoanant

@Roxsteady, yeah from my testing it lags on a Pi Zero currently. @fieldofcows (with the help of @MWGemini) has been testing out an implementation of the video preview feature using omx player instead of vlc that is showing nice promise for heat on a Pi3. There is no guarantee that would help on Pi Zero but I am looking forward to trying it out. The Pi Zero may not end up being powerful enough though. If that turns out to be the case I am going to build a version of this theme without video support for the zero next.

You can follow the status of the omx player updates here: https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/5823/looking-for-testers-for-es-video-preview-on-raspberry-pi/141 (thank you for the link and your tests @MWGemini)

mattrixk

@alphatoanant My Io theme uses <include>s if you need some inspiration.

Also, just a thought, but if videos lag on Pi-zero, would it be best if the Pi-zero owners simply didn't scrape videos? Then it doesn't matter if your theme has a <view name="video"> or not?

alphatoanant

@alphatoanant My Io theme uses <include>s if you need some inspiration.

That's exactly the one I am using to learn from, nice =)

Also, just a thought, but if videos lag on Pi-zero, would it be best if the Pi-zero owners simply didn't scrape videos? Then it doesn't matter if your theme has a <view name="video"> or not?

Good point. It might not be a common use case to share gamelist.xml's between a pi3 and pizero. I know for me I mostly do it for testing purposes. Not scraping for videos if using a pi-zero would work then.

Dominus

@alphatoanant Yeah for sure. It's just numbers, I didn't really do any graphical work.

Nismo

@alphatoanant Depens on how the videos are encoded.

I suppose the scraped videos are very high resolution for a rpi (it's known 640x480 60 fps videos are too much for the rpi), but I'm making good quality videos at low resolution and fps to safe space and don't stress the rpi. Keep in mind that scraped videos are not designed for playing in a rpi.

Just need somebody with a pi zero to test them.

Link: https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/8019/oldroom-theme-w-i-p-media-packs?page=1

alphatoanant

@Nismo Thank you, I may be able to try these out this weekend. Currently, I am using standard quality videos from emumovies.com (the ones that are around 320x240 res)