UPDATE/SOLVED: it was not related to the music player, after all.

I had presumed that libmpg123 error meant it was related to my mpg123 background music player, but it seems that's may be not the case.

It only happen on "random video" screensaver mode, I am unable to reproduce on either "dim" or "slideshow" screensaver modes.

...and, it happens now even with the music disabled. Now mpg123 is still installed on my RPi4 but when disabled it is never brought up during autostart.sh so now is just ES(-dev), and my video files (mostly which come from ScreenScraper).

Looks libmpg123 is also used by the vlc (which I do use on ES, as I have "use OMX player for screensaver" set to "off.")

https://code.videolan.org/videolan/vlc/-/issues/1554

Seems it is caused by (one or more) particular video files. I (backed up and) deleted half my gamelists (so their videos won't be played), and the error still occurred. Then I restored my backups, and deleted the other half the gamelists -- this time no error! I have narrowed it down further to a single game in my SNES playlist -- confirmed by removing all other entries so only that one plays when triggering screensaver, and then the error happens right away.

I tracked it down to a single bad video from screenscraper. Whenever the Pop'n TwinBee (SNES) video is played, the Illegal Audio-MPEG-Header error is displayed in console, in multiple, when exit EmulationStation.

This is accompanied by a visual glitch in the video playback (or freeze, depending on player) at about 0:16 seconds in, just past the halfway-mark. This also was visible on the video served from the screenscraper website.

I tagged the video in a comment on screenscraper.fr asking to re- generate their standardized video. A short time later, that request was granted and, after re-scraping that one game, the error is now resolved!

For curiosity: if you have this game, and have a video scraped prior to a few hours ago (about 2024-03-22 19:00 GMT), do you experience the same console error after playing its video on screensaver and, after re-scraping, is it also now resolved?

I gave up as I see there is no support on Github or anywhere!

Uninstall and try something else

Still not sure why the things I was trying from command-line didn't work, but this seems to be getting the job done pretty reliably:

autostart.sh:

(vcgencmd force_audio hdmi 1 >/dev/null 2>&1; sleep 8; mpg123 -Z /home/pi/RetroPie/bgm/*.mp3 >/dev/null 2>&1) & #bgm emulationstation #auto

.bashrc (excerpt):

[[ $(tty) == "/dev/tty1" ]] && (vcgencmd force_audio hdmi 0 >/dev/null 2>&1; pkill mpg123) #bgm # RETROPIE PROFILE START

...this seems to work as intended, even though I couldn't get it to work on command-line for whatever reason. With this setup the audio channel opens in time for the music to begin, and closes again when I quit to console.

In autostart.sh, I put vcgencmd before the sleep command because when I did the other way, sometimes it would open up in time for the music but other times it wouldn't. This way it opens up and "hums" for a few seconds before the music starts, but it always starts from the first instant, so an acceptable compromise.

In .bashrc, the original guide said to put the command inside the RETROPIE PROFILE section but that whole section gets rewritten if you update bashwelcometweak; putting it outside the section preserves it even when the welcome tweak is updated.

Issue 1 can be easily solved by using the Audio menu in RetroPie and choosing your default output (Analog Jack/HDMI).

For #2 - The Headphone value can also be chosen in the EmulationStation settings, since it has been updated in June 2020 following the RPI OS changes.

@weirdh I already put console=tty3 some days ago, but it doesn't really hide the console, it just leaves a black screen instead of text.
Actually, I don't really see the console when I run my scripts, I see a black screen. But since, I had console=tty3 I deduced that there would normally be console text instead of a black screen.
It will be difficult to completely hide that console/black screen, maybe it's not even possible.
Anyway, with the icons and detailed names in my scripts, it looks a lot better and 2 or 3 seconds of black screen isn't that bad I guess xD
Thanks!

@windg That's a really good list there. Thanks for that! :)

@mitu said in Redream playing BGM from ES:

I don't know, but you can run ps -ef while steamlink is started and see the process name that it uses, so you can add it to the emulator list.

thanks got it!

@jurassicplayer Hi, it worked fantastic!! Congrats and thanks!! The only issue I found so far has to do with some mp3 files which are played much slower than they should, Maybe I would need to try different mp3 formats but you did an excellent job. None of the other scripts worked for me because of the video previews I use in roms, your script is the only one that fits my build. I only need to figure out how to correct the slow mp3 files issue, in fact if you could implement a method to change music depending on what system is being played as in some Recalbox Themes, it would be perfect, Cheers

Its is the best method.

That's ok mitu. I would be willing to run a .bat file in the background if need be. I tried doing it myself and I was successful getting music to load up before the main screen finishes loading up on EmulationStation, as well as when you exit out of a game and go back to the menu. The problem I'm having is getting just one splashscreen to randomly load up/play before the loading screen and stopping/closing the media player that displays it.

The code for my splashtest.bat is the following:

@ECHO OFF

REM Your splashscreens file path:
start "" --play and exit "C:\Program Files (x86)\VLC\vlc.exe" -L "C:\Users\Username\Music\Playlists\Splashscreens.wpl"

REM Kill your media player:
C:\Program Files (x86)\VLC\vlc.exe /F

REM Run the frontend (EmulationStation example):
start "" "C:\Program Files (x86)\EmulationStation\emulationstation.exe"

REM Run the media player (WMPlayer example):
start "" "C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Media Player\wmplayer.exe" -L "C:\Users\Username\Music\Playlists\EmulationStation.wpl"

If anyone here has ideas on any mistakes you can see or a better way of executing this, please let me know. A big thank you goes out to those who can provide these answers :-D.

@mitu success - I'm now in. Thank you so much for your help - much appreciated and sorry for my daft questions

@mitu said in BGM in Ubuntu Desktop 18.04:

@dbrown1986 said in BGM in Ubuntu Desktop 18.04:

I think Ubuntu wouldn't allow it since it was a 'hidden' folder.

First time I hear this kind of - obviously wrong - explanation. Check the permissions on the folder and make sure your $USER owns the folder where the scripts are saved. You don't need to use sudo to edit something that's in your home folder.

Could also been something I mucked up; since I installed using net-inst, I checked the permissions and they looked fine.

@thestarglider My pleasure mate, I'm glad I could help :)

@mitu ok, i think i get it now. im using this as a crash course in writing scripts, so im sorry if i dont understand how this should work. but this is a huge help, thank you.

@cyperghost I have a working scriptmodule that installs mpg123 and sets up the background music automatically. May I have your blessing to include a modified version of this volume fade script (with credit) in the distribution?

@prog-amateur I would also like to know the steps taken to add BGM to RetroPie. This would be a great feature to be added