Theme is coming along nicely now. I intend to do a series (I got another 4 weeks minimum of furlough) of themes, based on hit SyFy channel TV programmes, starting with Warehouse 13.
I am doing 1 system at a time and testing it, having different characters and artifacts for the system screen, and basic screen, with a warehouse type tag for each.
So each one will look a bit like this;

SYSTEM Screen
system screen.jpg

BASIC Screen
basic screen.jpg

However, I am having issues with the Detailed/Video Screen. I have this so far;

Detailed screen.jpg

But what I want, is just to incorporate a screen shot of the scraped game, then a video snap of the game, but I want it so that it is in the "screen" of the following image. I am happy where the gameslist is, as I wanted it in the lid of the farnsworth (fans will know what I mean)also with the positioning of the other Meta data and the console. This is the image.
farnsworthjpg.jpg

Is there anyway of manipulating the scraped image so they appear in the round window. I have tried most things, but don't know how to display only screenshots and videos, and discount the marquees and the boxart. With the one I have I was able to make it fit by making the screen square.

As always, any help very much appreciated.

If you want to take a screenshot of just your current active window, type Alt-PrtSc instead of just the PrtSc key.

Get a SDcard testing tool (like H2testw or F3X) and check if your card is ok. If not, then you'll need a different SD card, otherwise try again to re-image.
You can also have issues from the power supply - the 3B model needs a 5V, 2.5A power supply - if you're using a simple charger I strongly advise to get a proper one.

I am new to this game as well, but before anyone asks, I know one person who is sick and tired of saying it, you need to fill in/read this first, that way you will get more help.
https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/3/read-this-first

As for your questions, even though I am still a novice I may be able to help on A

If you hit the Start key and bring up the main menu, you can go down to UI settings, and change the themes etc. On the Gamelist View Style, there is an Automatic option, every timeI have used this it will display both boxart and video's. It also does the same with video's settings.
If your getting black when it fades from the boxart image, it may not necessarily mean the video isn't there. It may have scraped but the video doesn't have the right codec for the Pi. I myself had this issue.
If you follow this guide https://github.com/hiulit/RetroPie-Convert-Videos it may help with any non-playing videos. It certainly did mine.
Also if you look in the Media or images folder that is associated with the system you are playing on you can see what images are there, and what videos.
Put on your PC a program called WinSCP and you can look at your pi directory from the PC and do all the necessary from that.

B0 I am sure somebody will correct me, but also if you use WinSCP you can look in the Media/image folder for MAME and you might find the image used for emulationstation. But you will probably have to edit the .cfg file associated with this, in order to display the image you want.

Hope it has been some help.

@LiveFastCyYoung Sure, go ahead. Just credit me

@Thorr69 Hi, thanks for the suggestion - but would that not also hide it for all my 'systems', not just the Retropie menu?

@super-retropie any chance you could make a pixel and power image for these as well?

@fluffypillow Perfect, exactly what I was looking for. I knew about purpose of "./", "[ ]" is new to me though. Going to work on fixing the system logo sizes, other than that the rest of the theme seems to be as it should. Thanks again!

I found the solution by combing the files from HerbFargus' 1.8.1 build with the latest files from jrassa's build + including the latest version of Retroarch executables in the Retroarch system folder. The only issue I'm noticing is the space between some of the fonts is squeezed together or centered on my television screen. Thanks again for your input 😊.

@youxia @altruistictrog I had just noticed there is more than just the theme. Would love to talk about it as well.

@paffley Thank you! I'll give this a try!

update: This did the trick! My carousel assets and backgrounds load perfectly after resizing the backgrounds from 1920x1080 to 1280x720. Thanks!

This is what it would look like with the systems the other way (while still sticking mostly to the MGS game)
If everyone would like it better this way, I could leave it like this. (ignore the games available location, that may or may not change in the future)

systembottom-min.png

And I didn't get around to make the aforementioned changes for your setup either, because I'm on vacation for a movie festival where I watch 2-3 movies every day over the whole week. :)

About the artwork's space: Yeah, I figured as much. But none said that retrogaming is a piece of cake (and if they said that, they lied). I'll keep this on my to-do list and look forward for any updates on your side.

Oops, never mind - I was trying to edit the wrong version of the file. The one in /opt/retropie/configs/all/emulationstation/themes/carbon was the one I wanted.

You can check the theme gallery to see how themes look - it's not a 100% complete, but has many previews.

@njscorpio The menu has the version at the bottom - just report what version you're on.

@mitu Fixing the case sensitivity worked! Thanks for your help.

Emulationstation doesn't support that, but you can check AttractMode or Pegasus.