Video Preview in EmulationStation

mattrixk

FlyingTomahawk

Thank you! "thumbup"

Nismo

@FlyingTomahawk Here you have the windows version I use: https://github.com/fieldofcows/EmulationStation/releases/tag/v0.1-beta.7

Ups too late...

daeks

@FlyingTomahawk said in Video Preview in EmulationStation:

@Nismo

I am sure it has been answered somewhere already but going through 400+ pages....

@herb_fargus offtopic: Might it be an idea to restructure the Ideas and Development Forum a bit? That would make it much easier to find relevant threads for specific topics.

Ideas / Requests
Development
- EmulationStation
- Third Party Tools
- Themes
- etc.

FlyingTomahawk

@Nismo

I was finally able to setup the whole video ES stuff on my Windows PC. Lot more comfortable to work now.

Is there a way to keep the videos original aspect ration?
For example; I have videos of vertical shoot em up games and regular fighting game videos. If I adjust the video code to match the fighting games the vertical shooter videos get stretched.
Is there a way to avoid that?

jdrassa

@FlyingTomahawk currently there is not. I am working on adding maxSize support to videos and hopefully will be submitting it soon.

Nismo

@FlyingTomahawk Like @jdrassa said, there is no way to keep the AR at this moment.

Once maxSize has been implemented, you will only have to change "size" with "maxSize".

Of course this will not work on the experimental windows version we are using, I hope it's not too difficult to compile a new windows version with all the new commits coming...

mattrixk

@Nismo said in Video Preview in EmulationStation:

I hope it's not too difficult to compile a new windows version with all the new commits coming

I'm hoping someone who knows how to do this will be nice enough to do it for us :D

FlyingTomahawk

When looking at the main xml file of any theme the all add the "extra="true" code to the background which again is mostly used by all views.

<view name="system, basic, detailed">

What is the reason for adding that "extra=true" code? And what would happen if it would be removed?

Yeah, I know why not try it and see what happens right? Well, it is 8:39am and I'm at work and can't test anything right now. But my head still can't stop running and thinking what happens if...

The reason I ask is the extra thing puts the video behind the background if I use this.

<view name="system, basic, detailed, video">

mattrixk

@FlyingTomahawk I'm not sure of the specifics, but it basically works like this:

You need to add the extra="true" to any extra element you add that isn't part of ES by default (like "logo", "md_image", "gamelist", etc), which would include any background images. On the normal Views (System, Basic and Detailed), if you used <image name="background">, nothing would show up until you added extra="true" to make it <image name="background" extra="true">.

Now the way Video View is made, <image name="background"> has been set as a new default element (the same as <image name="logo">), so it no longer needs extra="true" to make it work. It also has it's default z-index set to be the very bottom, so everything else sits on top of it. If you add extra="true", it changes the z-index to be that of every other extra="true" element, which is above the video.

I hope I've explained it properly, but feel free to correct me if I have something wrong.

FlyingTomahawk

@mattrixk

Thank you that was very clear and well explained.
Code-wise that is not so good looking though. Everything has to be added twice, one with extra one without.
I know this is all very newly added and @jdrassa is working on a z-index solution which hopefully will address this issue. I guess step by step we move sowly and steady forward.

Nismo

@FlyingTomahawk Your theme it's the only one I have seen that requires to add it twice for video view, usually it's not necessary (and I have modded a few themes for video).

@mattrixk Very well explained.

jdrassa

@mattrixk Just to clarify, extra="true" should only be required for system view. All of the gamelist views have an explicit background element.

FlyingTomahawk

@Nismo

Really? Maybe it is time to compare it with some other themes and improve the code.

Is there a way to run the beta ES in window mode?

mattrixk

@jdrassa said in Video Preview in EmulationStation:

extra="true" should only be required for system view. All of the gamelist views have an explicit background element.

Really? I didn't know that. Good info to have, cheers!

mattrixk

@FlyingTomahawk said in Video Preview in EmulationStation:

Is there a way to run the beta ES in window mode?

Have a look at this Repo I'm putting together. It's still a work in progress, but you can grab one of the .bat files and put it in your Windows ES root. Click the .bat file to start ES in windowed mode instead of clicking on the .exe to open full screen.

FlyingTomahawk

@mattrixk

Is that the same bat file that comes with the package from herb fargus portable USB version?
If so then I have that file already. So placing it into the ES root is all there is to it? Cool that will help a great deal to get things aligned proberly.

@jdrassa
Very interesting. If system is the only place that needs it then basic, detailed and video can be combined for some of the elements.

herb_fargus

@mattrixk perhaps we can work together.

Fee free to use any resources from here:

https://github.com/HerbFargus/Portable-Game-Station

I've been meaning to update the version of ES and retroarch has recently been updated so I may borrow some of your stuff too when I find the time to do it

mattrixk

@FlyingTomahawk: Yes they are from Herb's portable ES. I think he only had 1 or 2, so I added the others for testing different sizes. I do most of my work in the 1280x720, then test in the Full size and 4:3 when I get near the end.

@herb_fargus: Sounds good. I'm in the process of scraping all the metadata/images/videos for a bunch of roms. It's taking a bit of time because I'm also making some custom MIX and Scrape profiles for UXS. After that I need to scale down the videos so they don't take up as much room. I have no idea how to do this. I'm hoping to find a program that just lets me batch-resize them or something. I'd also like to squash the filesize of the images too. Once they're all as small as I can make them, then I'll add them to the Repo.

I also need to make some changes to the included theme (mainly reducing the image sizes and messing the image layouts).

Once it's finished I'll make a new thread about it and I'll include links to the various Windows ES versions I've found (yours, Fieldofcow's Video Preview and Zigurana's Carousel Mod).

FlyingTomahawk

@mattrixk

I do most of my work in the 1280x720, then test in the Full size

That is what I do too. I created my theme for 1080p but my laptop only can show max 1366x768 so 1280x720 is best to work for me.