Help testing: Random Video Screensaver on Main Branch

pjft

@TMNTturtlguy thanks, good catch on the option length on 4:3! Could you update and check again? I removed "use" and "video". Let's see if it helps!

As for the audio options, they're already on the main branch, @Hex put them together as he has an external sound card so he needed a few options there.

Are you referring to the OMX ones in particular? I think it's a good question and good feedback in general. Instead of having them be literally the option text that's passed to OMX Player it could be something more user friendly, like

HDMI -> HDMI
Alsa:hw:0,0 -> External sound card 1
Alsa:hw:1,0 -> External sound card 2
Local -> headphone jack
Both -> Default

Is something like this (assuming that I have them all correct) helpful? We could then do the option to parameters conversion via code.

Thoughts?

TMNTturtlguy

@pjft I have the girls now for a few hours until they go to bed! Will test in a few hours and let you know, you will probably be getting rest by then!

Yes i was talking about the OMX audio options in particular. I think @hex were fine additions. I think your new suggestion is much better! External Sound Card means something to me! Alsa:hw:0,0 means nothing! I think your list is good if it reads like I think your intentions are, i would order them like this if it was my setup:

Default
HDMI Only
Headphone Only
External Sound Card 1
External Sound Card 2

Does this make sense?

pjft

@Hex The entire video settings options going into the other settings menu?

On the meeting the two video options, I'd rather not. VLC doesn't perform well on the Pi, but there's unfortunately a use case for having it in the gamelist view, which is if you're using a theme with overlays on top of the video. OMX Player doesn't support that. However, it ends up overheating the system after a while, so having it as a screensaver player is far from ideal, unless you have a fan.

If you confirm that the screensaver is running on your pi and the HDMI signal isn't failing, I'll remove the VLC screensaver option altogether. I had just added it as in the previous posts we were considering the possibility that OMX Player would in some configurations not be a valid option because of that, so leaving VLC as a fail safe option was my attempt at that.

I'd love to remove it, though, so if you confirm that things are running for you on the Pi without the game info being displayed, that's good enough for me to remove it! Thanks.

pjft

@TMNTturtlguy I think so, if they are accurate representations of what they mean - I was mostly making informed guesses :)

@Hex - over to you.

Hex

@pjft So I compiled on pi3 and hdmi fails if subtitles are enabled with omxplayer . screensaver with vlc is damn slow.

"""The entire video settings options going into the other settings menu?"""
In my opinion it would be helpful

Regarding the audio options it might be possible to rename them that way but i am directly extracting the preference and sending it to omxplayer so if you rename it omxplayer will receive it as

omxplayer -o "External Sound Card 1"

which will not work at all. I will need to add a lot of code to translate option to parameter. I would rather have it the current way. I agree it is a bit vague but when you go looking for "Splash screen no sound usb" you will become familiar with these parameters. Else you would just need the default one , both.

I can change it if you guys think so. It will not take much time.

TMNTturtlguy

@Hex can you expand on hdmi fails with omx player with titles on? Does the audio, the video or both fail? I am running on pi3 with hdmi to 4:3 monitor and 3.5 jack and it is working. I had 1 instance where I got a black screensaver, after changing options in the menu but then could not reproduce it, it ran correctly every time after that. As for audio settings, as a non computer non coder background the asla or whatever naming means nothing to me. The options are very confusing. Also having these options in this menu and then audio options in the retropie menu will be very confusing as neither place tells me what the setting is doing. We will have users forcing audio in the boot configs and users forcing hdmi or 3.5m in the retropie menu and now we are adding even more options forcing audio from this menu. What happens when i go to retropie and force 3.5 and then go to the start menu and force hdmi?

Not trying to be difficult here, I am just approaching this from the common user trying to build a simple system with no knowledge of the underpinnings.

Hex

@TMNTturtlguy you are right, I will set it up as something simpler later. Since the binary 2.2 is already out there is not much hurry to fix it. I shall submit a PR soon with fixes

Hex

@TMNTturtlguy Regarding the HDMI I have overscan enabled so I am not the right person to work this with. In my opinion asking users to disable overscan and have black stripes just for video screensavers is not done. Disabling the subtitles sounds as a reasonable request to enable this feature

TMNTturtlguy

@Hex @pjft let me install the newest update on both of my builds. I have been testing on my 4:3 today as that is the current build I am working on with theme updates. I will update that to check the menu text. I will then test on my 16:9 with overscan enabled to remove the black bars as @Hex has in his setup. Just as an FYI, my previous testing the last few days have all been on 16:9 and it worked properly. That was prior to all of the options on how to display the text.

meleu

@TMNTturtlguy

@meleu I think something broke in the script after the last update?

Thanks for pointing it out. Actually the script wasn't broken, just a little dumb. :-)

The last changes @pjft made in his repo had conflicts with the previous version and when the script was trying to git pull, it was failing and, with any checking, going ahead with compilation.

I've just fixed and added a checking after the git pull, if it fails (probably due to conflicts) it rm -rf the local repo and then git clone it again (if it fails again, probably it's a connection problem).

Update your script and you'll get the delta version with this fix.

Cheers!

Hex

@meleu rather than rm -rf we can do the following:

git merge --abort && git pull -X theirs

This will preserve the build dir rather that making a clean compile thus saving compile time. All changed files will be recompiled by make. This is a much better solution on failure of git pull

To combine all of theme in one sentence you can have the command as such :
git pull || git merge --abort && git pull -X theirs

The || ensures that git merge --abort && git pull -X theirs only runs if git pull fails
The && ensures that git pull -X theirs only runs if git merge --abort succeeds

The final status will give you a success or fatal error status so its a win.

meleu

@Hex Better and very much elegant with this git sorcery! Will change it ASAP.

TMNTturtlguy

@pjft @hex i have downloaded the most recent build and tested on both my 4:3 and 16:9 pi units. 1 has overscan enabled, the other has it disabled. I am running on a pi 3 in both cases. As of right now both are on monitors, not TV's. Both cases testing audio with the both setting and running audio through 3.5 m jack.

Both builds run very well, both builds run with all setting for game name, always on, never and beginning and end. I have not lost my HDMI signal in any testing whether that is letting them sit and wait for the screensaver to come on, or pressing select.

I have had the 4:3 running screensavers for over an hour, the 16:9 for about a half hour. Randomly waking it up and letting them run. Works great on my end, I cannot replicate the HDMI loss using OMX.

As for the menu here is a screenshot. It is much improved on the 4:3 however you can see that it is still not ideal. I think it is fine in the end. @pjft note the favorites system logo in the background!

Hex

@TMNTturtlguy What resolution is your setup running?

TMNTturtlguy

@Hex 16:9 is at default display preferred = 1920 x 1080

4:30 is at default display preferred = 1600 x 1200

pjft

@TMNTturtlguy love it :) will get onto that after this is finished.

I'll try to reduce screensaver to something smaller even buy a few letters. I agree it's ugly at the moment.

The overscan/HDMI signal thingie is very much a thing, and it's unclear what causes it - we only know it does. In fact if you search in the forums for the splash screen video (which uses OMX Player) you'll see that the disable overscan recommendation comes from there as some setups have the exact same problem. I suspect there are some users who can't have the splash screen video at all because it doesn't work for them for that reason, though I'm not fully sure.

I myself ran into it a few months ago on the same TV when I changed frequency from 50hz to 60hz, and had to disable overscan to make it work. I agree it's not a nice thing to ask of users - though you're thinking of the opposite: what we need to do is to disable overscan, which means removing the black borders, not adding them. The black borders are an extra layer in the rendering pipeline and that's the problem. That being said, some people with specific TVs or monitors might need that option, so I'm not keen on forcing them to change it.

I have no problems with keeping OMX only as the screensaver default, but only if it's guaranteed it works for everyone without the captions showing at least. Otherwise it'll just be a flood of complaints in the forums, that's why I'm not opposed to providing VLC as an option. It can really be crippling, and it's not something that has been solved.

We can remove the option later, I suppose.

pjft

Ok, so a final tidying up update.

Removed VLC option for Pi's screensaver from the menu. Please confirm that your settings file does have <bool name="ScreenSaverOMX" value="true" />set in it, otherwise it will use VLC. I doubt that'll be the case, but worth giving the heads up. The default is to use OMX for screensaver.
Added a "info/warning" box when enabling captions for the screensaver, letting people know that if the screen signal fails they should disable game info, or disable overscan on the Raspberry Pi system config. I give them the steps.
Moved OMX Player setting inside the Other Settings menu.
The remaining options now belong in a menu named "Video Screensaver Settings". It's now inside "Other Settings".

Hopefully this is it. Good fun.

At least I don't have to rebase yet again.

TMNTturtlguy

@pjft wow! Thanks for sticking with this and all the hard work! I will update both my setups and let you know what how they work. Hopefully for you sake, time, and sanity this will be the last of it!

pjft

@TMNTturtlguy Thank you good sir. You've spent way more time on this than anyone could have asked for. If this gets to the main branch, it's certainly thanks to your effort in testing this thoroughly!

I actually just had one last hypothesis for the HDMI thing. @Hex - could you update to the latest build on the Pi and test, with the captions turned on, whether the HDMI signal situation is solved for you?

It's a long shot, but worth testing out if it helps mitigating that problem. If so, I'll make it an option.

If not, I'll revert the changes :)

meleu

@TMNTturtlguy said in Help testing: Random Video Screensaver on Main Branch:

I will update both my setups and let you know what how they work.

I've made some improvements on the es-tests.sh script (based on the always useful @Hex tips). Please update and use it on your tests so we can collect feedback! :-)