Only black screen instead of video screensaver

AnalogHero

Pi Model or other hardware: 3
Power Supply used: 3a from Amazon
RetroPie Version Used 4.3
Built From: Pre made image from here
USB Devices connected: Logitech wireless keyboard
Controller used: 8bitdo Snes 30 pro
Error messages received: none
Log found in /dev/shm/runcommand.log (if relevant): na
Guide used: na
File: (File with issue - with FULL path) na
Emulator: na
Attachment of config files: (PLEASE USE PASTEBIN.COM FOR LARGE LOGS)
How to replicate the problem:

Hi,

i tried almost everything but cannot get videoscreensavers to work. I put 1 video file in /home/pi/RetroPie/screensaver. Named it saver.mp4. Then i selected a game (6pak from megadrive) and added the path to the video line in the edit metadata screen.

If i select videogamelist view i can see my video there. But screensaver shows only a black screen. Other settings make no difference. ES freezes for 2 or 3 seconds and then a black screen.
Any ideas?

pjft

@analoghero video screensaver will show videos from your gamelists, not from a specific file. I don't think that anyone has implemented the use case you're searching for yet, unless it's a recent thing and I'm mistaken.

That being said, searching on the forums will yield some workarounds on how to achieve that using the current implementation. I'm sure I've seen some users come up with ways for it to play a single video by adding it to the metadata entry of an entry in the RetroPie system for instance.

AnalogHero

Already tried various solutions from this forum. Added video tags in retropies gamelist.xml. Even then the result is the same. I wonder if its a problem that there are empty video tags in my gamelists?

pjft

@analoghero that shouldn't be a problem. Tell me: if you navigate to that game entry, does the video play in the gamelist view? What about if you set it to use OMX player in the other settings menu?

AnalogHero

@pjft Yes, it plays if i go to this entry. If i set use omx player to off it plays the video very slow.

An idea would be that there is a similar menu as the one for slideshow. You select a custom folder with video files in it. No more fiddling with xml files.

pjft

@analoghero thanks.

Hmm. So we know that the player runs the video, which is great.

I wonder, what system did you add the tag to? Could you add it to a different system - namely one with actual games, rather than the RetroPie one?

Also, is that the only video you have? Could you share one of your gamelists via pastebin or so?

Thanks.

AnalogHero

@pjft The system i added the video is megadrive. But i tried other systems too (including the retropie one).

Will post the gamelist.xml when im back home from work.

AnalogHero

@pjft Here is my megadrive gamelist.xml

gamelist.xml

Note that the edited entry is the last one in the xml file.

pjft

I see.

Yes, if you can remove all those empty <video /> tags, that will very likely fix it. Maybe a quick find and replace will sort that out - I'd still make a backup of the original files beforehand.

Indeed, the way it works is that it searches for all games with a video tag, and then if it can't find a video, it'll retry for a number of times. In this case, if you have an empty tag, it will find a tag but then no video. If you don't have a tag at all, it won't include it so you'll be good to go.

See if that works.

AnalogHero

@pjft can you help me with the sed command?

Something like sed -i 's/<video />/ /g' gamelist.xml doesnt work.

pjft

@analoghero oh my. I'd love to be able to help you with sed but alas that's really far from my expertise. I'd usually open all the gamelist files in different tabs on a text editor and do a find and replace in all files. I know it's not efficient so I'm glad to see you thinking smarter:)

@meleu (apologies, I know I keep tagging you to the most awkward situations but you're the first person I think of when I think of people who deserve a sonnet about their scripting abilities :) ), would you be comfortable with sed? I don't really have experience with it.

@AnalogHero Just to confirm, please backup your XML files before attempting to manually edit them, just in case.

AnalogHero

@pjft I figured it out. Its sed -i '/<video \/>/d' gamelist.xml

And now the screensaver works as it should. Seems ES has problems with those empty video tags.

meleu

@pjft no problems in tagging me. Feel free to do it ;-)

I'm glad @AnalogHero sorted his issue :-)

pjft

@analoghero It's not as much that ES has problems with that, as it is that that's not how it's intended to work. :)

As I mentioned, the random video screensaver will search through all the existing video tags and then select an existing one to play a video. If the tags end up being empty, at the moment it doesn't really know about it upfront, before trying to play the video. I suppose we could change that to test for whether the path exists before choosing a random video tag, though it'd need to be tested for performance prior to making that change.

Glad you're sorted though!

AnalogHero

@pjft Please dont get me wrong as i dont know how much work this is:
Why not make it optional to play random videos from all gamelists or from a selected folder? I dont use video previews at all.

Just an idea...

pjft

@analoghero Not at all, please. :) that has indeed been requested quite a few times, and now that the image screensaver does exactly that - albeit with images - it could be a potential change to how it works.

Maybe it gets picked it up some day.

Glad you're sorted!