Problem with videos in themes (Making full screen video Theme)

janlopes

I'm making a theme with full screen videos, but my retropie plays the video very very slowly and encoded, it shows only 2 or 3 frames of a 20 seconds video. If i change the settings to use "Video Acceleration" the video plays very nice, but then the zIndex doesn't work.
Any ideas?
I'm using pi3 model b

pjft

Hi!

That is correct, unfortunately.

My best recommendation is to re-encode the videos to a maximum resolution of 480x360@30fps. VLC on the Raspberry Pi won't be good at rendering more than that.

Unfortunately if we use video acceleration, the rendering does not respect overlays, as it's rendered outside of ES, so those are realistically the two options at the moment.

Try to re-encode one video to a lower resolution and see if you get to one that renders nicely on your full screen!

Best.

janlopes

I'll try that! thanks man!

pjft

@janlopes Not a bother.

I recommend Handbrake for re-encoding, but if you have any other software, go for it. If 480x360@30fps doesn't cut it for you full screen, try going to 320x240@30fps.

janlopes

I'll try to find one that can re-encode all files in a directory, otherwise will take forever. I'm software developer, so if there's no software capable of doing that I will consider to make one.

pjft

Handbrake will do all in a directory. The reason I mentioned one is so you can test exactly what resolution to aim for in order to get good performance at full screen. Then you can apply it to all videos.

janlopes

Very nice! thanks man, i'll post the results for the full screen video theme as soon as possible!

herb_fargus

If it's just gameplay video you'll get better quality recording them at native resolution as opposed to degrading the quality with re-encoding them.

I never really understood the idea of having "full HD" of something where the resolution can never truly be more than 240p (3d systems not included)

janlopes

@herb_fargus Agree! in fact i prefer my system plunged in a old CRT TV, the problem is I can't scrap videos with custom resolution. But I'm trying handbrake now.

pjft

@janlopes I think @herb_fargus was implicitly suggesting that a more viable alternative could be to do it yourself.

There's this active thread that you may be interested in, in case you decide to pursue it:

https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/10772/take-and-scrape-your-own-videos

By the way, thanks @herb_fargus for chasing that. I've been following it from a distance so far, and I hope it can eventually be added to RetroPie as a standard!

herb_fargus

@pjft I'm not holding my breath on that til stretch is released as it will be much easier to do once we don't have to compile ffmpeg, but i imagine we'll be able to come up with a workable solution by the time that comes around (probably come end of year ish)