Idea for Video Screensaver in Emulation Station (Overlay art!)

[pomme]

I've got the video screensaver running on my most recent build and I love it! The delay between videos is a little longer than I'd like it to be, but I'm not complaining.

I have the pi running on a tiny color TV in my office. It's a great distraction (in a good way). I'll sometimes just zone out and check out the videos from my collection running in screensaver mode.

Occasionally a really cool looking game will catch my eye and I will have absolutely no clue what on earth it is or what system it's even on. This build I focused on adding full ROM sets and am doing most of my organizing through favorites and other metadata.

I wondered how whoever developed the video screensaver (thank you!) might be able to add the box art and or marquee art as an overlay to the video so you can at least get a title for the game. There have been several times when a game has popped up and disappeared and I wished I was able to check it out.

The idea I had in my head was something like the CRT theme where the box art and marquee art overlay the video (no need for the containing bezel obviously).

shown here:

Anyhow, just throwing the idea out there. Thanks everyone for your hard work making Retropie so cool.

[pjft]

@pomme hi. Glad you enjoy it. While most of the work was done by @fieldofcows , when I was improving it and building upon it I had considered something to that effect a while ago but didn't push it forward.

You have part of your use case addressed in the current settings, though:

• you can change video change interval in the UI settings > video screensaver settings menu
• you can choose to show the game and system name as well

It's not exactly what you're looking for - that would probably involve allowing the screensaver to be themable, which isn't something I was keen on exploring, but will hopefully help with your use cases.

The game name in particular may cause some issues with the default video player, that's why it's off by default, but let me know if that's the case and we'll sort it out.

Best of luck.

[pomme]

Oh wow, thanks for the info. I'll have to get in there and play with the settings.

We'll see how the titles look on my 9" Zenith Space Command TV.

[pomme]

It looks awesome! Thanks.

[pjft]

@pomme glad to hear that. You can also change the video length. Enjoy:)

[detron]

@pjft

great info. I decided to search the forum before asking my question, (game name on video) and there it was.

I just saw a video, and thought "I want to try that!" and have no clue what system or game it was.
I only caught the last 2 seconds or so, so maybe with a little more time I might have recognized it

[pjft]

@detron thanks! You can change when the caption shows - during the entire clip or just beginning and end - in the video screensaver options menu.

You can also launch it directly by pressing start while the clip is showing ;)