RetroPie freezes in UI with video preview

funimation

@clyde It seems to just be random videos each time. I will do a little more experimenting after work. You may be right about the format. I have heard some people say that lowering the framerate of the videos may help. I will check to see if they are 60FPS. Maybe I can drop them down to 30 somehow. It would take a while to do that for 1000s of videos though. :( Hopefully there is an easier process but we will see.

Loggahead

I am having this issue as well. I just started playing with video previews this weekend and found that my system randomly freezes when I have video previews enabled. I used the Sselph scraper and pulled the videos for arcade only from the screenscraper source. I have the OMX player enabled and my VRAM setting was already set to 80mb.

It doesn't seem to a particular video but I am not 100% sure of that yet. I am using the Tronkyfran theme and have the screensaver set to random video. I let the screensaver videos run and it froze but was just as a black screen when I found it so I wasn't able to see what video it crashed on. It seems that most of my videos are in H.264 codec. Is there a suggested codec / settings for video previews? I know how to use handbrake and could try re-encoding all of my videos to those settings easy enough...

mitu

@loggahead See the discussion at https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/12590/how-to-properly-convert-video-snaps-for-emulationstation/17 for converting using Handbrake.

Clyde

@loggahead said in RetroPie freezes in UI with video preview:

Is there a suggested codec / settings for video previews?

One common problem is the encoding in YUV 444, which omx player can't play, it needs YUV 420. If that's your problem, you can use one of these scripts for easy conversion:

https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/15362/script-batch-convert-yuv-4-4-4-videos-to-yuv-4-2-0-in-retropie-linux (no options, but simple)
https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/15764/script-retropie-convert-videos (not as simple, but with options)

Loggahead

@mitu , @Clyde - Thank to you both. I will research the issue more tonight and see if I can find what's causing the crashes. If I find some of the videos are YUV 444, I'll convert them to 420 and see if it fixes it. If not, I'll just batch re-encode them using the settings mitu linked me too.

I take it, you have video previews running on your system without it causing random system freezes?

Clyde

@loggahead Yes, I only had problems with said YUV 444 videos, and they didn't cause freezes. They only showed up as empty, black pictures in OMXPlayer.

Loggahead

I got it to freeze again last night and it ended up freezing in attract mode on a game called silent dragon. However, I couldn't get it to freeze on that same video after I rebooted.

I have ben using tronkyfran as my theme and know that carbon is the default so as a test I switched to carbon. I let it run for hours last night on carbon with no freezing. Could it have possibly been something in the code of that theme that could cause this? I'm letting it run all day today while at work and will consider this solved if it doesn't freeze.

mitu

@loggahead Is your power supply good enough ? Do you get the yellow bolt while playing ?

Loggahead

@mitu Never have gotten a yellow bolt whole playing or using my pi. I've had this particular pi3 for over a year now and it never has given me any issues so I am going to assume that my ps is ok?

mitu

@loggahead Sure, if you didn't have problems so far, I'd say the power source is solid.

Loggahead

@mitu I think I just found the issue. My cab froze again while in attract mode and I noticed the temp icon in the upper right! It's overheating!

I went back an looked another picture i took on my phone when it froze and saw that same icon! I'm now thinking using the hardware accelerated OMX player is what is causing this.

So my next question is this. I have my PI in an arcade cabinet mounted behind an lcd screen. the PI is not in a case and has heatsinks on the chips. It's also not overclocked. What is my best option to keep it running cool?

Loggahead

NVM, looking up some other threads on cooling but if you have any recommendations that would cut down some reading, feel free to share? And thanks so much!

mitu

@loggahead Can't say I have any cooling recommendations, but do you have installed a shutdown/reset script ? - maybe you have buttons connected via GPIO and you run the script to trigger reset/shutdown. I've seen a few scripts that monitor the pins continuously and because of the way they are programmed, they consume a CPU (100%) adding to the load of the system.
You can check what programs consume the CPU by running top - preferably from a SSH session so you can monitor the system while ES and screensavers are running - and then sort by CPU consumption (press P).

DougA

@loggahead How much ventilation do you have in your cabinet? It could get fairly warm in there, and if you don't have any ventilation holes, there isn't going to be much air flow.

Loggahead

@mitu I don't have a shutdown script and haven't programmed any buttons for something like this. It's something I'm looking at doing in the future though so I'll keep an eye on that.

@DougA It has some large ventilation holes at the top and bottom of the cabinet but NO active cooling whatsoever. I know this has to be my issue. I've checked the cabinet several times and the ambient temp isn't that warm at all. The lcd I'm using isn't putting off much. So I'm thinking the best bet for me to try first is some active cooling on the pi itself? I'm only running heat sinks so having a fan should resolve this issue I'm thinking?

Loggahead

Ordered one of these: https://www.amazon.com/Raspberry-iUniker-Heatsink-Model-Single/dp/B01LXSMY1N/ref=sr_1_6?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1525878832&sr=1-6&keywords=raspberry+pi+3+fan

Will see how well it works and go from there. I like the open case design to allow air to flow which should work well being inside the arcade cab. If not, I'll send it back.

Clyde

@loggahead said in RetroPie freezes in UI with video preview:

the PI is not in a case and has heatsinks on the chips.

The heatsinks may actually isolate the chips instead of cooling them, if they are attached by normal, non-thermoconducting glue, as many cheap heatsink sets are. If you're not sure what kind of glue you have, it may be a good idea to remove the sinks, clean the chips with high proof alcohol (not water!) and test the temperature of the system.

edit: See this thread for a temperature display in the Retropie menu. I didn't test it, though.

darknior

I also have this problem from the beginning ... many month ago.
All is working fine, and some time when i start my TV i discover my pi has crash, with some time a video glitch, some time the linux console, but all is freeze.
I always think it was the Video Screen Saver that crash ... on some videos.
All my videos comme from EmuMovies and i made some myself like us. And i never see one video crashing ...
Hard to found if it is really a video, what video it is ??? i can't test all my videos one by one, i have maybe more than 3000 videos.

Loggahead

@clyde My heatsinks are just attached using the compound tape that was on them. It's arctic silver or anything and probably isn't transferring heat all that efficiently. Although I have noticed the heatsinks get hot to the touch. I'll monitor the temp display now that I know it's overheating and compare that to the temps I get with the new case / fan.

It's odd to me though that it never has overheated on me while playing games which I have been playing A LOT since I built this cabinet. It only started overheating using OMX player. I guess it really is putting the cycles to the cpu on the pi to play vids!

@darknior Just because I found that my issue wasn't my vids and has ended up being my pi overheating and crashing due to vids being played back, look for a small thermometer icon in the upper right-hand corner of your screen the next time your pi locks up. That will indicate it's overheating. It's VERY EASY to overlook even if you already know about it.

Clyde

@loggahead said in RetroPie freezes in UI with video preview:

It's odd to me though that it never has overheated on me while playing games which I have been playing A LOT since I built this cabinet. It only started overheating using OMX player. I guess it really is putting the cycles to the cpu on the pi to play vids!

But that shouldn't be the case if you're using a hardware accelerated player like OMX. Hardware acceleration should remove stress from the normal CPU, not add to it. (?)