@sleve_mcdichael

Default will skip roms that have any piece of data from this source, and “only missing” will skip roms that have any piece of data from any source?

Yes, I had actually forgotten that point, it's quite an important distinction.

And you're welcome. Have fun with it!

In case anyone googles and finds this ... I did get to the bottom of it by looking into the source code (by source code I mean the RetroPie ES version, stable branch)

You can see here in VideoPlayerComponent.cpp where it launches omxplayer with a bunch of args:

VideoPlayerComponent.cpp:

// Run the omxplayer binary execve("/usr/bin/omxplayer.bin", (char**)argv, (char**)env);

Now if you fire up ES, launch the screensaver, and take a look in the process list while its running (in ssh session, ps -ef) you'll actually see all those args, something like this in the process list:

pi 2143 1 7 01:16 ? 00:00:08 --layer 10010 --loop --no-osd --aspect-mode stretch --vol -3885 -o alsa --win 0,0,800,480 --orientation 0 /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/neogeo/media/videos/trally.mp4

What I noticed is the volume is set to -3885. Now if I run that on the command line to simulate the screensaver I can play with the volume. For omxplayer, volume 0 should be 100% as it's measured in millibels according to the omxplayer help.

So I quit es and ran this:

omxplayer.bin --layer 10010 --loop --no-osd --aspect-mode stretch -o alsa --vol -0 --win 0,0,800,480 --orientation 0 /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/neogeo/media/videos/trally.mp4

ok great I can hear it now! I researched %vol to db and the formula is db = 20*log(%vol) and that checks out because I had es at roughly 65% volume which equates to about -3742 millibels.

So I went back into es and set the volume to 100%, and now I can finally hear it on a default RetroPie install. The issue is the drop off is really steep (must be some bug in omxplayer on pi, that their millibels to volume curve is off) because if you set the volume level at say, 60% you won't hear much of anything from the speakers. I think this is also compounded by the fact that when you're playing around with the audio settings in es, many times it resets the volume back to zero because it's trying to sync up the level with alsa.

Anyway, hope this helps someone get their head around the screensaver audio.

p.s. also, in es audio settings, make sure you set the "omx player audio device" to alsa (or whatever works on your pi, or in your command line experiments), as that drives the argument sent into omxplayer above.

No, at the moment this is not implemented in EmulationStation, the videos are always read from the gamelist.

@stuckinthe90s You are using a disposable email address which is bouncing. Please switch to a working non disposable address or I will have to remove/disable your account.

I think it would be a great idea. If it's not possible to implement it, could it be done using the theme system? 🤔

@RedMarsBlueMoon said in Would the (ES) screen saver shut game off?:

Does it get cleared on restart? As I have rebooted several times since the issue above.

Yes, /dev/shm is a RAM backed folder, restarting would clear it. The file is present after the game is run and it's also overwritten each time a game is launched, so if you want to get the actual error, you need to get the file immediately after the crashed game stops.

Re: Looking for log/clue why ES video screensaver may get stuck w/black screen

Closing the thread on this. There is nothing wrong with the randomizer. While there was exactly one (1) "Little Computer People" video, there were ~100 variations of the game in the XML referencing the same video. So it's probably by design. It would seem that each game listed in XML with a valid video has the potential to play. Like throwing 100 tickets into a casino raffle drum... You're more likely to win.

Ideally each video found should act as 1 potential. Not a big problem, but since games with multiple variants that reference the same video are more likely to play, making things seem less random than they truly are.

Mystery solved after spending way too much time staring at random videos.

This confusion happened over the course of weeks after I disabled the onscreen help. Forgive me. I've got some grey hair in my late 30s. :D

It's an omxplayer limitation on the Pi4 - if the upstream package gets updated and supports OSD (subtitles), then it will be supported if Raspbian will include the updated version.

@crash21 Yes, it should be possible, though it's not a single line change. EmulationStation's source code is up on Github, at https://github.com/retropie/emulationstation/.

@Clyde That would be awesome. I've written a script that will take a folder of videos and, using FFmpeg, overlay images on top of them like scan lines and a bezel and spit out a new video. It would be so nice to be able to do this as an image instead like retroarch does.

Okay.

It appears screensaver controls only work with videos - is that right?

Also, while it did initially work setting the screensaver to activate after 5 secs, it decided it didn't like it after a while, and it appears fine with it set back to the minute again. (I'm assuming the GUI not allowing me to go below a minute is something of a warning, here.)

So now my main question really is: has anyone used Skraper recently? It seems great, but try as I might I cannot get the video resizing to work.

For those want to testdrive the navigation (Joy-right/Select) and launch game (Start) also for the image slideshow screen saver -see suggestion 4 above- are invited to do so:

git clone https://github.com/RetroPie/EmulationStation.git cd EmulationStation git fetch origin pull/673/head:slideshow-controls git checkout slideshow-controls cmake -DFREETYPE_INCLUDE_DIRS=/usr/include/freetype2/ -DGL=On -DRPI=On . && make -j 5 all ./emulationstation --debug

@joesnow81 well you have the sources, the wiki/docs and the helpful guys in this forum. A comfortable start position I would say.

And for another piece of learning:
This is the beauty of git, you don't have to wait for a fork or merge into master.
See my notes here on how to try the PR by yourself.

Didn't realise it was quite so simple. Updated to 2.9.1 and can see the extra setting within the screensaver settings. All working perfectly.

Should it help anyone in the future the steps I went through were

In emulationstation, go to Tools > RetroPie Setup.
Once in, select Update RetroPie-Setup script and select yes to update it.
Now select Manage packages, followed by Manage core packages, select emulationstation and finally Update from binary.
Once that's done restart EmulationStation