Emulation Station Hangs only in Atari 2600 Menu!

techana

I'm running retropie 4.4.4 on Pi 3B+. In Atari 2600 only, emulation station hangs when trying to play snap videos. If I switch "use omg player (hw accelerated)" ON, then all videos play well but the layout is missed up in all machines menus (videos appear above images and marquees).

I looked at the videos in atari 2600 snap folder and nothing seems unusual. Here is the details of the first game in list:

General
Complete name                            : /Volumes/groms/atari2600/snap/2005 Minigame Multicart (USA) (Unl).mp4
Format                                   : MPEG-4
Format profile                           : Base Media
Codec ID                                 : isom (isom/iso2/avc1/mp41)
File size                                : 865 KiB
Duration                                 : 35s 648ms
Overall bit rate mode                    : Variable
Overall bit rate                         : 199 Kbps
Movie name                               : 2005 Minigame Multicart (USA) (Unl)
Album                                    : Atari 2600
Album/Performer                          : Circo
Performer                                : EmuMovies
Genre                                    : Video Snap
Recorded date                            : 2013
Writing application                      : Lavf54.2.100
Comment                                  : www.emumovies.com

Video
ID                                       : 1
Format                                   : AVC
Format/Info                              : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile                           : High@L2.1
Format settings                          : CABAC / 8 Ref Frames
Format settings, CABAC                   : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames                : 8 frames
Codec ID                                 : avc1
Codec ID/Info                            : Advanced Video Coding
Duration                                 : 35s 600ms
Bit rate                                 : 76.9 Kbps
Width                                    : 320 pixels
Height                                   : 240 pixels
Display aspect ratio                     : 4:3
Frame rate mode                          : Constant
Frame rate                               : 60.000 fps
Color space                              : YUV
Chroma subsampling                       : 4:2:0
Bit depth                                : 8 bits
Scan type                                : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame)                       : 0.017
Stream size                              : 334 KiB (39%)
Writing library                          : x264 core 122 r2183 c522ad1
Encoding settings                        : cabac=1 / ref=8 / deblock=1:0:0 / analyse=0x3:0x111 / me=hex / subme=6 / psy=1 / psy_rd=1.00:0.00 / mixed_ref=1 / me_range=16 / chroma_me=1 / trellis=2 / 8x8dct=1 / cqm=0 / deadzone=21,11 / fast_pskip=1 / chroma_qp_offset=-2 / threads=18 / sliced_threads=0 / nr=0 / decimate=1 / interlaced=0 / bluray_compat=0 / constrained_intra=0 / bframes=3 / b_pyramid=2 / b_adapt=1 / b_bias=0 / direct=3 / weightb=1 / open_gop=0 / weightp=2 / keyint=250 / keyint_min=25 / scenecut=40 / intra_refresh=0 / rc_lookahead=40 / rc=crf / mbtree=1 / crf=23.0 / qcomp=0.60 / qpmin=0 / qpmax=69 / qpstep=4 / ip_ratio=1.40 / aq=1:1.00
Codec configuration box                  : avcC

Audio
ID                                       : 2
Format                                   : AAC LC
Format/Info                              : Advanced Audio Codec Low Complexity
Codec ID                                 : mp4a-40-2
Duration                                 : 35s 648ms
Bit rate mode                            : Variable
Bit rate                                 : 109 Kbps
Maximum bit rate                         : 128 Kbps
Channel(s)                               : 2 channels
Channel layout                           : L R
Sampling rate                            : 48.0 KHz
Frame rate                               : 46.875 fps (1024 SPF)
Compression mode                         : Lossy
Stream size                              : 475 KiB (55%)
Default                                  : Yes
Alternate group                          : 1

Any help please on how to make emulation station plays Atari 2600 snap videos without the need to switch OMX player on?

Thank you.

mitu

@techana Please add more info about your system as requested in https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/3/read-this-first. How did you get the movies - which scraper have you used ?

techana

Pi Model or other hardware: 3 B+
Power Supply used: USB power supply
RetroPie Version Used: 4.4.4
Built From: Pre made SD Image on RetroPie website, then updated
USB Devices connected: Keyboard
Controller used: PS3 BT
File: Atari 2600 snap videos

I got the videos in an Atari 2600 rompack.

The issue has not been fixed yet, Atari snap videos cause ES to freeze unless HW acceleration is enabled.

When HW acceleration is enabled, videos are enlarged and appear above images and marquees in the theme "cygnus". I switched to "ComicBook" theme and the layout is intact even with enabled HW acceleration.

By the way, I tried to re-encode a sample video using ffmpeg and Intel h264 GPU encoder. ES played the video without HS accleartion, but many frames were dropping. I also got this error message in the raspberry SSH terminal:

pi@retropie:~ $ mmal: mmal_vc_port_enable: failed to enable port vc.ril.video_decode:in:0(H264): ENOMEM
mmal: mmal_port_enable: failed to enable port vc.ril.video_decode:in:0(H264)(0x6d792ca0) (ENOMEM)
glGetError 0x505
glGetError 0x505
...

mitu

@techana The errors you posted seems to indicate there's no available VRAM for the video to be rendered. If you're not using OMX (which has HW acceleration), Emulationstation will use vlc (via libvlc) to play the videos and they're not accelerated. The downside of using the omxplayer is that videos will appear in a separate layer on top of any image, hence some themes will suffer from it.
Try increasing the GPU VRAM - the default RetroPie image will allocate 256Mb to the GPU, but you can increase that by editing the /boot/config.txt file. You can then increase the VRAM limit in Emulationstation, so maybe the ENOMEM errors will be gone.

vladulkom

@techana did you fix the issue? If so please share how

BuZz

@vladulkom If you have a problem please open a new topic with details of your set-up. The issue above was related to vram - but this thread is 11 months old.